Practising coaches building their practice
Even the best of leaders can’t attend to everything. They try to ensure that all the important issues are covered, with someone in the team having accountability and responsibility for them. Both team coaches and one-to-one coaches are vulnerable, however, to the team leader who doesn’t manage some areas of his or her responsibilities well. (more…)
Read More The leadership vacuum trap and how coaches and mentors can avoid it
What makes a good contract in coaching or mentoring? While contract is a word every native English speaker understands, it isn’t ideal for describing how the coach-mentor and mentee-coachee clarify and commit to how they will work together. To contract is to reduce or bring within boundaries and carries a legalistic flavour. A more appropriate...
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“Presence” is one of those easily recognisable but hard to define qualities. It plays a significant role in how we assess competence, promotability and other factors that make or break reputation and careers. So what exactly is presence? A pragmatic definition is: “Influencing others simply by being there”. Someone, who has presence commands attention and...
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In coming to virtual group supervision, people tend to have two main aims: Virtual group supervision sessions tend to be relatively short (60 to 90 minutes maximum) compared with two hours or more for face-to-face group supervision. So it is important to prepare well to make maximum use of the time. Typically, a session would (more…)
Group mentoring is a relatively recent innovation. It is typically used in situations, where the demand for mentors outstrips the supply. In a typical group mentoring programme, the mentees might meet on their own once a month, acting as peer mentors and agreeing topics they want to bring collectively for discussion with their mentor. They (more…)
A survey reported in Harvard Business Review asked 106 executives from 17 countries about problem management in their organizations. Overwhelmingly, respondents expressed high confidence in their companies’ ability to solve problems, but low confidence in their ability to understand or even identify the right problem. It seems that managers have a propensity to frame a...
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As the name suggests, feedforward is different from feedback because it focuses on the future rather than the past. While feedforward may begin with a question such as: “What have you learned about yourself and how you approach your work, which could be of benefit in how you manage future tasks?” …the emphasis is not...
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How to help a coachee or mentee be “realistic” about their performance The “better-than-average effect” is a phenomenon first explored in the 1960s, when it was discovered that terrible drivers all judged themselves to be better than average and much closer to the expert end of the spectrum than to the poor driver end. Further...
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Most of us have a bias towards optimism or pessimism. Within normal ranges, this is quite healthy, but outside of these, it can be a significant problem in terms of relationships with colleagues, decision-making, and career potential. Of course, some jobs demand an element of pessimism — working in finance or compliance requires a focus...
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Read More What to do when the coachee or mentee is overly optimistic or pessimistic
What makes an impactful question? In their early training, coaches are taught a number of questions that have the potential to help clients to think. In practice, these rapidly lose their impact because: A question is only powerful or impactful if it causes the client to step outside of their normal narrative or self-discourse. From...
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