Helping the client manage difficult relationships

Leary’s rose is a simple tool for helping clients understand the dynamics of relationships. The rose is built around two dimensions: Dominance v Submission, and Hostility v Togetherness. Our responses to other people’s stances are either symmetrical (hostility provokes hostility; togetherness stimulates togetherness); or complementary (dominance provokes submission, submission provokes dominance). In a work environment,...

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How mentees can manage their boss’ expectations of the mentoring relationship

In theory, the boss should be delighted that someone else is sharing the responsibility for helping one of their direct reports to manage their career self-management and personal development. In practice, they may have reservations about how much time away from the job will be involved, what mentor and mentee will say about him or...

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How to assess commitment to development goals

It often happens that people bring goals to coaching and mentoring, which they feel obliged to accept. Because these goals are externally generated (for example, from the expectations of their line manager, or their spouse), their commitment is likely to be much lower than if the goal were generated internally, meeting their own needs. So...

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Hope to help the coachee/ mentee cope with change

In essence, all coaching and mentoring are about helping people achieve change. When change is incremental, planned and about progress towards a desirable objective, and the coachee/ mentee feels reasonably in control and not under threat, then coaching or mentoring task is relatively straightforward. But when change is unexpected, threatening or involves significant perceived loss,...

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Five levels of listening:

When a coach / mentor is truly attentive to a client, they listen intently. They do so not just with their ears, but with their eyes and their intuition. Of course, being in that state of high attentiveness continuously isn’t easy – internal and external distractions constantly interrupt our total attention and cause us to (more…)

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Getting to the heart of a problem or issue, using levels of meaning

Levels of meaning are like the layers of an onion: each layer conceals another, deeper, layer of information. Goodman (2002) identifies four levels of meaning that can give structure to exploring an issue in a coaching or mentoring conversation. These are: In using this approach, it’s important to give sufficient time to understanding each layer...

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Giving and receiving feedback

Giving and receiving feedback are essential to someone who wants to develop themselves and others it is also a critical element in performance improvement. How we both provide and receive feedback will impact on the overall success and on the outcomes of our mentoring / coaching relationships. But the skills of giving and receiving feedback (more…)

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Goal setting in coaching and mentoring: general principles

Objectives come in many sizes and varieties. Research evidence shows that whilst objective-orientation is significant in overall leadership performance, the nature of effective objective management changes at different levels, from a focus on task (practical, usually short-term objectives) at lower levels of leadership to one on purpose (achievement of a broad vision) at higher levels....

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Helping the coachee or mentee become more ethically aware

People in all cultures tend to think of themselves as more ethical and more morally virtuous than we actually are. (Even prisoners in goal think they are more ethical than average!) Ethical awareness is increasingly regarded as a core skill of a good leader, but many people reach leadership positions without a strong moral compass....

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