Is Coaching Right for You?
Our Steps to Coaching
As you hit the trail with your coach, you can expect the following waypoints along the journey:
Schedule a 15 minute call with our founder, Mark House, to determine if our coaching services are right for you!
1. Orienteering
Initially, a contracting meeting for the purpose of clarifying expectations takes place.
Your Coaching Goals will identify desired skills, measurable outcomes, with initial milestones, and timelines. We also identify the key business challenges? What business goals need to be achieved? What culture-specific leadership competencies define success? We also establish clear agreements regarding confidentiality and guardrails for the journey.
2. Wayfinding
You engage with our coach in an in-depth dialogue of relevant issues focused on identifying areas for improvement.
A Developmental 360 can inform the process. We believe in collecting input from interviews, but this can be supplemented by other 360 instruments that you or your organization have used in the past. The interviews include the leader’s peers and stakeholders, a human resources manager, and always the leader’s supervisor. We leverage an organization’s established values and competencies or our own empower set of guideposts.
3. Mapping out the Trail
We create an Action Plan that includes strengths, developmental targets, and effective strategies for personal change.
Alinging your vision and the key objectives of the business will be a Map/Action Plan that focuses on behaviors that drive results. We recommend that at least one of the specific goals be shared with your supervisor for their support and feedback on progress. This also helps keep the supervisor engaged in the process without disrupting the confidentiality of the coaching relationship.
4. Hiking the trail together
You and your coach/trail guide meet on a regular basis for feedback and reflection.
Regular weekly or bi-weekly meetings, we share new observations or questions that have developed since the last session. The focus is to provide a safe-haven for the leader to describe and discuss real performance opportunities and approaches that they are using. The coach supports that discussion by asking powerful questions, helping see a different perspective, and connecting insights from other feedback gathered. This environment is key to help the leader achieve the results they set out in their Coaching Map.
5. Celebrating “Peak bagging” and Sustaining Success
Approximately six months after the initial feedback session, an abridged version of the 360 feedback performance appraisal is conducted.
These assessment results assist in evaluating the effectiveness of the coaching process. Continued development is determined and aligned with updated business goals. Sometimes the coaching is extended to work on related or different performance goals important to the leader. Our focus is to provide self-sustaining skills within a year.
A “Coaching approach” is the fundamental building block of all our programs.
Coaching helps you find the trail and pathway forward that you know, but it may not be clear. You may have dropped your compass, or have lost the blaze to the trail you were following, or at a junction of trailheads that go in very different directions. It often feels like “The Pit of Despair” from The Princess Bride. Rather than “telling” you the easy answer, we create an environment where the wilderness begins to feel more encouraging, and those paths point you where your next footstep should go. This stance keeps us grounded in what you, your team, or your organization need to continue to grow.
Thumb – Counseling/Therapy.
Coaching emerged from the Positive Psychology of Carl Rogers, and uses the same stance of questions and listening, assuming there is “nothing to fix” in you or your teams. We are not Therapists… but we can work alongside them.
Pinky- Consulting.
Deliverables and process-focused, consulting uses answers from proven methods… that probably will not work for your unique situation. We rarely do this, and if we do, it is a separate engagement.
Index – Life Coaching.
The deeper questions of “why am I doing this” and “where does this take me” can show up. Certified in the Designing Your Life and Positive Intelligence proven approaches, we can provide these frameworks, and… they are not the typical engagement we start from.
Ring Finger – Mentoring.
This is advice – the answers that friends and neighbors give you, books that provide “easy answers.” Sadly, they are not you, and are not in your situation. While our coaches are very experienced and often can suggest approaches, we stay true to what you really want…
Middle Finger… Leadership Coaching.
Surprisingly this is what we do. It is a blend of all of these, with a primary focus on how you are delivering value in your work context. What is getting in your way, what is within your control, and how can you use these to align you and your teams? Simple – not Easy.
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empoweringLEADERS believes that integrating music with business is empowering and helps people achieve success.
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Our founder, Mark House, shares daily leadership lessons by paralleling his personal anecdotes with those of some of music's greatest legends. Each quick read is paired with a YouTube track for an extra layer of enjoyment.