I have been coaching/mentoring/supervising coaches for 16 years. Doesn’t time fly. I have benefited so much from having meaningful conversations with a wide range of age groups, commercial sectors including all sorts of different types of people enabling me to learn so much and hopefully stay young at heart.
There are so many different reasons why people look for support with coaching including careers, redundancy, onboarding, leadership, mentoring, retirement. These are just the headlines however, what is really going on under the skin of the coachee. For those starting off in management, it can often be time management and lack of confidence which often employees won’t admit to their manager, but they will do to a coach, as everything is confidential. Again, for those in management it might be the first time they have appraised somebody. Some people haven’t been interviewed before, or it might have been 30 years ago that they last went through the process.
I like to make coaching practical including trial interviews, presentations and appraisals so when the coachee does the real thing, it is a piece of cake for them. I get a great sense of achievement when the coachees get that job, promotion or becomes a Director, or whatever the objective is.
People often ask about the results of coaching sessions. I’m always very cautious in being specific due to concerns about client confidentiality. However, I feel that they can be anonymised and these case studies are important illustrations of coaching outcomes.
Mike felt under pressure as his company had been brought into a new group. His lines of communication were not clear and (as time was limited with his new superiors) Mike tended to be too defensive.
After our coaching sessions together Mike:
– Plans for what he is going to say a lot better
– is more concise
– is looking to the future rather than the past.
Being a small cog in a very large wheel can still be good, but it takes time to adapt to such changes. Having a coach enables this process as the coach is detached and can enable the coachee to see the light for themselves.
Emily’s Radical Rethink When we met, Emily was successfully employed in the operations centre of a busy company but whilst she was successful, she was not exercising her excellent people skills enough. These were evident at both company and industry networking events.
Using her Prism Profile analysis as a guide for our coaching session, Emily felt confident to seek a new customer facing role. So, one coaching session and two interviews, later Emily is starting a new sales job in a different industry. I wish her the very best and am sure that she will thrive in her new work environment.
These two scenarios show the variety of issues clients come to discuss and the range of results.
Occasionally, coachees are happy to broadcast the benefits of coaching and James is one of these, Thank you James.
“I have found Neil’s help invaluable in providing advice to enable me to manage upwards effectively. By enabling me to reflect on my respective strengths and weaknesses Neil’s programme provided clarity on where I want to take my career whilst providing pointers as to how I should manage situations more effectively. Neil has been an excellent facilitator providing the tools to help me self-analyse and therefore arrive at my own conclusions as to how I can improve. This provides real buy-in to the specific strategy we arrived at to improve…he is excellent at not pre-empting the problem and the solution but rather facilitates you to realise this yourself…”
James Leathley, Underwriting Director
I hope the above illustrations show how coaching can benefit so many different types of people at different stages of their career. If you want to try out if coaching can work for you or you know of somebody who could do with a bit of coaching to accelerate their career of life generally, please get in touch with neil@nvwsolutions.co.uk
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