Think about great managers or great leaders with whom you've worked. What was it about them that made them so effective?
The unanimous response is that the most effective managers and leaders have the qualities of a great coach.
Leaders who utilize coaching skills have more effective teams, higher morale, and better bottom-line results than those who don't. These leaders have high levels of retention of key people, better customer service in their organizations, and higher productivity. And let's face it—people remember them and their impact.
How can leaders become more coach-like in their behaviors and actions? Coaching Essentials for Leaders focuses on the development and practical application of core coaching skills and a coaching conversation model, enabling leaders to become more "coach-like" with their colleagues and teams. In addition to the training, each leader gets his or her own coach who will mentor the leader's early coaching efforts. Through personalized, one-on-one follow-up coaching sessions, leaders are encouraged to apply, evaluate and discuss the effectiveness of their new behaviors.
Program Description
Purpose: Coaching Essentials for Leaders was created for leaders who seek to learn and apply coaching skills with others in order to increase their effectiveness and influence within their organizations. Coaching Essentials is dedicated to increasing the participants' ability to integrate coaching into their current leadership style.
Outcomes: Leaders who go through this program will be better able to utilize coaching skills to support others in taking focused and purposeful actions that increase their productivity, growth, impact, and results.
Approach: Coaching Essentials for Leaders does not attempt to make leaders into coaches. By focusing on coaching skills and a coaching process, leaders are encouraged to examine their current behaviors and leadership styles while practicing and experiencing how coaching skills makes them more effective.
Participants: Senior level and emerging leaders, managers and others with leadership or supervisory responsibilities.
Format: Coaching Essentials for Leaders includes two distinct segments: a training component to learn and practice the skills, followed by three or more individual coaching sessions to support and apply the learning.
Training: Coaching Essentials for Leaders is offered either on-site or virtually (telephone and web application). The following four areas are threaded throughout the training session:
- Coaching Skills
- Coaching Process
- Coaching Practices
- Workplace Application
Individual Coaching Sessions: Each participant receives a minimum of three coaching sessions after the training by a professional Blanchard Coach. All individual coaching sessions are approximately one hour in length and are delivered via telephone. The primary benefits of these coaching sessions are:
- Increased content retention
- Improved communications among managers, direct reports and teams
- Effective utilization of coaching skills
Program Leaders: Madeleine Homan and Linda Miller, who designed Coaching Essentials for Leaders, are Master Certified Coaches with more than 18 years of coaching experience. Both have extensive experience designing and delivering coaching programs as well as coaching leaders in organizations such as Picture Tel, Forrester Research, Boston Consulting Group, Duke Energy, Deloitte & Touche, Delta Faucet, and The Boeing Company. Linda and Madeleine personally oversee the training of all Coaching Essentials program leaders and provide ongoing mentoring.
What Clients Say about Coaching Essentials for Leaders
“OK, 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug 28th. I had an opportunity to put into practice some of the skills I have learned in the class and in SLII training during a session with one of my direct reports. I had to present a warning letter about inappropriate behavior and was afraid that the session would get really ugly, angry, etc. It went great, and I achieved the outcome I was looking for in the meeting: acknowledgment of the behavior and reality of the seriousness if the behavior does not change. I believe the employee left the meeting feeling valued by me and with ideas of and information on ways to help redirect the inappropriate behavior. What a great feeling it was as a manager and a coach who cares about this employee! I look forward to learning more!”
“Let me start off by saying Coaching Essential for Leaders has an extremely fast pace. You don't want to blink or scratch yourself. I am not judging or suggesting slowing it down since it creates a very focused, dynamic, and challenging environment. I have never done this type of training before and found it mind-boggling. Pretty cool. I look forward to the next few weeks!”
“I'm finding these sessions to be very valuable. I was skeptical at first of how this would work out. I wasn't sure if the Internet conference and the one-hour sessions, spread out like they are, would work. My experience has been the opposite. The sessions in the middle of the day cause me to reflect on and practice the new skills immediately.”