While we specialise in Coaching for Executives and Managers, coaching can be used successfully at all levels of an organization.  A coach works with a person through a number of structured 1 :1 meetings to help the person achieve their goals in developing and enhancing their performance in their business.  Goals set by coachees vary and some examples of themes for coaching can include, strategic thinking, people leadership, influence and impact, personal efficiency, creativity, resilience, to name but a few examples.  The goals for coaching are often informed by performance and personal development planning conversations with more senior colleagues or through one's own observations of areas for personal development. 

 A coach acts as a conduit to enable behavioural change by initially working with the coachee to understand their situation and using a range of coaching tools help the person gain new perspectives on issues.  This leads to a shift in actions the coachee is prepared to try away from the coaching sessions. This shift provides the basis for behavioural change in coaching. Along this journey the coach will use a range of tools to help the person gain greater insight, make decisions, plan and review actions.

While 'one off' coaching meetings can be useful a typical coaching assignment takes place over a number of sessions (4-6) in a 2-4 month time frame.  The coaching goals are set and agreed between the coach and the coachee as part of the coaching contract.  Increasingly, where a coaching programme is being rolled out in an organization the person's line boss may be asked to sit in on the first 30 minutes to help set the coaching objectives.  However, thereafter a crucial component of coaching is confidentiality and apart from helping to set the objectives the discussions between a coach and coachee are 1:1 and completely confidential.  For reporting purposes organizations may ask us to take note of dates and duration of coaching sessions but we do not discuss the content of the sessions. 

As business psychologists we are qualified in a number of tools to help a coahee build self-awareness e.g. leadership profiling, 360' etc and these are particularly useful at the start of the coaching assignment. The effectiveness of coaching can be measured using a similar range of tools e.g. surveys, follow up 360 measures, business performance data etc.