Coaching
One-to-one coaching is purposeful, structured and involves both support and challenge. Done well, by a qualified and experience coach, coaching helps people to flourish.
At team level, developing coaching skills can help line managers and leaders to become more effective by helping them to adapt their style and flex their approach to meet the needs of the situation and the people concerned.
At an organisational level, self-aware colleagues who are engaged in positive dialogue with their teams are able to notice people’s needs and offer appropriate support and challenge in a timely way. When combined with strong listening and questioning skills, this ability to notice becomes a powerful source of organisational intelligence.
We are proud to use Lumina Learning psychometric tools to help people deepen their self-awareness and develop emotional intelligence. Lumina also provides a range of digital tools to support self-coaching over time which add value and encourage on-going applied learning.
Mentoring
In contrast to coaching, mentoring is intended to be directive i.e. the mentor offers their perspective, advice and guidance, as well as listening to, supporting and challenging their colleague. It is usually provided by someone who is not involved in the line management of the mentee.
Mentoring benefits both the mentor and the person being mentored (the “mentee” – I know, not a great word). The mentee can tap into their colleague’s experience and knowledge. The mentor learns a great deal too by way of the skills needed to enable and support another person, and by discovering how that person sees and responds to the world.
Mentoring is a great vehicle for intergenerational working. Don’t assume it's always the senior person who does the mentoring! “Reverse” mentoring is a powerful way for senior people to understand and connect with different perspectives and experience.
Get in touch if you’d like to discover more.
COACHING
INDIVIDUALS
At its heart, coaching is the active application of emotional intelligence by a highly skilled professional who seeks to allow their coachee to explore and make sense of their experience and determine their own next steps.
Walking with someone for a time through coaching is an immense privilege. A coach creates rapport which builds into trust, inviting perspective and developing insight. It is not something that can be forced. We can only invite the individual to reflect, to find ways to make sense of their experiences and to build on them.
COACHING
GROUPS
Coaching is hugely valuable to junior colleagues, but the expense can be off-putting.
Group coaching can offer a useful way of encouraging reflection, so that people learn strategies to become resilient and take responsibility for their own behaviour, including identifying what learning is likely to help them.
We can also offer self-coaching tools and teach people how to use them. In addition to appropriate support and challenge from line managers, this approach can be super empowering.
MENTORING
SKILLS
Mentoring is about guiding and enabling others. A good mentor, like a good coach, demonstrates highly sophisticated human skills in order to “read” their colleague, assess their needs and enable them to take action for themselves.
The fundamental skills have significant transferable value, particularly in relation to working with clients to explore, discover and take responsibility for action.
We work with professionals at all levels to help them become experts in listening, framing questions carefully with thought and courage, and noticing what their colleague needs in order to make progress for themselves.
COACHING SKILLS FOR MANAGERS & LEADERS
Coaching skills help colleagues to learn to listen first; to engage and be curious without “telling” when appropriate.
They also set people up to see the value of purposeful conversations, which might involve using a simple structure to shape dialogue and help stay on track to reach useful conclusions.
In the future, as digital tools enhance efficiency, coaching skills will be to the fore in working with clients too.