We decided to carry out a survey on Executive Coaching by phone because we have been working with more international clients and in the UK some clients were asking for coaching by phone to fit in with their busy schedules. We asked 48 of our Executive Coaching clients who had completed some or all of their coaching by phone about their experience. We also asked our Executive Coaches how they found coaching by phone and what was important to ensuring the coaching was successful.

Client View on Executive Coaching by Telephone

• 53% of Executive Coaching clients had some reservations about being coached by telephone before they started.
• 47% of clients had no preconceptions because either they were not sure what to expect from coaching, or that for cost and geographical reasons telephone coaching was the best way to access personal development
• Where the coach and client met for an initial meeting and agreed to phone coaching no client had any concerns about the effectiveness of telephone coaching
• 95% of clients found telephone coaching a convenient way to enable them to use their coaching time. It meant they could receive their coaching where and when they wanted it. They also welcomed the fact that they did not have to travel to and from coaching meetings
• 98% of clients felt they were able to develop a strong relationship with their coach over the phone
• 95% of Executive Coaching clients achieved their objectives when they used telephone coaching (this is a similar level of achievement as those clients using face to face coaching)
• All clients felt that they were listened to during telephone coaching and that the coach understood their situation or dilemma. This was considered as one of the key factors in the success of telephone coaching
• 88% of clients commented that they saw the reduced cost of telephone coaching as a benefit of the approach

The View of Executive Coaches on Telephone Coaching

• 100% of coaches said that they felt that telephone coaching worked well because of the lack of distractions that sometimes exist in face to face coaching.
• In particular coaches referred to the distractions that sometimes occurred in the face to face coaching environment – the coaching location, dress and body language
• This led to a much higher focus on listening to the client on the phone; both to what was said and how it was said
• All coaches commented that phone coaching tended to be more businesslike in that there was less exchange of pleasantries and both coach and client were more disciplined about the use of time
• The majority of coaches said that there were less cancelled coaching sessions than there tended to be in face to face coaching
• Coaches commented on the need for some specific skills for telephone coaching to be effective. It was important to know when the other person was thinking and not to interrupt their thought process. Many of the coaches stated that they agreed beforehand with their clients that they would say if they were thinking rather than leave the other person wondering why there was a silence

Some Overall Points

From our survey it is clear that telephone coaching works well for both Executive Coaches and their executive Coaching clients. There are some significant benefits for clients of telephone coaching – convenience, reduced travel, reduced costs of coaching. It seems that both coaches and clients find that listening is improved in telephone coaching.

So based on this small survey it would seem that Executive Coaching by telephone works well for coaching clients and enables them to achieve their objectives as well as those who use face to face coaching.

Tony Goddard Consulting

As an Executive Coaching Company we offer the facility of telephone coaching to suit the needs of our clients. This can be for some or all of the coaching discussions. We offer telephone coaching at a reduced cost to our clients because of its convenience and the fact that there are no travel costs or time involved with travelling.

Another option that we offer very often for international clients is the use of Skype.

Keywords; Executive Coaching, Telephone Coaching, Coaching by Phone, Skype Coaching, Coaching Survey, Survey on Telephone Coaching

We are a Career Coaching Company based in Stratford upon Avon offering career coaching services to clients in the Warwickshire, Birmingham and Midlands area.

If you are looking for a Job, or looking for a Career move, we can help you achieve your objective. We work with

• Clients who have been made redundant and are looking to find a new job
• Graduates who are looking to find their first job after university
• Postgraduates looking to find a job on completion of their masters Degree
• Clients already in a role looking for promotion or to change the function in which they work

We have helped many clients find the role they are looking for and you can see what our past clients have felt about their career coaching on our Testimonials page on the website (on the top bar). As an organisation we provide career coaching services to graduates and postgraduates at Warwick University and the University of Buckingham.

You can choose a career coaching package to suit your needs and tailored to your circumstances. So you might choose to have one coaching session or a number of sessions. These can be done both on a face to face basis and by phone. We offer the help you need to;

• Decide on the right career
• Create a CV which will enable you to get interviews
• Prepare for interview so that you are confident and can beat your competition
• Mock interviews
• Prepare for competency based interviews
• Prepare for Assessment Centres – group discussions, interview, numeracy tests and personality tests
• Market yourself so that you find the jobs you want before they are advertised
• Understand how to work with Recruitment Agencies or Executive Search firms

You can choose any one or more of these topics to equip you to get the job that you want. There are more details of our careers coaching on the careers coaching page of our website (under services on the top bar).

If you want to know more please call us on 01789 261202, or email Tony@TonyGoddardConsulting.com

Tony Goddard

The business is owned by Tony Goddard who prior to setting up the Company was an HR Director of a large FTSE250 Company. Tony holds a Masters Degree in Coaching. Our Executive Coaches are all qualified to post graduate level and have extensive experience in a commercial environment.

We work with clients from a list of well known organisations and this is available for you to see on our Clients page of the website. We have successfully worked with our Executive Coaching clients on topics such as

• Leadership development
• Successfully moving after promotion into a new role
• Developing the competencies required to move from a specialist to generalist role
• Building relationships with key stakeholders
• Implementing change management programmes

Full details of all our services can be found on the Executive Coaching page of our website. You can also find out how past clients have found our service on our Client Testimonials page.

Please feel free to contact us to discuss how Executive Coaching could help you in your career.

Tony Goddard

Executive Coaching Midlands, Executive Coaching

Our Executive Coaches are all qualified to post graduate level and have extensive experience in a commercial environment. The business is owned by Tony Goddard who prior to setting up the Company was an HR Director in a large FTSE250 Company. Tony holds a Masters Degree in Coaching and Mentoring.

We have an extensive client list and this is available for you to see on our Clients page of the website. We have extensive expertise of enabling our clients to enhance their business performance in some of the following areas

• Leadership competencies
• Transition into a new role
• Moving from a specialist to a general management role
• Influencing skills
• Building stakeholder relationships
• Building self-confidence

Full details of all our services can be found on the Executive Coaching page of our website. You can also find out how past clients have found our service on our Client Testimonials page.

Please feel free to contact us to discuss how Executive Coaching could help you in your career.

Tony Goddard

Executive Coaching Warwickshire, Executive Coaching Warwick

There are also overlaps between the different types of coaching. But in order to keep things simple here we present five specific coaching types.

Life Coaching

Life coaching is aimed at providing people with support with topics related to their personal lives. This might be about managing emotions such as anger, or how to become more assertive. Life coaching also helps people consider what they want to achieve in life, the barriers and how to overcome them.

Anyone can call themselves a life coach so it’s important to find out the qualifications and experience of any life coach you intend to use. A good way to do this is to ask if you can speak to a previous client.

Executive Coaching

Executive Coaching focuses on topics related to your working life. The overall aim is to enable you to maintain and enhance your current performance levels. Executive Coaching applies to many types of organisation and in the case of the coaching we provide at Tony Goddard Consulting we work with clients in private companies, universities and public bodies.

Executive Coaching topics typically relate to personal development or considering a specific business issue. In the area of personal development it may be about how to be successful in a new role, enhancing your leadership skills, or building specific competencies such as presentation skills. Executive Coaching can also be used to look at particular business issues such as; how to implement change, develop strategy, reorganise, develop teams.

Career Coaching

Career Coaching is a specialist field that helps people consider the right type of career for themselves, as well as how to find a job if they are out of work. In the ever increasingly competitive jobs market career coaching can make the difference as to whether you get the job or not.

In our career coaching practice we work with clients who are looking to make a job move for promotion or greater job satisfaction. We work with clients who have been made redundant and are seeking a new role. We also work with graduates and postgraduates who are seeking a permanent job role. This gives you an idea of the range of support provided in career coaching.

The subjects covered in career coaching can range from how to effectively network, producing a powerful CV, success at interviews and how to negotiate the best contract.

Business Coaching

This tends to be coaching provided to the owners and senior teams in small or medium sized businesses to enable them to build and grow their business to the next stage. Alternatively it might be about how to increase the profitability of the current business.

Sports Coaching

Sports coaching is probably the field most people understand the best. Each sport has it’s own coaches and coaching qualifications. So if you are looking to learn how to play Tennis or get better at Tennis you would look for a Tennis Coach. Probably at your local Tennis club

The role of the leader is key and this is laid bare in the world of football. How many times have we seen an underperforming team suddenly move up the league table on the appointment of a new manager? The same team significantly lift their performance as a result of the influence of the new manager. Granted that the world of football and business are slightly different but there are also some similarities when it comes to developing a high performance team.

So what is it you have to do as the leader to develop such high performance team? The tips given here are in no particular order of priority but they are all important.

Am I Leading a Team?

The definition of a team is a group of individuals with a common purpose. So does your team have a common purpose, or are you actually leading a group of individuals. If you are leading a group of sales people who have both individual and a group sales target there is a fairly clear common purpose. This might be about sharing knowledge, leads, expertise and prospects. However if you are leading a group of functional heads across a wide range of areas there may be much less of a common purpose. For example a Finance Director who leads Group Risk, Financial and Management Accounting, IT and the Company Secretariat. In this case what might the common purpose of the group be (there are possibilities)?

So if you are not leading a team perhaps you need to consider the purpose of any group activities such as meetings. It may be that the purpose of the group is literally for communication of new policies, company results and initiatives.

If you are leading a group of individuals with a common purpose like a football manager then there are some specifics you need to put in place in order to create a high performance team.

What’s the Vision?

As a leader you are accountable for creating a vision for where the team is headed. This enables people to understand what will be required going forward and ensures all those in the team are pulling in the same direction. The vision can be fairly grand or very specific. Examples might be

• As a financial accounting team we will achieve a 100% annual audit rating
• We will become the largest retailer of food in the south east based on the volume of meals served
• We will achieve 10% average sales growth over the next three years

The creation of a meaningful and compelling vision clarifies the common purpose and enables individual team members to see how their objectives contribute to the whole. In our team development coaching we find that the process of creating a vision not only generates a sense of purpose but also contributes to some of the other building blocks for a high performance team.

Transparency

For a team to function well there has to be an atmosphere of trust which allows team members to openly contribute their views. It is important that this includes the ability to constructively criticise ideas which may be of concern.

This type of transparency doesn’t happen by accident although it can occur over a lengthy period of time. If you are a new leader however you need to accelerate this trust among team members. This can be even more difficult if you have been managing a team for some while where there is a lack of trust.

One way of building trust is for team members to understand a bit more about each other. This can be done in a number of different ways but in team coaching we will often use the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. This tool focuses on the strengths and differences between individuals. So it is non-threatening and enables team members to understand why people behave in the way that they do.

The team leader also sets an example of transparency. So it’s important that the leader facilitates open conversations and does not try to bury them.

Ground Rules

The team needs a set of ground rules that state how individuals will interact with each other and what the team as a whole believe is important. This means that everyone understands what behaviour is acceptable and not acceptable.

Delivery

It helps if members of the team have a clear understanding of each others’ objectives. This means everyone understands how individuals are contributing to the whole team. It demonstrates transparency and everyone can see who is under what pressure to deliver.

Where individuals agree to take on a tasks for the team it is important that they are held accountable by team members for delivery. So if for example two team members agree to take an additional savings target to cover overspends elsewhere they must know they are expected to deliver.

Consistency and Fairness

As leader it is critical that you are seen to be consistent and fair in the treatment of team members. This is one area where problems may occur because the leader is seen to be too lenient or indeed to hard on certain team members.

Deal with the Stragglers

Occasionally there will be those in the team who do not buy in to the approach taken by the leader. If after doing all the right performance management activity their attitude or behaviour does not change it must be dealt with quickly. There is nothing worse for undermining team morale than knowing there are one or two that do not demonstrate the right performance, behaviour and attitude, but get away with it.

So the answer is to move the under performers out! Don’t wait for them to leave. Set the example and move them on. This might be to another team where they are better suited and may be happier, or they may have to exit the organisation.

Reward and Recognise High Performance

Build and maintain a high performance culture by rewarding and recognising those that show the right behaviours. Bonus schemes will normally reward the right financial performance but there is so much more you can do as a leader. Create a pot of money to allow you to give recognition. This could be high street vouchers, a meal for two, a weekend away, an additional day off or a team night out. You can reward for all sorts of things, for example

• Doing something on behalf of the team
• Speaking on a subject to develop the team
• Contributions to a team project
• Successful completion of a team project

This reward and recognition highlights the behaviours you expect and gives an incentive for showing it.

Team Development Coaching

Sometimes you can be fortunate and all these things fall in to place naturally. Often that is not the case and leaders cannot afford to spend the time necessary to get the team performing at the highest level. This is where team development coaching can speed things up. As a consultancy we can work with you to design the interventions you may need to create a high performing team

Tony Goddard

Keywords; team coaching, team development, team building, high performance team, team performance, team development coaching

Role of the Executive Coach; the role of the coach is to apply the skills of listening, understanding and accurate listening to ask you questions that enable you to get a fresh perspective on the topic you have brought to coaching. It has been likened to being taken in a helicopter and flown around a landscape. When this happens you see the land in new ways. To continue the analogy in executive coaching the coach will ask you questions that allow you to explore your topic in ways that it is hard to do by yourself.

So your coach is not a consultant and will not give you his or her ideas of how to resolve a topic – after all the person that really understands the situation is you. And someone famous once said that there is little risk in giving people advice because they rarely follow it.

By understanding the role of the coach and what coaching is all about you can see why these tips might be valuable.

Be Committed to Coaching; whatever happens do not feel forced to use coaching to resolve something. Coaching only works if the client has a dilemma that he or she is committed and motivated to resolve through coaching.

Get the Chemistry Right; you will be discussing all sorts of things with your coach so it’s critical that you feel comfortable with the relationship between you. Make sure you meet your Coach prior to agreeing to take any coaching. Any reputable coach will offer this facility anyway. Make sure you ask the coach a bit about their style and approach to coaching so that you feel comfortable with it.

Have a Clear End Objective; make sure that you have a clear objective for your coaching. Ideally you should express this as what will be different at the end of coaching. Don’t worry if you can’t do this immediately as your coach should be able to help you to do this.

With a clear end result in mind both you and your coach have a common understanding of what you are trying to achieve and what success will look like.

Executive Coaching can help you find solutions to business issues and works especially well in enhancing your personal development. For example coaching can help you on topics related to leadership, change, influencing skills, relationship development.

Get in the Coaching Zone; if you are busy at work it’s important that you create some clear psychological space for coaching. In this way you don’t go into your coaching session with all the things that are taking up your energy at work that day or week. Our clients have reported that they find this easier to do if they have their coaching sessions somewhere other than in their office. The journey to the location gives you time to get your mindset right.

Prepare Your Agenda; prior to your coaching session be clear about the topics or issues you want to discuss at your coaching session. Take the time to review what has happened since the last session and how well you have achieved the actions you agreed at the previous session. Any good coach will start a session by asking you what is most important for you to discuss – it’s your time and your agenda.

Be Prepared to be Challenged; one of the great benefits of executive coaching is that you can work with someone who can challenge your thinking without any hidden agenda. This kind of challenge allows you to reassess your assumptions. A coach may ask you to try ideas and thinking that may not be your natural style, but this kind of experience can be very illuminating and developmental.

A Transparent Relationship; be prepared to be open and honest with your coach. In this way you will get the most from your coaching. In any coaching the content of the discussion between coach and client is confidential. Although you and your coach are likely to report back on the overall progress towards your coaching objectives to the person that paid for the coaching. So make sure there are clear boundaries on confidentiality agreed beforehand. This is normally an essential element of any coaching contract.

A Partnership; coaching is a partnership and both the coach and client have clear responsibilities. A client of ours recently likened it to two people sailing a boat. One has responsibility for steering and the other for trimming the sails. Each needs the other to meet their responsibilities for it to work. This is a good analogy for the nature of the executive coaching relationship.

If you are interested in using coaching to help your personal development please contact us to find out more. We offer a no obligations one hour coaching taster session to enable you to see if coaching is for you. All our contact details are on our Executive Coaching homepage

Tony Goddard

Keywords; coaching, executive coaching, executive coaching client, coaching relationship, coaching contract, confidentiality,

In coaching one of the tools used is lifelines. This gives clients the opportunity to consider their life as a whole and become more aware of its successes and difficulties. This is a tool you too can try out. Have a go – it might surprise you.

All you have to do is get a piece of paper and create a graph of your own like the one below. On the vertical axis is your level of satisfaction or happiness with a scale which runs from 10 (very happy) to -10 (very unhappy). On the horizontal axis are the years of your life. In the example below there is just one line covering overall happiness. It often works better with two lines; one for work and one for life outside work. Go ahead and plot your own lifelines. If you have a partner discuss it with them to see what they think. When you have plotted your own lifelines reflect on the questions under the graph.

Questions to Consider

• When were you happiest?
• What caused that?
• Would the same thing make you feel as happy now?
• When were you most unhappy?
• What caused you to feel that way?
• Do your work and personal lifelines move in the same direction at the same time, or not?
• What surprised you?
• What can you learn?

It includes information on

• Writing a CV that will get you interviews

• How to write a skills based CV

• Online job applications

• Success at interviews and getting a job
  

• Competency based interviews

• Assessment centres

• How to market yourself, finding a job
  

• Networking

The guide is based on the experience of career coaching experts and our career coaching clients. It is available to you free and with no obligations. Our toolkit to enable you to Get a Job or Career You Want is on this link.

We’d welcome any feedback on the content or any of your valuable hints and experience that we can add to it for the benefit of others. Send your feedback to Tony@TonyGoddardConsulting.com

This checklist is for those in HR who want to use coaching as a development tool, it is also a guide for any line manager who would like to use internal coaching. It is based on many years of experience of supporting organisations in creating an internal coaching network, as well as having firsthand experience of introducing internal coaching in a FTSE 100 organisation. The checklist is not in any order of priority, although it will be obvious that some considerations are more important than others.

Organisational Culture

• Is the organisation supportive of a coaching approach to development? In some organisations coaching would be seen as a crutch to support the weakest. In others it is seen as a tool to be given to the most talented. What would you say is te current status in your organisation
• Do people understand what coaching is all about? Coaching is a way of enabling others to solve their own problems. In this respect it is different to consultancy where the consultant will advise you how to do something. Mentoring is somewhere between coaching and consultancy. So what are you looking for?
• Will those who provide coaching receive any form of recognition?

Purpose of Coaching

• Why do you want to introduce coaching?
• Will it be for high potential staff?
• Would it be for new staff to get them up to speed quickly?
• Is it for those who have performance problems?
• It is worth noting that coaching does not work well when it is the last stop before a potential exit from the organisation

Types of Coaching

• There are a number of different types of coaching. Do you want skills coaching, for instance making presentations?
• Do you want performance coaching aimed at improving current levels of job performance?
• Do you want developmental coaching to build capability for the future?

Selecting Coaches

• Who will be coaching who in the programme?
• Most often coaching is provided by HR or peers in an organisation
• Coaching of junior staff by senior managers or line managers can be more problematic unless clear boundaries have been established
• Will coaches be selected based on their coaching skills, their company experience or their skills?
• Will a coaching role be offered to those needing to develop coaching related skills such as questioning and listening?

Coaching Boundaries

• What can staff using coaching for and how will they be allocated a coach?
• What are the rules on confidentiality?
• What can and cannot be discussed as part of the coaching relationship eg how to deal with an aggressive line manager?

Training and Developing Internal Coaches

• How will you train internal coaches?
• To what level will you train internal coaches? A coach can be trained within a day or over 2 years to a Masters level?
• How will you provide ongoing development to coaches? Most reputable external coaches have a coaching supervisor for this purpose.
• You could use an external coach to provide this support or set up coaching groups of internal coaches to provide support to each other – there are lots of options, but it is important to do something

As an organisation we are actively involved in the training and development of internal coaches and have firsthand experience of implementing an internal coaching programme. If you want to talk through your plans and get some help and support please call us.

Tony Goddard