Coaching Cares

K-Pop Stickers Prove It 

I’m approaching 500 hours of helping leaders connect their own dots. 👏

WHY might you or someone in your leadership world choose a certified coach, as part of your ongoing development?  Because senior leadership often feels alone; like being marooned on a desert island (Why is it always a desert island? Why not a tropical island?). Senior leadership often doesn’t come with a non-partial, trustworthy, and qualified dance partner to help one evaluate, discern, and plan next best moves and to assure one keeps moving forward. And experience shows that when we engage in regular coaching, we gain improved communication skills; increased self-esteem/self-confidence; increased productivity; optimized individual/teamwork performance; improved work/life flow; increased well-being and self-awareness; improved business management strategies; expanded professional career opportunities; accelerated on-boarding into a new professional role all the while gaining an accountability partner to help you reach your goals.

I appreciate this definition of executive coaching: “Executive coaching—also referred to as business coaching, leadership coaching, or workplace coaching—is an individualized learning and development intervention to help leaders improve their capabilities, enhance their effectiveness and maximize their personal and professional potential in their organizations."   Frontiers in Psychology.  June 2023. 

Professional coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes, and managing personal change. As coaches, we utilize a co-active process that develops a collaborative relationship, an alliance, between two equals for the purpose of meeting the client’s leadership goals. This practice is a highly effective strategy for leaders to improve expression of their best selves and advance their transformational influence in their organization.

The personal stories of coaching bring its magic alive.  I love when I hear a client say back to me, “Hmm. That’s a good question. I’m not sure. Let me think on that a second....” and then their ideas begin to flow. They discern which ideas to follow, which to ignore and how to pull on the confidence to do so. Different of my coaching clients have said they know I care about them, which is true. Being curious, wanting their best, believing in their abilities to grow and succeed, and cheering for them (mostly silently trying to stay out of the way as they do their work) -  I will them to choose their next big courageous step. Such is part and parcel of how I see my role showing up with them to hold the sacred space for them to do their work. 

Caring for coaching clients means in part that I learn what inspires them through their vulnerable stories of what has worked before and what will renew and inspire them now.

With permission, here is a thank you letter I recently received from a client. She wrote to thank me for stickers and posters of her favorite musical group that happens to be from Korea where I vacationed in June. In her national director role, she leads a staff who are literally trying to change the world.  Between heart ache, tears, and small victories this client knows what revives her. One aspect of that revival is to walk to work with headphones and ATEEZ music playing in her ears.

After one particularly hard meeting she found herself supine on the floor (a technique she learned from one of her staff) reviving again with this favorite K-Pop music. She is SO WISE! She has discerned what helps her renew. It feels natural to send her ATEEZ stickers and posters because as her coach I know her. So yeah, while in Korea I shopped for a client.

I visited K-Pop market booths and chose what I thought she'd value. She's made such an impression on me that I remembered what revives her even while across the ocean. Think of the example she is to her team! She unabashedly displays K-Pop stickers and posters on her office wall and lives into the knowledge that doing so gives her renewed resilience to help change the world. She is modeling for her team the gift of and invitation to find what renews them and YES, bring it into the office or if needed, take breaks to engage in that activity outside. And why? for the betterment of both the employee and the important work of each of our organizations. Carry on, Tammy. Crank that K-Pop up! - then go change the world.

From a portion of my client’s recent email: 

In the middle of what has been an incredibly chaotic, busy, and, at-times, overly stressful week, a lovely package arrived for me at that front door of the office. :-) Thank you for the ATEEZ posters and sticker set. It is not at all too weird! This, I’m learning, is part of k-pop culture and I’m embracing it. :-) Of course, one of these madness-inducing weeks I may take them out and cover my office walls with them. I’ll hang them with Velcro and my staff can see what kind of week I’m having based on how many ATEEZ faces they see on my wall, lol. 

Tammy

As you care for your team and clients, make sure you care for yourself. Not just by taking revival time like Tammy with her K-Pop music but consider adding in regular times with a qualified coach. Time with a coach is confidential, allows you to hear yourself think, be challenged when your thoughts contraindicate each other, and invites accountability. We coaches are trained to ask questions, be the occasional pain in the rear with our questions, and ultimately support you in your self-actualization potential.  Commit to use more of your full transforming influence in the world changing it with your unique giftedness! Reach out for 2025 coaching slots yet available and let’s see if we or any of my gifted colleagues are a match. 

Favorite quotes on coaching: 

The goal of coaching is the goal of good management: to make the most of an organization’s valuable resources. - Harvard Business Review

To create a high-performance team, we must replace typical management activities like supervising, checking, monitoring, and controlling with new behaviors like coaching and communicating.          -Ray Smith

Coaching is about helping clients unlock the treasure-chest of their lives - worth bearing in mind then that diamonds are made from coal under pressure and it’s the grit in the oyster which creates the pearls.  - Sarah Durrant

I believe that wherever there is mastery, coaching is occurring and whenever coaching is done, mastery will be the outcome. - Andrea J. Lee

Coaching is a profession of love. You can’t coach people unless you love them.  -Eddie Robison

Shared from https://paperbell.com/blog/busines-coaching-quotes 

Listen to some ATEEZ and learn more benefits of coaching for all leaders: 

 Find some bounce back energy with some K-Pop of your own like my client’s favorite go to revitalization tool: The ATTEZ official YouTube channel with a single from their new album Golden Hour titled, “Work.”

This June 2023 article, “The effects of executive coaching on behaviors, attitudes, and personal characteristics: a meta-analysis of randomized control trial studies”, in Frontiers in Psychology highlighted the outcomes of coaching for executives. This takes a combined look at 20 studies of coaching’s effectiveness via examination of various hypotheses. The outcome relays that executive coaching is a tool that effectively helps greatest in helping individuals change behavior most notably cognitive behaviors.

This Forbes July 2023 article by Roberta Matuson asks, “Is executive coaching really worth the money?” She makes the case leading off with the astounding stat from a Metrix Global study that reports executive coaching has a 788% return on investment (ROI) pointing to increases in productivity and employee retention. 

 This podcast from Harvard Business Review featuring Richard Boyatzis from Case Western on “What great coaching looks like” and is a helpful listen. 

I love coaching. I look at the hours spent coaching clients - the ones who want to work on themselves - as sacred interactions where the goal is for their full transforming influence to be unleashed to a greater degree into the world.

Link here to read about coaching on Dawn’s website and to schedule a free discovery call with her to see if coaching is for you. 

Transforming influence alongside you,