The Client:
Coaching Individuals and Teams
The initial situation:
it is often the case that an individual is referred to us for Coaching after a Team Coaching Session or indeed other facilitation work. In most cases Individuals & teams are referred to us because of a specific need identified either for performance/career development or behavioural issues that have impacted others. Examples include: a volatile temperament, emotional outbursts, uncaring attitude.
CFO – Referred by his MD, to develop his personal confidence and public speaking persona.
Behavioural Economist – Referred by CEO, to develop his tolerance and understanding of how his team works and why it is that they cannot keep up intellectually with his thinking.
Team – Project team referred by MD. The project team was brought together to drive major initiatives including implementation of a new performance management system.
The Solution:
No two clients are the same. For each client a discovery session is the starting point, goals and measures identified and if this is not clear then we work backwards from ’how is the current status not working for you or your team?’
The Solution (CONTD.)
CFO – We worked with the client to make him feel comfortable in public speaking scenarios by developing clear communication strategies and methodologies to ensure that the message is delivered in a way that would be understood by the audience . In most cases it was about avoiding jargon and not blinding everyone with lots and lots of numbers they may not understand., but to develop story lines that may be easily accepted.
Behavioural Economist –it was the case of making him realise that not everyone is on the same intellect level as himself. We worked on developing his understanding of the negative impact ‘his own behaviour’ was having on the team. A number of diagnostic tools helped bring home the message in a way that he understood – grounded in science. Project Team – we used a ‘Thinking preferences’ profiling tool to provide a very easy to remember framework which would not miss out any components and was easy to understands across the multi cultural teams within the organisation.
Feedback from the client & key stakeholder:
Combining a non-nonsense attitude with the mantra of being truth tellers, sessions with Zakeera are full of discovery of self and others!. She has the innate ability to create a safe space to share and be vulnerable. I have learnt much about myself in the time spent with her and look forward to further sessions.
Our reflections:
Supervision is essential to make sure that boundaries are maintained, and the focus remains the client. CPD for the ‘coach’ is essential so that the coach is aware on new coaching methodologies and ways of working.
