Services

What is Coaching?

Coaching is a process that helps individuals, teams, and organizations achieve exceptional results based on goals that you set. It supports you to:

clarify what really matters,
identify and challenge limiting beliefs
broaden your perspective on possible choices,
take action, and
be accountable for following through.

By doing so, coaching supports you, your team, or your organization in getting what you most want far more quickly and thoroughly than might otherwise seem possible.

Why Have a Coach?

Coaching supports you, your team, or your organization achieve extraordinary results quickly and cost effectively. This is particularly important when:

You or your organization are tired of just "getting by" and now are ready to be highly effective, productive, and fulfilled.
You face a big challenge, setback, or opportunity that is urgent.
You want to get unstuck, make some big changes, and accelerate your results.
You want to leave a legacy of having made a real difference.

The Coaching Process

As your coach, I am your ally who is 100% committed to your success. With one-on-one coaching, we typically begin with an initial Discovery session which lasts between 1.5 – 2 hours. At that time, you have a chance to discuss your goals for coaching, the issues you would like to explore, what motivates you, and what holds you back. We will then design how we will work together so that the coaching is most powerful for you.

With subsequent sessions each week or every other week, you decide what you would like coaching on, and then we explore the topics together for either 45 minutes or an hour. While some clients prefer that I coach them in person, others prefer the convenience of the telephone. Either way, I typically ask lots of questions, reflect back to you what I am hearing you say, provide you with frameworks, support you in seeing issues from new perspectives, help you align with what you most value, and support you in moving forward. At the end of each session, we co-design the homework that will help you make the most progress toward your goals. Throughout, you will be challenged and supported to be and do what you may not have thought was possible.

When coaching organizations and teams, I typically work with the leadership of the team(s) to design an approach which will elicit strong buy-in of all team members, and then facilitate a number of different processes to enable the team to make the changes it desires. Team coaching is highly participative, and assumes that all the voices in a system are important. My objectives when working with teams and organizations is to strengthen the effectiveness of the entire system as well as all members of that system.

To learn more, please click on the link below for the kind of coaching that interests you:

Leadership Coaching

While leaders typically tend to organizational and individual needs of people all day long, they often do not have the time, space, and opportunity to tend to their own leadership needs adequately. Leadership coaching offers you a rigorous and confidential means to develop yourself as a leader so that you are more effective organizationally and more fulfilled personally. As we work together, I will always be keeping one ear on what it is you most want, and keeping that as our north star as we delve into specific issues. I’ll provide you with tools and frameworks to help you gain clarity, find your own answers, and move forward. I'll then hold you accountable for doing what you said you would do between sessions so that, in the end, you have far greater impact and fulfillment.

“Mary knows how to walk the delicate balance between listening and providing a gentle prod on the one hand, and calling you to the carpet on the other, definitely an asset in the coaching business.”

-Rob, Education and Management Consultant, Maryland

Relationship Coaching

Sometimes the relationship between business partners, managers, as well as between bosses and subordinates can be strained for a variety of reasons. When the organization strongly depends on both people, it is imperative that they improve their relationship in order to produce the organizational results they want. In these cases, relationship coaching can help two employees safely define what they want from each other, understand and work through their differences, and create a solid foundation for a work relationship that is aligned, fulfilling, and far more effective.

Team and Organizational Coaching

Very often, organizations don’t get the results they want because of a myriad of human factors. These factors include such things as differing priorities, roles, work styles, incentives, skills, perspectives, and many other factors. Team and organizational coaching enables a group to address these human challenges far more effectively than the group is likely to do on its own, so that it not only meets its goals, but exceed them. Whether you are looking to align your leadership group, improve the dynamics between departments, and/or boost the synergy in individual teams, organizational coaching offers you the opportunity to boost your collective effectiveness.

“I interviewed four leadership and organizational coaches and Mary stood out for her understanding of both organizational structures and interpersonal dynamics. As the Director of a major division in our Company, I am responsible for effectively managing the teams delivering our services. I, as well as our division, need to be in alignment for maximum results. Mary has been providing the support and guidance for all of us to gain maximum synergies so we can meet our goals.”

-Sarah, Director, Jonathan Rose Companies, New York

Organizational Systems Consulting

Very small organizations often do not have the organizational infrastructure that is needed in order to support the kind of growth they would like to see. As they begin to grow, these organizational constraints matter more and more. To address this, I work with leaders of small businesses and nonprofits to assess their organizational structure needs, and design supports such as:

Recruiting strategies
New employee orientation processes
Office policies and procedures
Maintenance of employee data
Employee work plans
Employee development plans
Performance appraisal systems
Compensation planning
Customer/client feedback mechanisms

Leadership Assessments for Leaders and Teams

Developing one’s leadership starts with understanding where you are right now. One of the fastest and most effective ways for both a leader as well as a team to do this is to conduct a “360” assessment. I am certified to deliver the two most highly respected and most validated leadership assessments available in the market. These are the “Leadership Circle Profile” which assesses an individual’s leadership, as well as the “Leadership Culture Survey” which measures the leadership culture of a team or organization. Below are descriptions of each assessment from the Leadership Circle’s website: http://www.theleadershipcircle.com/ . See this Leadership Circle website for more information.

“The Leadership Circle Profile” (Individual Leadership Assessment)

The Leadership Circle Profile (TLCP) is the only 360 degree feedback instrument that measures the two primary leadership domains- Creative Competencies and Reactive Tendencies- and integrates this information so that the key opportunities for development immediately rise to the surface.

Creative Competencies are well-researched competencies that measure how you achieve results, bring out the best in others, lead with vision, enhance your own development, act with integrity and courage, and improve organizational systems.

Reactive Tendencies are leadership styles that emphasize caution over creating results, self-protection over productive engagement, and aggression over building alignment. These self-limiting styles overemphasize the focus on gaining the approval of others, protecting yourself, and getting results through high control tactics.

Most importantly, TLCP 360 degree feedback instrument is unique in that it reveals a leader’s Operating System: the internal assumptions (beliefs) that run behavior in both domains. This allows the manager to see how his/her inner world of thought is translating into a productive or unproductive style of leadership. Ultimately TLCP increases the inner awareness that affects outward behavior.

“The Leadership Culture Survey” (Team and Organizational Leadership Assessment)

If you would like to get a powerfully insightful read of your leadership culture, consider using The Leadership Culture Survey (TLCS). Used for your entire organization or just a leadership team, TLCS reveals valuable data: It tells you how your people view their current leadership culture, and compares that reality to the optimal culture they desire. The “gap” between data on their current culture and their desired culture instantly reveals key opportunities for leadership development. Furthermore, TLCS measures how your leadership culture compares to that of other organizations.

The Leadership Culture Survey will:

Establish a compelling rationale for change;
Focus leadership development efforts;
Delineate cultural challenges associated with acquisitions, mergers and restructuring plans;
Correlate leadership to productivity, profits, turnover, and other bottom line metrics.

TLCS is quick, very affordable, web based, and user friendly. Results are downloadable. This means that over a lunch break, you can conduct a thorough and valid assessment of your team’s leadership style. The Leadership Culture Survey works seamlessly with the individual Leadership Circle Profile so that if your organization chose to do both, the two instruments would provide complementary feedback.

Workshops

I also design and facilitate workshops for organizations, conferences, and the public. In addition to workshops that are custom designed, I am also available to deliver the following:

“In the Zone: Moving from Stress to Focus in your Organization” (Workshop)

Just as individuals can lose focus and productivity when they are under extreme stress, so too can teams. This 2-hour workshop allows a team a chance to apply a powerful conceptual tool toward a particular organizational source of stress and:

gain practice in recognizing what the team can control and what it can’t;
discover where the team is most powerful and how to leverage that power;
examine how the team’s beliefs and assumptions frame whether team members see something as good or bad, possible or impossible;
choose team perspectives that serve the situation best;
commit to taking some powerful steps toward being more effective with the source of stress.

“Gaining New Perspective on Old Problems” (Workshop)

Albert Einstein once said that you can never solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it. However, in most organizations we can find ourselves stuck in the same kinds of conversations and approaches to problems that have gone on for years. As a result, we find it hard to solve certain intractable problems in order to take our work to the next level.

In this 2 -hour workshop conducted at your workplace, your staff is invited to take an important organizational issue and explore it from a number of new perspectives in order to shake things up, and get its creative juices going. Using a structured process, your staff will have an opportunity to get “unstuck”, think in new ways, and create new possibilities for the issue of your choice. When this happens, new perspectives on old issues will “pop”, and creativity will flow. The result is that not only will your staff make significant progress on the issue at hand, but also gain new tools so they do not need to be “trapped” by their thinking in the future.

“Overcoming our Personal Immunity to Change” (Workshop)

Just about all of us have a really important goal (or two or three!) that we never seem to reach for a variety of reasons. In many cases, we know exactly what we need to do to reach our goal, but getting ourselves to do those things is another matter. Simply trying to do a “better job” tackling the things that we are not particularly motivated to do often does not work.

Based on the powerful 4-step process developed by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, this 1.5–2 hour workshop is designed to help participants:

clarify what they most want;
surface what they are doing or not doing that gets in the way of achieving their goal;
identify competing commitments;
surface beliefs and assumptions that keep the competing commitments as roadblocks to their goal, and plan tests of those assumptions so they might discover which assumptions are either partially or completely false.

Once participants have completed this process, they then may replace their disempowering beliefs and assumptions with more empowering beliefs and assumptions. Participants then experience fundamental and lasting shifts that enable a far faster and more complete achievement of their original goal.

“Overcoming Team Immunity to Change” (Workshop)

Once employees have completed the workshop, “Overcoming our Personal Immunity to Change” and experienced the power of the 4-step change process personally, a team is then ready to address its team’s immunity to change. Using a similar process, this 1.5 – 2 hour workshop enables a team to:

clarify a team goal it wishes to address;
identify what the team is doing or not doing that gets in the way of achieving that goal;
surface the team’s competing commitments; and
understand the team’s collective beliefs and assumptions driving those commitments, and create a plan to test them.

Once the team’s disempowering beliefs are replaced with more empowering beliefs, employees then experience the team making far more fundamental adaptive changes which support the achievement of their original goal. In most cases, the results are truly transformational.

Retreats

In addition to the above services, I also design and facilitate retreats for organizations. All retreats are custom designed to suit your needs, and typically are highly participative and interactive. Customized staff retreats are designed upon request, and may last anywhere from a half day to several days. Retreats may be for a variety of purposes including:

Visioning and values clarification
Defining an organizational mission
Goal setting
Strategic planning
Team building
Creativity generation
Conflict resolution
Morale boosting
Celebration
Etc.

Tele-seminars

Tele-seminars are 1-hour seminars offered over the phone via conference call. Accessible by anyone with a phone, these seminars enable participants to gain valuable skills and insights through a highly interactive, stimulating, and convenient conference call. Tele-seminars are typically scheduled at the lunch hour.

“In the Zone: Moving from Stress to Focus” (Tele-seminar)

While all of us face challenges every day, sometimes really big challenges can cause us so much stress we can lose focus and productivity. Right when we would like to be “in the zone”, working at peak performance, we can sometimes feel overwhelmed and spin our wheels. For us personally, this might happen when we are experiencing a crushing workload, financial pressures, or a troubled relationship. Organizationally, it might occur with constantly changing technologies, scarce resources, or poor teamwork. As citizens, it might occur when we are addressing huge national or international issues.

What if there were another way?

This one-hour tele-seminar will introduce participants to a simple but powerful conceptual model that can be used anytime, anywhere, in order to increase one’s effectiveness while decreasing stress. On this interactive call participants will:

gain practice in recognizing what you can control and what you can’t;
learn where you are most powerful and how to leverage that power;
examine how your beliefs and assumptions frame whether you see something as good or bad, possible or impossible;
choose the perspective on your topic that serves the situation best;
commit to taking a powerful step toward being more effective with your issue.
learn how this model may also be used with a team to address a team challenge.

“Resolving Conflict and Creating Positive Change” (Tele-seminar)

This 1-hour tele-seminar includes 6 activities where participants reflect, engage and deepen their learning about what contributes to conflict and its resolution, as well as how to live more harmoniously with everyone in their lives.

Participants will learn:

How we define conflict, and what key elements are at play in all conflict;
How our limiting beliefs can perpetuate conflict in our lives;
To recognize the potential for disagreements and how to handle them well;
How our personal behaviors fuel the conflicts we find ourselves in;
Our preferred method for dealing with conflict;
A practical tool for creating a better outcome in conflict situations.

“Lunch & Learn” Seminars

The lunch hour is a great time to bring your staff together for some quick and cost effective professional development. Invite your staff to bring a brown bag lunch to your conference room and participate in one or more of the following “Lunch and Learn” seminars. They are fun, interactive, and provide a great chance for everyone to improve their skills on universally important topics.

“Turning Good Listening Skills into Great Listening Skills” (Lunch & Learn Seminar)

Most busy professionals these days have so much on their plate that multi-tasking has become the supreme survival skill. Unfortunately, as we multi-task, we have become accustomed to half listening to what people are saying so that we can simultaneously hold onto all our other thoughts, “to do’s”, and concerns. Yet, as we “half listen”, we half connect with people, and miss countless valuable opportunities without ever realizing it. And this is the normal way in which most of us listen.

But what if you could turn “normal” listening into “extraordinary” listening?

During this stimulating 1-hour “Lunch & Learn” seminar, your staff will:

learn what keeps us from listening well;
gain an understanding of the three levels of listening;
gain practice listening at each of these three levels;
develop skills in listening at deeper levels;
create a fun accountability structure to ensure that everyone continues to listen well to one another after the seminar.

“Being Present in Life’s Fast Lane” (Lunch & Learn Seminar)

Are you racing through work and life at 90 miles per hour and missing most of the scenery? Are you a busy professional who does not have time to slow down but who wishes to be more present and connected to those around you?

This “Lunch and Learn” seminar enables participants to explore how to be present in a hectic world. Walk away with a valuable toolkit of new skills and a different level of awareness that you can apply in your professional and personal life. Learn new techniques for being more present at work, at home, and anywhere.

Results of Mary's Coaching

Here are a few examples of the value my coaching has brought both leaders and organizations:

With the support of both leadership and organizational coaching, a major division of a national Green development company stemmed its turnover rate from 1 person per month to zero turnover in a year, while transforming itself from a traditional work group to a high performance team, increasing its staffing by 30%, and improving bottom line results.
After working through organizational assessment tools, a start-up biofuels company came to understand and successfully work through issues of trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results, supporting it organizationally so that it could go on to gain full venture funding.
With the support of 1-on-1 leadership coaching, numerous leaders I've worked with in both corporations and nonprofits have been able to work through issues of overwhelm, communication, personal habits, trust, personal transitions and organizational changes in order to improve significantly both their professional and personal effectiveness.
After just three coaching sessions, a boss and subordinate in a major Green company worked through numerous “hot spots”, met all 7 of their coaching goals, and significantly improved their communications, synergy, and productivity.
With the support of coaching, a strategy consultant to Green leaders clarified his values, goals, direction, choices, and work-life balance.
At a day-long, off-site retreat I designed, the staff of a community non profit significantly improved its understanding and appreciation of staff members’ roles and challenges, resulting in a significant boost to staff morale.
After I improved the sourcing and performance management of a key technical division of a major engine manufacturer, the group became the #1 ranking division in a corporate survey for its “people processes”.

Services

Free Coaching Consultation

If you are ready to make some dramatic improvements to how you or your organization is working, call or e-mail Mary today for a free, no obligation coaching consultation.

Tel: (203) 389-7343
E-mail: mary@marygorham.com