Do you find yourself stymied in producing the results you really want in your leadership position?
Are you frustrated in getting the performance you need from your team?
If you’re like most of my clients, you have a strong track record of successful leadership. But for whatever reason, you currently find yourself facing significant challenges.
The three most common situations for my clients
- You’re taking on a higher level of leadership, or have moved to a new organization or team, and the skills that made you successful in previous situations aren’t enough anymore. You have big goals, but you’re unsure how to most effectively influence others in your new situation, and you can feel yourself losing confidence in your ability despite your previous success.
- Your team is missing key performance measures, and people avoid having the tough conversations necessary to turn things around. Trust seems low, conflict festers, and you struggle to get them to share a sense of accountability for results.
- Instead of feeling able to proactively pursue your goals, you feel constantly reactive to the daily challenges of leadership. Every day feels like fighting fires, and too often you are thrown off center by the unexpected glitches, difficult people, and inevitable criticism that are part of the job.
Whatever your specific circumstances, you feel a sense of urgency about changing things. You know that you, or your team, will not be successful in the long run if you don’t learn new ways of leading and interacting. You’re invested in making a difference, and you’re not willing to coast.
What’s possible instead?
As frustrated as you may feel now, you can make changes that will make a difference to your effectiveness as a leader and your team’s effectiveness in producing results. What if, instead of the challenges you currently face, you could experience this instead?
- You speak and act with clarity and confident authority that gets the attention of your team, your peers, and more senior leadership. Your communication skills enhance your influence, and you have new ways of thinking and behaving as a leader that help you produce the results you want.
- You know how to engage and lead others, including your team, to a much higher level of performance. You see how you’ve gotten in your own way in the past, and have the capacity to take strong stands when necessary while still staying open to influence. You have the tools to build a team that communicates directly and openly, manages conflict skillfully, engages in highly productive meetings, and produces great results.
- You are able to maintain a calm, centered presence no matter what gets thrown at you. As a result, you are more focused and skillful in your actions. You make better decisions about where to focus your time and energy, and are able to consistently move toward your goals.
These results are possible with the Centered Excellence Leadership Coaching Program.
The Centered Excellence Leadership Coaching Program is a comprehensive and customized 9-month leadership development coaching program that is focused specifically on you. It is NOT an off-the-shelf program that teaches generic “leadership skills.” Rather, it is built around your specific challenges and goals, and integrates the real business results that you’re responsible for into our coaching work.
The main benefits of this program
This is what you’ll get from the Centered Excellence Leadership Coaching Program:
A strong sense of center that will become your greatest resource as a leader. An integral part of the CE program are easy and effective exercises that will help you develop a compelling leadership presence that is simultaneously strong and warm. Built into the program are multiple opportunities to practice these exercises and deepen your understanding of how you get thrown off center, and how to get back.
A customized coaching program with exercises and readings that are designed and delivered specifically for you. The program will include a mix of formats to support multiple kinds of learning (for example, reading, observation and reflection, coaching conversations, skill practice, and somatic work). Everything we do will be geared toward helping you address your particular challenges and achieve your particular goals.
A mix of skills and tools that you can put to immediate use to enhance your leadership. Specifically, we’ll focus on developing your capacity for three fundamental leadership skills: 1) taking clear, strong stands without steamrolling or sugarcoating, 2) staying connected and listening to others without taking things personally, and 3) managing your own reactivity in the midst of the daily challenges and frustrations of leadership.
The coaching support necessary for you to achieve the specific results you want. We define these results together at the start of coaching, so you’re clear about where you’re headed. We will identify results in terms of your own leadership behaviors, as well as in terms of any concrete organizational results for which you’re responsible. Because, after all, leadership is about producing results.
What makes this program different?
We incorporate somatic exercises and practice to support your development as a leader. Simply put, “somatic” means related to the whole body. It is, after all, the body that allows us to take action in the world. And for most of us, there are gaps between what we know or aspire to, and what our bodies are able to do, especially when we’re under pressure. The Centered Excellence Leadership Coaching Program develops your capacity to bridge that gap.
We blend the best of 1:1 coaching methods with an understanding of organizational and team systems. You may develop as an individual leader, but you work within a human system. Our coaching together will help you not only broaden and deepen your individual strengths, but also to function more effectively and less reactively within the organizational patterns you encounter at work.
We always focus on results. At the beginning of the program, we’ll work together to clarify the specific outcomes you want to achieve, and keep those outcomes front and center as we work together. We’ll also pay attention to the bottom line results that you’re responsible for as a leader, and connect the coaching we’re doing to your ability to deliver those results.
How is the program structured?
This is what you can expect over the 9 months of the Centered Excellence Leadership Coaching Program:
- Coaching sessions every one to two weeks. Our focus in these sessions will be on what you’re learning and experiencing as you work with the different elements of the coaching program, addressing challenges that come up, and adjusting course as necessary. Generally these sessions run 60-90 minutes.
- Homework between sessions designed to support you in achieving your goals. Homework might include reading, reflecting on specific questions, or practicing new skills.
- A structure to keep you on track. I’ll ask for brief written updates every week so we can ensure you’re getting all the support you need and maintaining some momentum.
- Additional access via email and phone. I’ll be available to you between sessions via email and, with some notice, by phone. Have a challenging meeting coming up? You can get coaching ahead of time.
- Customized coaching notebook with the exercises and tools we work with throughout coaching. In addition, I’ll provide any books or articles I ask you to read.
- Built-in evaluation of progress. We’ll evaluate how coaching is going halfway through the program and again at the end, using measures of success that we create together. If you’re not getting value or moving toward your goals in the way that you want, we’ll adjust course.
For additional value, when you sign up for the Centered Excellence Leadership Coaching Program you’ll also receive:
- A free CD of centering practices by Wendy Palmer
- Live, ad-hoc coaching in difficult conversations, as we agree and location allows, at no additional cost
- Articles and resources on leadership delivered regularly to your inbox
- Free participation in any public offerings I make over the course of our work together (for example, workshops, webinars, etc.)
- The opportunity to take the EQ-in-Action Profile at cost, with no additional markup
And here’s my promise to you…
I’m invested in you being successful. If you genuinely engage in the coaching program, and do the work that I ask you to do (exercises, observations, practices, etc.), I am fully confident that you will see results during the course of our time together. If you don’t, I will continue to work with you, at no additional charge, until you do achieve the results you want.
Ready to take the next step?
If you’ve gotten this far, it might be that the Centered Excellence Leadership Coaching Program is for you. If so, I invite you to contact me for a complimentary 90-minute Centered Excellence Strategy Session.
In this session, we’ll explore your current situation and challenges, what results you’d like to see instead, and whether this program could be a good fit for you. Whether we end up working together or not, you’ll get value from the conversation. And of course, if you decide this program isn’t for you, you’ll get no pressure to move forward.
To request a free Centered Excellence Strategy Session, please fill out every field on the form below. I will get back to you within two business days. I look forward to hearing from you!