Coaching
The Learning Need: Coaching the “walking well”
Often, seminars in coaching focus on how to work with employees who need remedial help. What about the employee who is delivering superlative results? How can a leader-coach demonstrate value to someone who is doing exceptionally well? How can a leader add value during times of change?
Iris is a Portfolio Manager – and her job is changing. In Seeing Iris, she sees the new coaching program as just another way of forcing her how to comply with the new way of doing things. There aren't many people who do her job better than she does. Herb, her new manager and an ex-Portfolio manager himself, is stumped as to how to engage Iris in a meaningful way.
This experience comes with two scenes, one where Herb tries but really fails in his attempt to create a coaching relationship with Iris and a second, where he does much better. Participants are challenged to see that the way they see Iris can be very different from the way she sees herself. They learn that good coaches need to see the coachee as whole and resourceful first, before they can explore with the coachee other ways of being. More importantly, they learn that the journey is well worth the time and effort – for themselves, the coachee and the company.
Coaching is hard at the best of times. I feel more ready to try things now.
~ Participant