Coaching
"Once used to bolster troubled staffers, coaching now is part of the standard leadership development training for elite executives and talented up-and-comers at IBM, Motorola, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and Hewlett Packard. These companies are discreetly giving their best prospects what star athletes have long had: a trusted adviser to help reach their goals.”
- CNN.com
What is Coaching?
Coaching is the process of helping leaders uncover and unlock internal resources that lead to greater consistency and success. At Above the Grind Leadership, we’re committed to helping leaders expand and evolve in a way that honors all those they serve, including themselves. Coaching fosters dynamic leaders that create healthy, productive cultures.
This looks like knowing how to ask the right questions to dig deeper into problem areas a coworker may be dealing with or being able to provide more in-depth feedback to someone on your team. As you improve communication with your team, it’s reflected in everyone’s ability to lean on each other for help and clarity.
What sets us apart?
Every leader is faced with time demands. We leverage a combination of self-paced digital mentoring + focused-coaching sessions to achieve the transformation leaders desire. Our virtual, digital mentoring introduces and reviews key concepts important for effective high-level leadership. At the same time, our coaching services provide customized, specific, and nuanced discussion that helps leaders apply the concepts to their day-to-day practice. After all, without application and integration, there is no transformation.
Do I need a coach?
We believe that EVERY leader needs a coach. Regardless of where you are on your leadership journey, we all have blind spots. A coach can bring immense value to your pursuit of leadership excellence.
A Coach:
- Becomes your strategic thought partner.
- Allows you to move beyond your blind spots.
- Helps you become more accountable to yourself and others.
- Shares tools and resources relevant to your needs.
- Can serve as a source of inspiration.
- Pushes you past your limits which can be difficult by yourself.
- Lets you get honest feedback which can be difficult for leaders.
- Is a dependable resource for high-achieving leaders who want to continue to grow.
Simply put, research has consistently demonstrated that coaching works.
Why should organizations invest in mentoring and coaching for leaders?
Organizations are faced with unprecedented and rapid change in today’s workplace. What got your leaders to where they are today may not be enough to help them successfully perform through the emerging challenges. Great leadership is valued and nurtured by top executives.
Coaching, not training, is often the single most controllable difference that can be made in preparing your leaders to position your team for success.
Here are just a few ways investing in consistent coaching has helped organizations overall missions and vision:
- Managers who underwent leadership coaching to build resilience saw a 31% increase in team performance, a 9% increase in team innovation, and a 52% decrease in burnout, according to research by BetterUp.
- 98% percent of coaching clients said their coach “provided practical, realistic, and immediately usable input” and helped them “identify specific behaviors” that would help them achieve their goals.” (Center for Creative Leadership study, 2016)
- A 2013 study by Anthony Grant found that executives who received coaching experienced effects that transferred over into the executives’ family life, including heightened work-life balance and improved relationships with family members.
- According to a study by Harvard Business Review, 61% of executives “were not prepared for the strategic challenges they faced upon being appointed to senior leadership roles.”
- Leaders in the top 5% had 76% of their employees highly committed, where leaders at the 90% had 54% of their employees highly committed. (Zenger and Folkman 2020)
Our Coaching Services
Individual Leader Coaching
Who among us has not found ourselves in a situation we have struggled to escape? Whether it is trying to meet organizational objectives or setting career goals.
Leaders can deal with unique challenges, and it can often feel lonely at the top. Especially if you’re unable to have vulnerable conversations and feel trusted and heard by those around you. We provide leaders with a safe space to have transparent and difficult conversations. The process of coaching can help you successfully navigate the obstacles in your path to accelerate your success.
In your individual coaching sessions, we do the inner work to analyze your current situation and experience. We support you by uncovering concrete solutions to help you transform your challenges into opportunities which allows you to gain an objective thought partner who is invested in your success.
Our one-on-one coaching is enhanced by relationships that are both visual and verbal. To foster building rapport and trust, coaching sessions are conducted virtually, on-camera.
Group Coaching
Group coaching can be an enlightening experience as they provide an incredible opportunity to learn and grow in several ways.
This includes:
- Being able to share and get assistance with your specific challenges.
- Having the opportunity to learn from others as we work through the challenges they bring forward.
- Sharing and providing feedback to others in the group to meaningfully contribute to their experience.
If you’re looking to expand and evolve while building meaningful relationships that can build a lifetime, group coaching is the correct method for you. These conversations that occur in a group coaching session eliminate thoughts of uncertainty and fear while driving clear, open communication that provides an equal platform for everyone to grow and excel.
Our groups meet via Zoom with cameras on in the spirit of building trust and transparency among the participants. We create a safe space for all to participate, share and learn during the sessions.
Team Coaching
As a leader, how do you cultivate belonging? Ultimately, all of us want to feel as if we belong. That feeling of knowing that we are worthy of love and belonging is the driving force behind most moments (we typically would say every moment, but don’t want to come on too strong right away) of the human experience.
To know that we can show up just as we are – who we are – and contribute in meaningful ways free of conditions or exclusions is the common pull we all have in us. We want to be accepted not for what we do but rather for who we are.
For all of the many ways in which we are so beautifully different as individuals, we aren’t all that different as humans. We all – every single one of us – walk around the world doubting whether we deserve a seat at the table, wondering if we are good enough to be on the team, questioning whether we are smart enough to add to the project – all spurred on by the shame-based lie that metastasizes throughout our psyche that we are not worthy of love and belonging unless we do something to earn it.
From there, much of our effort (again, normally we’d say “all of our efforts,” but we’re trying to ease in) serve the purpose of proving to ourselves and others that we’re good enough, that we matter – or working to quiet the voices of our self-doubt and insecurity in unhealthy and ineffective ways.
“Rhonda, I feel like I can fly when I talk with you. You'll be my coach forever.”
- Billy Jones, Photography Studio Owner