Customised Programmes

A Holistic Approach

We believe that the most effective way to ensure success in changing organisation and team behaviour is to adopt a combination of 'bottom up' and 'top down' development activities. In practice, this involves a blend of coaching and training.

The leaders must be fully on board

Top down development is particularly helpful in creating and maintaining a change orientated environment. It typically has an emphasis on one-on-one coaching to encourage flexibility and the development of new leadership styles. We seek to ensure that, in rolling out the change program, the leader is fully congruent in words and actions. Failure to address this critical aspect can sabotage all other efforts because of the subtle but incredibly powerful way that a leader's behaviours affect the whole team.

By working with the leaders we can help to ensure that the development initiative receives sufficient focus and that challenges can be anticipated and overcome before they become a threat to the process. We help them to foster a learning environment and encourage them to adopt a coaching style to maximise their influence. Where coaching is adopted learning is maximised.

... then everybody else can be brought along

The bottom up development generally focuses on group coaching and workshop environments. In addition, teams can be supported by coaches and people within the organisation who are helped to develop their own skills as coaches. This provides a mechanism for cultural change.

The process through which we take people is focused on raising self-awareness, after which accelerated growth becomes possible. As described in the section on raising awareness, becoming aware that a better way of doing things is possible is the first step in transforming behaviours. This can be highly introspective for participants as we leverage the well-understood human characteristic that coaching has been designed to capitalise on: that people learn best from self-discovery rather than being told by someone else.

Most people have never had the opportunity to focus on themselves in this way and are surprised to find out how little they know about themselves. As we help them to examine their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs - and to understand how these factors directly impact their results - many of them will spontaneously start to make new and better choices.

Top professionals in every field practice regularly

So that participants can embed their learning we help them to identify simple exercises that they can incorporate in their normal business day. Practice is essential, as the more often that a new behaviour is exercised the more automatic it will become. As long as participants are prepared to put conscious effort into practicing these exercises, rapid progress can be achieved.

We also offer is accountability throughout the programme. This can go much further than simply checking whether tasks have been done - when people do not complete their actions, we help them to understand why not. Some people believe that positive accountability is one of the most valuable aspects of coaching because of the motivation that it provides to achieve constructive change.