OEC Consultant's Corner
Coaches Talk About Their
Self-Chosen
Specialties print
page 
In an
article in the Ayers
Report, Joan Caruso discusses the trend toward
specialization in coaching. Here
are some examples of the niches coaches are choosing for
themselves.
Jane Washburn
In 25 years as
a senior executive and in coaching as well, I have witnessed
the frustration many women experience when they can’t realize their full potential
in the workplace.
To be successful, women need to be able to
promote themselves
to hiring
authorities, bosses, colleagues, clients, and prospects. But many are uncomfortable with
this concept, unsure of how to go about it
without seeming to be too brash or boastful. I’ve seen bright,
accomplished women become unnecessarily insecure when they need
to foster relationships with business prospects or the boss’s boss.
To meet their unique needs, I coach female executives in personal-brand and
business development.
A personal brand
is necessary for articulating who you are and what you stand
for in the eyes of your internal and external networks. You
can’t “sell” yourself until you thoroughly
understand that. I help women identify their communication goals,
realistically assess their core competencies, and then craft a positioning statement that
articulates their unique value propositions. If a female
executive wants to be rewarded as a results-driven leader
or as an innovative problem-solver, for example, she needs to
continuously reinforce that image visually, vocally, and verbally.
In most businesses, the people with power
are those who deliver incremental business to drive growth. In
today’s environment, enterprise survival requires executives to be rainmakers, but
many women simply are not confident in that role.
I coach female clients on how to adopt
a business advisor’s attitude. This means moving beyond a
focus on your technical capabilities and specific service to
identify a client’s broader needs and bring in the
resources to help address them. This takes the relationship to
a new level, building trust and fostering loyalty.
Once this
mentality is established,
I work with the executive to create
focused business objectives and strategies for such areas as networking and
negotiating to drive the actions/reactions that lead her to
new-business wins.
Jane Washburn is an
Ayers executive coach/consultant who has provided strategic
counsel across a broad array of industries. Her background
includes extensive corporate sales/marketing experience in
financial and professional
services.
Joe
Tomaselli
The
skills that will matter most for leaders in the next few years
are interpersonal competencies. Executives more often run into
problems over issues relating to interpersonal effectiveness
or emotional competencies rather than functional skills. Those
charged with executive development need to address this area
creatively to
help executives achieve their full
potential.
A key outcome of coaching is often a
change in self-concept. We achieve this by helping clients
gain deeper self-awareness and equipping them to deal
effectively with the ambivalence of subordinates, unspoken
rivalries of peers and superiors, and complexities of the
workplace. The key is a customized comprehensive assessment,
which provides a lens through which clients can clearly see
strengths, weaknesses, and barriers to change. Once they
better understand themselves, they can more fully realize
personal capacities and achieve integrity in relationships.
A comprehensive assessment
process integrates performance-related skills and competencies and emotional competencies, looking
at how they interrelate and match up against job
criteria and the company’s mission, vision, and values. The process accelerates
understanding for coach and client, helping
both consider the impact of styles, proclivities, and patterns in
the client’s work environment and create a development
plan to facilitate desired change.
Whether the client is a high-potential
being groomed for greater responsibility, a seasoned pro in
need of focused support to improve
skills and effectiveness in tackling business challenges,
or a team seeking to enhance synergy, assessment
is a powerful tool used in a safe
climate with support. I’ve widened the process to include
learning that reveals the client’s values, which inform attitudes and
behavior. Together, we leverage values and strengths to effect
desired behavioral change. When you do this with a team, deeper awareness
cascades and generates power within the organization.
Once people really see themselves through
the assessment lens, you have their attention. Then you can
identify one or two key areas to focus on and develop a
strategy and actionable plan for achieving sustainable change.
His experiences in the
pharmaceutical industry and as an entrepreneur and a senior
HRD/OE executive have helped make Ayers coach/consultant Joe
Tomaselli an expert in facilitating transformational change in
executives and organizations.
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For more information, please
contact Joan Caruso, Managing Director of Organizational Effectiveness
Consulting at The Ayers Group — (212) 889-7788.
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