If you are looking for one to one coaching for yourself, for your whole leadership cohort or for one individual leader, we can help.
Professional coaching is a powerful and effective tool in developing leaders and teams, and can be made absolutely bespoke for the aims and objective of the work. We do also see thematic requests in these sectors, which have led us to create some executive pathways.
Clearworks’ programmes are flexible and adaptable by every coach-client partnership. Initially the commitment is for a set number of hours or days, and the coach and client decide between them how long sessions might be. Some prefer an hour at a time. For some it’s half days.
An Executive Coach helps leaders to gain honest perspective, think differently and to explore what is really true. Often the coach is the only person in a leader’s life who can talk with ‘no skin in the game’, ask the big questions, enable deep, brave decision making and facilitate fresh thinking in leaders who haven’t previously had or made time to reflect. Setting and committing to accountability goals with a coach can leverage a big step up in performance.
These judgement-free conversations are often the catalyst in raising self-awareness to a new level. Working out our strengths and ‘watch-outs’ in a safe challenging environment, can be one of the turn-key moments in a leadership journey. Sometimes we use psychometric tools to deepen the exploration and provide data – read more about these here.
Purest versions of coaching should remain in the questions, rather than in solutions. At Clearworks, we carefully walk the line between pure coaching, and consulting at times, depending on the requirement. In the world of scientific or technical areas, there can be an appetite for leadership development input. If a framework, model or book recommendation might help, we can add those in too, but only with care and never instead of provoking good thinking.
Coaching can really boost a leader’s ability to work out the idiosyncrasies of the system in which they work. Becoming more career savvy, impactful or switched on to the ‘games’ at play in an organisation can be transformational. Being external enables us to help leaders explore those systems and networks with clarity. Understanding the organisational perspective and history can unlock all sorts of powerful insights. Boosting communication skills and flex is one of the key benefits of coaching.
Working with a coach can be transformational in enabling a leader to ensure her or his values, purpose, mission are aligned and exploring why it matters. Your coach will be using appreciative enquiry techniques to help you hunt for your strengths and to work out what exactly you wish to focus on – both for high performance and for happiness, satisfaction and resilience. How is the balance? What is not serving you any more?
There is a part of the brain that fires up when we’re being listened to, that doesn’t fire up under any other circumstances. It is rare indeed that a senior leader can think deeply without judgement, in the presence of a trusted ally. The role of the coach is not to be complicit in assumptions and limiting thinking, but there is a time for just allowing people to talk, to think and to exist uninterrupted. Only then can they reach their own thinking potential.
All coaches at Clearworks have delivered more than 750 hours of exec coaching, have regular, robust supervision & CPD, are fully qualified to be working at the most senior level of any organisation. This exceptional team of Exec Coaches has been curated, assessed and developed with care and integrity by Aly King-Smith over more than two decades in this sector. If you ask for a Clearworks Coach, you can relax in knowing they are a top class Executive Coach at the top of their game. We know everyone in the team as a trusted friend and each one matches our values and criteria of excellence and experience.
Coaching programmes are delivered at a flexible pace depending on the requirement, and can take place face to face, on Zoom, Teams, Hangouts, Bluejeans, Webex, Skype or any of the many online platforms, and sometimes on the phone. Using virtual platforms for leadership coaching has been a key part of Clearworks’ delivery strategy for many years, way before lockdown.
A senior leader in a drug discovery company had a reputation for being: ‘exceptional at science’, ‘a great guy’ and ‘a natural leader’ at the company. He wanted to expand his influence, grow his presence in the industry and “feel more like a leader” consistently.
A sixth month programme of 121 coaching and he’s achieved his aspiration and been promoted to C.S.O.
A very smart junior leader in a digital organisation was feeling frustrated with consistent feedback that she wasn’t demonstrating enough ‘leadership presence’. She was irritated with management ‘fluff’ and felt that people who were overtaking her had learned the rules to some inauthentic game she didn’t want to play. After some deep work with a coach, this leader started to find her own, real leadership style and voice, that felt authentic and fluff-free. She worked out how to find ‘leadership presence’ that felt real, and gained promotion within three months of completion.
A STEM leader who had been working in an organisation for more than ten years was being overtaken for top roles in the top teams, receiving feedback that although he was technically brilliant, he could often wound people up and fail to get the influence he needed across the organisation and externally. He completed an emotional intelligence awareness process, the EQ-I 2.0 and explored the difference in perception of him across his team and peers. He understood the styles and needs of others more, and began to flex his own leadership style. He’s now much better prepared for future promotion and describes feeling better, clearer and more aligned with others at work.
