What Are the Benefits of Team Coaching in the Workplace?
January 9, 2013 § Leave a Comment
What Are the Benefits of Team Coaching in the Workplace?
Executive coaching is a strategy aimed at excelling performance to a higher level. When coaching is given to a team of professionals who work together on projects, this can involve team members participating in a series of both individual and group coaching sessions. The coaching is aimed at enhancing effectiveness, harmony, morale and productivity of teams for the greater good of the company. The reality is that when teams of people work together, any number of complications can arise, from heightened competition that cramps collaboration, to sabotaging spirit, to clashing personalities, to conflict avoidance. Team coaching can help groups harmonize office environments and better manage problems, while working together to meet common objectives.
Read the rest, with my comments here
Burnout!
September 10, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Burnout!Burnout. What a terrible situation to find yourself in. You started out doing something because you thought you’d love it/would be good at it/were born to do it/wanted to ____,_____, or ________ . Maybe you accomplished what you set out to do. Maybe you still want to continue doing it or maybe you’ve just stopped dead in your tracks and can’t take ONE MORE SECOND of it. You’re exhuasted, have no interest in an area that you used to love, can’t get out of bed in the morning, dread it and/or anything connected to it.Burnout can hit hard but there are steps you can take to prevent burnout, to energize yourself while in the midst of being burnt out yet still required to do the job that burnt you out, and ways to energize and get out of a burnout situation.
I had the great pleasure the past couple of weeks of doing a q&a session with a group of small business owners, as well as workshops with corporate exectuives and another one with people in the arts which included writers, musicians, filmmakers and people wanting to become more established in those fields. All of these are surefire groups to experience burnout, since their roles require inordinate amounts of work and work hours as well as intellectual and creative involvement in the business and/or craft. In short, it can be a 24/7 situation. I will add that I found all to be smart and motivated people and I was interested to hear the kinds of issues they were dealing with and how I might be able to assist. It was great! The questions came hard and fast and there were so many that I didn’t get to finish all of them in the alloted time. As promised I answered the rest later in the day and will post them here. Some of the issues that came up included life changes that cause burnout, behavioral habits that made it difficult to “just say no” to business requests which can lead to a work overload, ways to re-energize during the day/week/year, work-life balance when working from home, work-life balance when working from home and being primary caretaker of small children, work-life balance when work becomes a 24/7 proposition, I was energized when we were done and I had lots to think about, which I’ll share here as I consolidate my thoughts on the issue. I’d like to thank everyone there who shared their questions and concerns and also to all of you who emailed after with thanks and kind thoughts and words. I always appreciate hearing from you!
RKW
@coachkiki @writecoachkiki
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Shift Coaching For Second Careers
July 20, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Hope you’re having fun summer! For many, the summer is a difficult one with the economic realities changing so many things about “summer vacation”. We’ve received many inquiries from people beginning new careers as well as those who are faced with the prospect of beginning a second career that they may or may not have planned on.
To focus on the specific needs of those who are STARTING SECOND CAREERS we’ve developed an exciting, short-term coaching module which we call SHIFT.
SHIFT COACHING FOR STARTING A SECOND CAREER will get you focused, ready, and armed with new strategies and ways of approaching your second/new career.
The SHIFT COACHING FOR SECOND CAREERS is designed as a 5 session coaching system which can be completed in one month, 2 weeks or 1 week.
For more information about the SHIFT COACHING FOR SECOND CAREERS please email atypicalcoaching at gmail dot com (please put 2nd Career as the subject) or call us at 646.355.8759.
Wishing you good luck with today and a wonderful tomorrow,
Rebecca Kiki (@coachkiki on Twitter
How to Fail Successfully – A 3 Part Series
July 18, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Every year, as people are thinking about September and the work/academic year to come, I get emails asking me to repost this series on success and failure. I’m always happy to do it as the topic is a particular favorite of mine and one of my goals when working with clients is to enable them to achieve success and to deal with the inevitable failures and disappointments that are part of life. Things happen. They just do. The question is how you deal with them and what those things do to you.
do While I do try and find the good in every situation, I’m not of the “think only positive thoughts and only wonderful things will happen” school of thought. Positive thinking has its place, but putting that kind of burden on yourself is often counterintuitive. Negative things happen, things you wish didn’t happen, happen. Now what?
Children of all ages have found this series helpful and it’s my great pleasure to post it again. Enjoy.
Helping Children Fail Successfully – A 3 Part Series
The question is what happens after a failure? What do you do next?Did anyone get anywhere without some kind of failure along the way? Not a chance. The people who have achieved the most have also failed.
I’ve worked with so many children and parents throughout the years and this one area seems to trouble both groups the most. Failing at something. Whether it’s not getting the lead, or any part, in the school play, not making the team, failing on a test or not doing well, making a public mistake at the recital, failing emotionally, failing socially, failing interpersonally…the list goes on and on. What to do? Parents are agitated and upset, the children are despondent and often anxious about their parent’s reaction to the failure/upset.
The pressure to achieve everything, at all costs, publicly and every single time has been seeping into our collective national personality for a while. It’s causing unreasonable expectations for parents and children.
I’ve decided to spend the next few posts talking about ways in which parents and adults who work with children can manage their expectations for themselves and their children, learn how to accept failure and disappointment in themselves and their children, and learn how to use failure as a positive learning opportunity.
When working with clients to achieve the above an amazing thing happens. They and their children try more new things! The fears are manageable, a failure doesn’t become a catastrophic event and can be seen in context. Parents and children learn about managing frustration and disappointment. They also learn about expanding their options, being realistic about abilities and new ways to try achieving the same aims.
In short they learn my clients learn that ”if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again – oh – and try, try differently – oh – and try, try something new – oh – and try, try to measure yourself against only you”.
I look forward to writing more about it – it’s a topic I work with people on, lecture and teach but maybe I can learn some new things by approaching it in this new way.
Enjoy the day your way,
Rebecca (Kiki)
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For information on coaching, workshops, seminars, classes or materials for your group, school or institution please call 646.355.8759 or email me at atypicalcoaching at gmail dot com
Helping Children Fail Successfully – Part 2 of a 3 part series
July 18, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Helping Children Fail Successfully – Part 2 of a 3 part series
Quick Start Coaching Tip: This weekend it’s all about you.
Who likes thinking about their failures? Well, it won’t be forever (a great lesson to be learned from a failure!) and it’s an important step in understanding how your methods of dealing in both positive and negative ways might impact the way you approach it with your children.
1. Can you remember a situation where you really wanted to succeed at something but didn’t? (think back to last week or as far back as grade school)
Was it a job? A competition? A marathon? A game? A promotion? A personal goal you set but weren’t able to achieve? A part in the school play? A date for prom? A grade you wanted on an exam? A course you wanted to take? That cute guy/girl you were just dying to go out with? The account you wanted to land?(I just came up with about a dozen myself!)
2. Write down the words that come to mind that describe how you felt.
Angry, sad, furious, enraged, depressed, dejected, ashamed, annoyed, blase, hysterical, whichever words work for you.
3. What did you do next?
Did you brood? Did you give up on the whole thing altogether? Did you try and figure out what you might have done differently? Did you blame yourself completely for the failure? Did you ask other people for support? Did you shut yourself away alone until you got over it? Did you abandon all hope for ever achieving the goal? Did you recharge and attempt it again? Did you try to achieve it a different way?
The list of ways one reacts is vast. Everyone has their own way of dealing with failure what we’re trying to do here is identify your particular way of reacting so that you can think about how that impacts the way you react to the failure/s of the children in your life.
4. Would you react differently to it today? How?
Experience is a great teacher (I love her but I really wish she was always kind to me instead of teaching me some lessons the hard way!). Time often provides us with a new perspective on an old situation.
5. What did you learn about yourself and what’s right for you by going through the situation?
Take a couple of days to think about it. Next week you’ll use that personal knowledge to move forward with teaching the children in your life about failing, failing good, and how to learn from their failures and disappointments so that they can move forward successfully. That might sound like a contradiction but it really isn’t.
Email me your war stories, tears, upsets and all. I love hearing from you.
To read Part 1 of the series click HERE
Enjoy the day your way,
Rebecca (Kiki)
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For more information on coaching, groups, workshops, seminars or classes, lectures and materials for your group or organization please call 646.355.8759 or email me at atypicalcoaching at gmail dot com
Helping Children Fail Successfully – Part 3 of a 3-Part Series
July 18, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Helping Children Fail Successfully – Part 3 of a 3-Part Series
Quick Start Coaching Tips for changing “fear of failure” to “fear of learning nothing from failure”.
1. Begin the dialogue before the event. Discuss the different outcomes as you are working with your child toward the goal. Use the following questions as an outline for the types of conversations you might have.
Note: Use an intro to talking about it that is most comfortable for you. You can use the internet to surf ways to practice or get information on the topic together, the drive to and from practice, the dinner table, going out to a movie,lunch or shopping together for some special-together-time. Whatever works for you.
* Would you like to win/get _____?
* Why do you want to win/get _____?
* What might happen as a result of winning/achieving?
* Do you know anyone who has ever won/finished/gotten ______________?
* Do you know anyone who wanted to ____________ but didn’t?
* How can you prepare to achieve it?
2. Identify role models (yourself included!)
* Choose role models that mirror the activity or goal involved. Actors if it’s a role in the school play, athletes if it’s a sport, musicians if it’s music, astronauts if it’s space-travel related, scientists etc.
* Discuss their achievements and what makes them positive role models.
* Ask the tough questions – do you think they reached every goal they set out to?
How do you think they prepare? What happens when they lose/don’t achieve?
Note: Try and get some information for yourself so that you can mention it in the conversation. There’s tons of biographical information available online. You might also include experiences from your own life to include.
3. After the fall….. Ok. The worst happened. Disappointment, dejection, sadness…name the bad feeling that’s washing over your child and give her/him a chance to feel them. THEN – dig in and figure out;
* What happened?
* What do you think might have contributed?
* Note all the circumstances within and OUT OF the child’s control.
4. Change the language of the event. Move forward. Use these two simple words and three simple words.
* Next time….
* In the future….
What you’re doing by using those phrases is moving forward immediately, planning for the future, getting into a “try again” mentality and showing your child that the situation is not a be-all-and-end-all. It’s an experience. There will be other experiences if they keep on moving forward and trying again.
Many parents try and shield their children from disappointment, rejection, failure and anything negative but in the long run that’s not the best way to assist children in preparing for the future. It can be a tough world out there. We all want things we might not get, or might get them later than we wanted or in a different way than we anticipated. Children need to develop the mentality and the skills to deal with setbacks, disappointments and failure. That’s how they can continue onward and upward to eventually succeed.
Look at anyone you know who has accomplished something, or many things. Now, ask them how many times they’ve failed.
Enjoy the day your way and let me know how it goes!
Rebecca (Kiki)
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For information on individual or group coaching, workshops, seminars or classes and materials for your group or institution please call or email at 646.355.8759 or info at dlcecc dot com
Posted by Rebecca “Kiki” Weingarten M.Sc.Ed, MFA
