Services

individual development

Effective leaders know better than to try to be someone they are not. They are comfortable in their own skin and don’t try too hard to emulate others. They stay true to who they are and make sure they have the right people around them to compliment their strengths. They also allow those around them to remain true to themselves.

Individual coaching at any level of seniority is personal with outcomes which are driven by the individual. However, you can expect to work on things such as:

• You as a leader or team member, what shadow do you cast? What shadow do you want to cast?
• Impact and influence
• The team around you and maximising their strengths
• Working with your weaknesses
• Strengths in overdrive
• The impact of your strengths on the culture
• Long term strategy
• Your legacy
• Taking on new assignments or projects that play to one’s strengths
• Using strengths in new ways to tackle performance blockers and challenges

teams

Rather than one dominant leader who tries to do everything or individuals who all possess the same strengths, research shows that the most cohesive and successful teams possess broad groupings of leadership strengths including executing, influencing, relationship building and strategic thinking.

Our team coaching programmes are designed to maximise the strengths within a team and minimise the risks of gaps in strengths, team weakness and the overuse of strengths. A natural, often subconscious, desire to recruit people like ourselves often leaves a team with an imbalance of strengths.

Our team coaching sessions will typically work on:

• Trust – the most important element of the team. Without trust mistakes are hidden, blame is apportioned and growth and creativity are restricted. The team has to trust in one another’s intent even if they don’t agree with their methods.
• Rules of engagement – how do they run their meetings more effectively and give everyone a voice
• Behavioural analysis – who contributes to discussion and how. Ensure the meetings are balanced, considered but also deliversome actions
• Minimise weakness – the accumulative impact of team strengths and team weaknesses can be damaging to creativity, decision making and team dynamics.
• Perspective – respect that your way isn’t the only way. The team learn how to appreciate and use other perspectives without compromising their beliefs.
• Decision making – improve the quality of conflict and how a team member can support a decision without necessarily agreeing with it.
• Conflict – necessary for development but often difficult for some team members.
• Goal setting, accountability and action – get things done.

We love what we do and we love to talk about it so do please just get in touch.

building resilience

In our resilience training sessions we teach you the principles and a bit of the science behind resilience and why it is something we can all learn to become better at. We combine that with some great simple to use tools and techniques to deal with pressure and difficult situations in a proactive manner.

When we are under pressure our natural reaction is often driven by our weaknesses. By understanding how your strengths can help you gain a balanced perspective, challenge limiting beliefs and reframe or break down an issue to manageable elements you are able to limit the impact of pressure.

You can access our resilience training either as a delegate on the open courses or by arranging a bespoke inhouse session where we will tailor the content accordingly.

Our resilience sessions will help you deal with and understand:

• What is resilience and why it’s important
• The relationship between pressure and performance
• How to deal with change
• How to process feedback and use it positively
• How to manage thinking traps, the short cuts your brain takes which distorts the truth
• How to get and keep things in perspective
• How to deal with worry and uncertainty

We have been talking about resilience for a long time, since before it was a buzz word and we know how now more than ever it is important to develop these skills. We all have a responsibility to do everything we can to help ourselves.

Support Recruitment

Placing emphasis on a person’s existing knowledge, skill and experience to do the job rather than their strengths and aspirations when recruiting can be limiting. The danger is that it takes little account of a person’s passion to put in sustained effort to deliver and grow in the role and to make necessary changes as the job and organisation evolves. Engagement and productivity levels of people hired in this way may therefore decline sharply when job requirements shift in response to external changes in the environment.

The most effective leaders put strengths first in the hiring process. They know that knowledge and skills can be developed relatively easily on the job through relevant experience, but strengths and positive attitude can’t.

We take the standard strengthscope report and tailor it to the job role you are recruiting for to support your interview process. We combine our expertise as strengths coaches with years of recruitment experience to produce an overview and interview questions to help you get under the skin of the applicant and understand how they can enhance your team.

You will be able to appreciate how:

• A new recruit can add value with their strengths
• A new recruit can compliment the team
• To identify areas of potential risk/impact of weakness
• To induct and train them quicker and more effectively

The purpose of interviewing is to find the best person for your job and that is not always the one who can do the best interview. The profile alone cannot do that either and is only part of the process so we can also provide interview support by a consultant trained in both interviewing and strengths coaching.