Awareness, Clarity, Action and Accountability is what I center my coaching work around. It’s the four-step process that gets my clients from start to finish.
I rely on a handful of skills and natural abilities of my own to help my clients make decisions about their work. What happens during each step depends on the client or group.
- I listen broadly and deeply.
- I ask thoughtful questions.
- I respect the people and groups that I work with, and I appreciate limitations.
- I emphasize options and possibilities while balancing practicalities.
To help you see how the process looks in different situations, let’s look at a couple examples.1 – I co-facilitated a “Difficult Conversations” workshop with a colleague from the Georgia School Superintendents Association for NWGA RESA. Having difficult conversations is often at the core of these public school administrators jobs. Our one-day workshop…
- Created awareness around what happens when confronted with a difficult conversation (to those having the conversation, to others watching the conversation, etc.)
- Clarified and differentiated a difficult conversation from other types of conversations
- Led them through a series of actions to script an upcoming difficult conversation
- Created accountability by securing dates from attendees as to when they would actually have the conversations
2 – For a coaching client who was deciding whether or not to take a promotion, the process looked like this. We…
- Uncovered (created awareness about) all the issues impacting this decision including aptitudes, experience, income, worklife balance, outside interests, values, and work-related goals and considered the promotion within a larger context by digging deeper into certain areas that the client had made some assumptions about — like her aptitudes.
- Made the distinction (became clear) between work responsibilities she did well, and those she liked. She also reflected on her interests, which she was spending less and less time on.
- Did additional research and reflection (action), making some modifications to the responsibilities associated with the potential job and writing up her own job description.
- Set personal deadlines (accountability) to negotiate her modified promotion. She also scheduled a follow-up coaching session with me to debrief the outcome and her satisfaction.
To find out if this four-step process will work for you or your group, contact me and we’ll find a time to talk.