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Career Transition, Outplacement and Mobility People Development

Not Everyone Wants to Be a Manager

Not Everyone Wants to Be a Manager

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Career success takes on many forms.

For some, it’s landing a management position. For others, it’s finding work-life balance or developing a very specialized expertise in one area. Still others like the variety lateral moves provide. Respect and acknowledge each employee’s definition of success, and keep individual contributors engaged. Whether they’re backroom, frontline, low or high profile, individual contributors are the backbone of an organization and, as such, should not be relegated to stagnation but valued and nurtured through customized development and growth opportunities.

Interested? see this article on latest employment trends!

Not-Everyone-Wants-to-Be-a-Manager

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Coaching

How to Launch a Second Act Career as an Executive Coach

How to Launch a Second Act Career as an Executive Coach

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Launch a Second Act Career as an Executive Coach

Executive coach Simon Moody has always been able to find opportunity in adversity.

Like the time he planned to spend a year sailing his 42-foot sail boat from Gibraltar to the Arabian Gulf. It would have been a daunting adventure for an experienced sailor. For Moody, with only two days of sailing lessons under his belt from 20 years previous, it presented the challenge of a lifetime. “To say I learnt on the job is a gross understatement. I have never ever been so scared in my life nor so exhilarated.”

In addition to his 18 month sailing trip, Moody has lived and worked on four continents. After starting out in the music business, he developed an international career in brand and marketing. He would go on to serve as the President of a $300 million North American division of WPP, the world’s largest media, brand and communications agency.

After 16 years at WPP, both in the UK and the US, a new challenge came calling again, this time in the form of a major restructuring. In his work co-managing the restructuring, Moody quickly realized that he needed to eliminate his own position. He saw it as an opportunity to embrace the next step of his professional life, whatever that might be.

“At the time of the restructure, deep down I knew there was something else I needed to do that would harness all my years of experience around the world while propelling me forward into a  parallel career universe,” he said.

That something else turned out to be coaching senior business leaders.

Once I discovered the pure craft of coaching, I realized I had “come home.”

SIMON MOODY EXECUTIVE COACH, LEE HECHT HARRISON

Moody said that throughout his career, he had established a profile as a leader who was both approachable and supportive of those with whom he worked. Whenever he took leadership assessments or solicited feedback, it was coaching and mentoring that were consistently at the top of his most positive attributes.

When the restructuring door opened, he seized the moment to reinvent himself as a full-time professional coach. After doing considerable research, he eventually enrolled in LHH’s Coach the Coach ICF Certification Program, an intensive, six-month training regimen that provides participants with certification from the renowned International Coaching Federation.

Moody said he approached his formal coaching training with a fair bit of confidence; after all, he had been recognized for being a solid, intuitive coach during his time as an executive. However, the first 24 hours of the program revealed just how little he knew about formal coaching strategies.

“The toughest lesson I had to learn was that coaching is not about jumping in to fix things,” Moody said. “It is about exploring and enabling your client to find her or his own way forward. When you come out from a career in the Board room, where you have spent a lot of your time solving other people’s problems, your natural inclination as a novice coach is to step in and do just that. You soon learn the limitations of this approach.”

As much as he found the training to be invigorating, Moody said he was concerned about whether coaching could provide him with a full-time career. Many friends and colleagues cautioned him about pursuing coaching as more than just a part-time job.

“Pretty much everybody said to me, ‘Simon, don’t do this. Coaching is really just a part-time, semi-retirement gig and you can’t support yourself on that kind of salary.’” That was all he needed to hear to press ahead. “Once I discovered the pure craft of coaching, I realized I had ‘come home.’”

And his intuition was right—he quickly discovered that the business world has a voracious appetite for effective coaches, particularly those with high-level certification. Based now in New York, Moody said he has been able to build a successful coaching practice that focuses on work with executives in a broad array of industries and sectors, including health care, fashion and financial services.

On an average day, Moody will work with up to five clients. “Once you start to work out ways to scale while building a lean machine around scheduling and planning, coaching can be financially very rewarding.”

Coaching has also delivered a great deal of personal satisfaction for Moody. “My ex-colleagues, some who cautioned me about going in this direction, tell me that I’ve never been happier. Truly, I feel that I’m the luckiest person in the world, in that I’m doing what I totally love. In fact, I wish that I had done it years earlier.”
Written by SUSAN MARC LAWLEY, PH.D.

Source: lhh.com

Categories
Coaching Organizational Development People Development

Leaders from Within: Coaching Through Growth at Procore

Leaders from Within: Coaching Through Growth at Procore

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coaching through growth

Procore Technologies faced an enormous opportunity in 2014. This market leading provider of construction management software was experiencing rapid growth. Procore needed a revised management approach that could accommodate such expansion both in terms of business volume and professional staff.

Procore leadership, recognizing the opportunity to enhance staff collaboration, curiosity and capacity for personal growth, launched a pilot coaching program for a small group of leaders. This pilot ignited an unexpected appetite across the organization for more internal coaching opportunities. Soon, Procore brought in ICF-credentialed coaches to integrate a coaching program into the company culture to provide accessibility and scalability.

Since then, Procore’s coaching program has reached over half of its employees and is a powerful tool for acquiring and retaining talent, developing leaders and nurturing a world-class culture that values the whole employee.

As a result of Procore’s sustained commitment and innovative approach to coaching, the company earned the International Coaching Federation’s (ICF’s) top honor for organizations with strong coaching cultures: the 2019 ICF International Prism Award. ICF’s Prism Award program honors organizations that have achieved the highest standard of excellence in coaching programs that yield discernible and measurable positive impacts, meet rigorous professional standards, achieve key strategic goals, and shape organizational culture.

With two focused goals—accessibility and scaling—Procore created a robust coaching program that empowers every employee’s development and growth as the company continues to scale.

Accessibility to Reach Each Employee

To make coaching readily accessible, Procore set out to demystify coaching by offering many opportunities for employees to familiarize themselves with the program:

  • The organization offers a 90-minute, in-person workshop that introduced coaching. The workshop, “Framing Up Coaching,” introduces listening skills, powerful questions, leaning into curiosity and an understanding of presence and perspective. Being able to leverage these skills builds empathy, connection and work effectiveness.
  • In addition, one of Procore’s internal Executive Coaches speaks at each new employee orientation, explaining the program and its offerings. They also get a tiny taste of curiosity through a playful question game.
  • Combined with its team of internal Executive Coaches, Procore gives employees the opportunity to receive on-demand coaching from external, ICF-credentialed coach practitioners. Employees who utilize this service commit to weekly one-hour coaching sessions via webcam. They also can access this service anytime during business hours for spontaneous check-ins.
  • The Coaching Corner is a collaborative space that features articles written by internal Executive Coaches, as well as forums where people can share questions related to coaching.

Scaling to Build a Coaching Culture

To achieve scalability, Procore reinforces its coaching culture through leaders who embody a coaching approach. These leaders understand how to ask their team questions instead of giving them answers, apply active listening and help their team members navigate collectively toward a solution.

Creating coaching opportunities for the executive team is essential to building a coaching culture. “If [the C-suite is] not actively in coaching engagements, you can forget about having a successful coaching culture,” says ICF Professional Certified Coach Jeanne Smith, Procore’s coaching culture architect and the organization’s Prism Award nominating coach.

As much as 90% of Procore’s executive team participates in one-on-one coaching with ICF-credentialed external coach practitioners. These executives then bring their coaching leadership styles to their teams.

“Being a leader isn’t just being in a position of power,” says Procore’s senior director of real estate and facilities. “Being a leader is inspiring others and having them want to be on this journey with you.”

A Personalized Approach to Growth and Development

A high-quality work culture across the entire organization is a top priority at Procore. Coaching is a direct investment in maintaining and improving that culture. Employees are learning to lean into asking instead of telling in workplace conversations, creating a trusted environment that welcomes diverse points of view.

“This personal approach makes Procore unique,” Smith says. “The beauty of the work that we do as coaches is to develop the whole person. And as human beings we crave that one-on-one attention. When a company says, ‘I support that,’ the people of the organization feel seen and heard. This invites them to bring their best selves to their work, their teams and their clients.”

With an executive team that understands the impact of curiosity and strengths-based leadership, Procore is ready to tackle future coaching goals and continue to foster a healthy workplace culture organization-wide. Through its coaching program, Procore has built a workplace where every employee is valued and encouraged to grow.

Source: International Coaching Federation

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