EXECUTIVE COACHING - AN ACCELERATED DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY
The work of leading - whether in your personal sphere or in business - can at times feel like a challenging journey of transformation. These are threshold moments that hold the potential for exploration and lasting positive change.
Having a coach helps you navigate those moments of foundational transition with greater ease and discernment.
ARE YOU READY?
To build the lasting capacity for resilience in the face of any new challenge
To step into your full potential and sense of purpose at transition moments of life
To follow through on your action commitments in ways that support wellbeing
To go beyond surface fixes to access sustainable leadership momentum
To have greater impact without the risk of burnout
WHAT IS EXECUTIVE COACHING?
Coaching is essentially a process of partnering with you as the client in a thought-provoking and creative process to equip you to maximize your personal and professional potential. This is particularly important in today's uncertain and complex environment, as continuous learning and transformation are required to sustain not only career growth, but also the capacity to resiliently navigate complex change. As a coach, I acknowledge you as the ultimate expert of your life and work, ground my support of you in the belief that you are fundamentally creative, resourceful and whole. I am not here to fix you or push you in directions you are not interested in exploring. Rather, my role is to accompany you in a journey of exploration, skill development, experimentation with new avenues of expression, and accelerated growth. My responsibilities in the coaching partnership are to: discover, clarify and align with what you truly want to achieve; encourage your capacity for self-discovery and development; support you in developing new solutions and strategies; and, hold you accountable to your own stated intentions.
HOW DOES AN EXECUTIVE COACHING PARTNERSHIP WORK
Our work together starts with a chemistry session to determine whether I am the right coach for you.
Once we have established that agreement, a specific coaching program will be identified and our first/foundation session will take place (usually in person but i have also held first session online leveraging Zoom, Skype or phone) in which you will clarify your medium term goals and objectives, as well as the deeper sense of purpose that will underpin you in your journey.
We will then go on to explore together what is holding you back or challenging you from achieving the next needed steps. You will learn some new frameworks that will help you make sense of your current situation in a new light. And we will outline together a path of change that meets your needs.
Sessions are usually 60 minutes long and will address your progress, learning and insights and any setbacks you may be experiencing along the change path that you have set for yourself. The ongoing sessions are usually online using Zoom or phone, or if you prefer face-to-face, we can agree on a number of in person sessions.
Coaching programs are often 3 months or 6 months in duration, with specific phases:
Phase 1/What's Up Now?/What are my blind spots?/Outcome: Clarity and Focus
Phase 2/What matters?/How do shift habits?/ Outcome: Alignment of Purpose and Actions
Phase 3/How do I make it last?/ What else is there for me to continue to grow?/Outcome:Sustainable High Performance
Coaching is not advising, mentoring or therapy. It is about having a professionally trained partner help you unveil your own answers and insights, find clarity in stuck moments, and support you with tools, methods and processes that will grow you self-awareness, improve your interpersonal impact and enable you to operate from a place of systemic awareness and skills.
WHAT I BRING TO EXECUTIVE COACHING
My focus is to provide a strategic other viewpoint, to see patterns that you may be missing, to challenge and encourage your own discovery and your own capacity to learn from experimentation and action. I encourage and challenge you as needed so as to grow your presence, your goals, the mindsets that shape your habitual behaviors and decisions, develop new skills and expand the choices you can make in work and life.
My coaching relies on my 35 years of direct global business experience in some of the world's more demanding corporate and non-corporate environments, where I learned how to develop both the inner and outer resilience to stay true to core values while achieving business results. I also leverage my lifelong passion for the arts, mindfulness practices and the power of symbols and metaphor to unlock new insights that lead to real results, with the depth of purpose needed to sustain them.
As a coaching partner, I rely on the integration of mind, emotions and body intelligence to bring about changes that last, and I practice what I preach so as to be a role model of what I advocate.
My coaching certification has grown out of my 25 year career in large corporate environments, as well as my consulting and leadership work with Dialogos, the research and coursework I undertook as part of the Columbia University Coaching Certification practicum, and from the Gestalt coaching supervision work of Benjamin Graham in London, and Rachel Ciporen and Tanya Fauste-Koivido in New York.
Psychometric Self-Assessment are a very practical way for coaching clients to learn more about themselves, their gifts and their watchouts - some options that I offer clients are: Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) by the Leadership Circle Group, MBTI personal preferences that shape how you see the world, TKI Conflict Styles, FIRO-B Interpersonal Needs Assessment, VIA Values Inventory, Kantor Four Player preferences.
WHAT IS EXPECTED OF YOU
Openness - be ready for feedback, ambiguity, new ideas, and challenge your current mental models
Honesty - be ready to share with me who you are, what you know and what you don't know, what scares you, what inspires you and where you want to go
Patience - change of any sort takes time and practice, learning new habits is not simply a question of willpower and intellectual ability, giving yourself the time and space to experiment requires an openness to not being perfect the first time you try
Discipline - the work of transformation is all in your camp, there will be assignments and experiments to undertake in between coaching sessions, this is where the real work takes place
Preparation - coming to the coaching session prepared to review progress made, with questions on new challenges that may have arisen is key
Commitment - it is so easy for day to day demands and priorities to push coaching assignments and goals to the side, staying committed to your own development and to the coaching program is essential
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM ME
100% commitment to your growth and development
Confidentiality - what you share with me stays with me
Listening deeply and asking the questions you need to ask yourself
Keeping track of your progress and reminding you to celebrate your milestones
Providing insights and feedback
Business acumen
A world class systems thinking and management of change experience set
Some representative quotes from past coaching clients..........
"Dorian has the unique ability to dive into the heart of the matter with a fierce empathy that disarmed my resistance. I have been surprised by the lasting impact of her master questions."
"She has an elven warrior presence that I rely on when confronting day-to-day challenges. I both dread and can't wait for the insights she will demand of me in her coaching calls."
"As a 27 year old, I was worried about being coached by an experienced business woman in her 60s. I shouldn't have been. She has stayed young at heart. And she treated me as a partner, not a young client. Yet she also somehow - how did she do that? - guided me to grow."
"It isn't just about a set of coaching calls. The tailored homework, the readings, the introductions to new pragmatic models, the encouragement to put small intentions into daily practice.... it has all been a leadership development program in the form of a coaching relationship."
OTHER COACHING-RELATED OPTIONS
4-HOURS OF LEVERAGING SELF-ASSESSMENTS FOR GREATER AWARENESS AND IMPACT
For those who are interested in gaining a clearer understanding of how they see the world around them through particular lenses of personality or personal preference, and how the world sees them, I use a series of online confidential psychometric assessments to shape tailored debrief sessions.
Psychometrics that I use:
Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) by the Leadership Circle Group
Meyers Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI ) Step 2 for an overall sense of preferences along 4 key dimensions of Introversion vs Extroversion in how you manage your energy, the role of Sensing/Facts vs Intuition/Big Picture in how you prefer to gather information, role of Thinking vs Feeling in how you make decisions, and Judging/Perceiving in organizing your tasks.
FIRO-B for an understanding of how you prefer to have your interpersonal needs met along 3 key dimensions of Inclusion, Control and Openness. Has direct bearing on how you then prefer to lead/manage and be lead/managed, and helps you understand why others may differ significantly from your own preferences.
TKI for understanding your preferred ways of handling conflict and your least preferred (or rarely used) ways
Other assessments that I routinely use:
Business Plan U to support you in seeing how a career pivot or life transition can be underpinned through the rigor and creativity of a business plan approach to self
Kantor Four Player preferences
VIA Values Inventory
Harthill LDF stages of leadership development
4-HOUR STANDALONE INTENTION CLARIFYING SESSION: THE SYMBOLS WAY (3DMAPPING)
The Symbols Way is a unique strategic inquiry and insight process. It leverages the perspective of 4 archetypal leadership stances, provide information and clarity on a challenging life question:
The Place of Intuition - home to our emotional IQ, where reliable perceptions of critical non-physical factors inform us through our bodies. The ability to stand in one another's shoes, and our spontaneous playful selves reside here. Our ability to powerfully Follow resides in this area.
The Place of Your Truth - deeply rooted in the earth: practical and honest. Draws clear boundaries, assesses risk and voices what needs to be spoken. Our ability to respectfully oppose resides here.
The Place of Perspective - the dispassionate overview that can discern cycles and patterns, reframe problems, learn quickly and embrace complexity. Our ability to discern and bystand is informed by this capacity.
The Place of Vision and Purpose - where one sees through surface disturbance to the benevolent and worthy essence of one's own self the gifts of others. From here we maintain the sanctity of the core mission of all endeavors, and hold the continuity of past, present and future. Our ability to Move with clarity is born from this stance.
The Symbols Way process is especially effective for men and women who are in transition and/or are at an impasse in their life. The process offers practical applications to life situations, and is a highly effective tool for strategic clarity to set a sound foundation for action.