Career Directions

A Career Partners International Firm

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Representative Coaching Scenarios

If you or your organization has never used external coaching services before, these representative scenarios will familiarize you with the most common reasons that clients turn to Career Directions for coaching assistance.

Thinking Partner

Top executives can find it both lonely and frustrating trying to problem-solve alone because of the need to maintain confidentiality, especially with respect to personnel issues, sensitive organizational plans, or political issues. Clients engage us both short-term and on an ongoing basis for this purpose – to offer an unbiased view or be a sounding board for difficult issues related to relationships in the organization or difficult personnel decisions. We can even talk to affected parties, gaining insight about their needs and concerns, and make recommendations as an unbiased third party that are most likely to be the best for everyone involved and for the organization.

Optimizing Leader Performance

Whether it’s your own performance, the performance of a key leader, or the performance of a prospective leader, we can provide counsel that leads to better decision making. Should you or another person stay in the current position, or move to something else? How should you deliver difficult, critical feedback to someone who needs to improve or change? We help leaders discover their impact on others – direct leader, peers, direct reports, customers – in the areas of vision, influencing and persuading others, structuring and delegating work, collaboration and cooperation, problem-solving, giving feedback, developing/coaching others, maintaining accountability, and monitoring productivity.

Assessments that identify leadership competencies and emotional intelligence, coupled with one-on-one discussions, can provide superior insight into the best short-term and long-term strategies. Resultant findings may be directed only towards individual performance enhancement, or may serve a broader purpose in succession planning for the organization.

Career Decisions

Succeeding at each consecutive rung on a career path doesn’t guarantee than an individual will succeed at the next. Even if someone is a success at the next level, the position may not provide the personal satisfaction that will keep the leader in your organization, rather than exploring outside opportunities. Career Directions can help you or future leaders assess job fit, job transitions, and job restructuring options with the idea of creating a win for both the individual and the organization. Skills and abilities, knowledge/expertise, work style, values, and motivators – all must be considered in making the best decisions. Once decisions are made, we can assist with the critical career conversations that will help reshape one or more person’s role in the organization.

Team Coaching

A team of “prima donnas” can take your organization down in short order. Strong leaders are good, but not when they end up working as opposing forces instead of a well-integrated team. Team and organizational coaching can be used to rapidly integrate new team leaders or members, to create better collaboration and partnering, to resolve intra- and inter-team conflicts, and to create an environment of trust and support. Team coaching can include relationship coaching to repair broken or disconnected relationships between peers.

Accelerated Developmental Coaching

Career Directions can teach top leaders to coach their own direct reports, key leaders, high potentials, and targeted “successors” to key positions. This type of coaching arrangement is often put in place to help an organization retain or strengthen its key leaders. Leaders have the option to perform all the coaching themselves, or to provide joint coaching (along with Career Directions) to the coachee. In the latter case, both the coachee and the leader receive regular feedback from Career Directions. In addition to our coaching services, we provide mentor training programs that teach mentors how to most effectively develop budding talent.

Onboarding/Rapid Acclimation to a New Role

Leaders facing significant new challenges, such as additional reporting units or a substantially larger unit may need to develop new and different skill sets quickly. Leaders may find themselves trying to do more complex “managing up,” contend with more organizational politics, and manage higher levels of personal stress. Using a coach in this situation can help leaders succeed more quickly, feel supported, and avoid the trial-and-error method of learning.

Organizational Transitions

At some point in time, nearly every organization must undergo a rapid change, whether driven by a reorganization, downsizing, rapid growth, or restructuring driven by a change in mission. Leaders and employees alike sometimes have difficulty relinquishing old habits and styles of interaction. Using a third party to coach the organization through such a change can increase the speed and success of change. Career Directions can help you avoid developing some of the friction that can irreparably damage relationships when personal styles aren’t factored into the equation of making changes. An unbiased third party can help bear the brunt of the anger and leave vital relationships intact when the inevitable concerns about moving too slow or too fast erupt. Team and organizational coaching can work hand-in-hand in these situations.

Raising the Bar

Perhaps you have a talented, strong contributor who has recently slipped and needs to return to former productivity. Rather than letting the trend continue, why not reverse it with some coaching – rather than bearing the expense and burden of training someone new? Or perhaps, there are executives or managers who simply need to achieve new levels of excellence – for the survival of the organization. Why not lend them the support they need to achieve their new goals, rather than forcing them through frustrating trial-and-error experiences? An external “listening ear” allows them to openly voice frustrations, reframe and resolve the problems they face, and achieve new corporate goals faster.