The Boulden approach to Coaching Clinics
Once a month a professional coach visits your premises and provides advice on a 'drop-in' basis
- Your own independent coach
- A valuable vehicle for skills development
- On the spot help to resolve issues and rising to challenge
Introduction to Coaching Clinics
Coaching Clinics are on-site, ‘drop in’ centres that offer consultation with professional coaches to key staff, enabling them to improve performance, capability and job satisfaction.
Run once a month, Clinics provide busy managers with timely and convenient access to independent coaches, who are impartial and familiar with a range of private and public organisations.
The service will suit fast-moving organisations in which line managers and HR staff have insufficient time to provide such coaching. Organisations that have ‘down-sized’ or which operate with matrix management will find the service especially valuable.
Who is the service for?
Access to coaching clinics is for middle managers and key professional staff, who may not be suitable candidates for formal Executive Coaching programmes. Typically, they will ask questions about handling problems, progressing careers and professional development.
Benefits of Coaching Clinics
Coaching Clinics provide confidential, tailor-made coaching in a private setting that help staff confront challenges, defuse problems at an early stage and develop their skills.
Coaching professionals
Staff will view Clinics as a credible and serious forum for development because our coaches are experts who act with integrity. BMC coaches have held senior executive positions in a range of industries and provide a skills base that includes MBA’s, Master Practitioners of NLP, Certified Coaches and Chartered Psychologists.
The Coaching Clinic Process
The process has four components
- The drop in clinic
- Telephone follow up
- Email report for the coachee
- Monthly Evaluation Report
Key Stages
Summary of the key stages involved in our approach
Drop in clinic
Employees pre-book forty-five minute coaching sessions via a calendar published on the Boulden web site, or they sign up on the day, or (if the coach is free) they simply ‘drop in’ for a meeting.
During the session, the coach agrees with the coachee (i) the issue to address, (ii) the session outcome (iii), practical solutions, and (iv) an action plan
Telephone follow-up
The coach then arranges a thirty-minute update phone call with the coachee to monitor progress, deal with obstacles and provide encouragement.
Email report for the Coachee
After the follow up telephone call, the Coach summarises the outcomes and key learning points, and highlights further actions. This completes the coaching, although employees are welcome to start a fresh round of coaching, if appropriate.
Monthly evaluation report
To enable organisations to judge the effectiveness of Coaching Clinics, we produce a monthly Monthly Evaluation report which:
- Lists the numbers of people who have attended the clinics
- Summarises the issues addressed, while maintaining confidentiality
- Flags trends or patterns that suggest coordinated action for the executive team to take
Communications strategy and the 'coaching contract'
Effective communication at launch is a key to success. We include briefings, updates and support materials. Our aim is to work with you to ensure all your coachees feel involved in the set up of Clinics and understand their part in them.
Our ‘coaching contract’ makes clear the roles of the coach, the coachee and the company, and how and when progress is reported to management.
Web-based coaching support
As an optional extra, we offer a web-based coaching tool.
This option starts, as usual, with a face-to-face coaching session at the drop in clinic. The coachee then goes on-line and creates a secure account on our ‘coachskills.com’ web site. This guides the coachee through a series of activities that help them create a clear goal and a step-by-step action plan to achieve it. The web-based model asks them to work through the well known ‘GROW’ coaching model.
- Goal - (What do I want to achieve?)
- Reality (What is happening now?)
- Options (What could I do?)
- When (What will I do and when will I do it?)
- Action (Implement the plan)
- Follow up (Review results and, if necessary, take corrective action)
The software automatically submits the GROW plan to the coach, providing the basis for a thirty minute telephone coaching conversation with the coachee. Following this, coachees modify their GROW plans.
Coachees then implement their plan and report their progress, using the web site’s tracking tools.
After an agreed period (usually one month), coach and coachee review progress in a second thirty-minute telephone coaching conversation and issue a brief report about the action phase.
Typical coaching issues
Examples of issues that people bring to the coaching sessions include:
James, a manager in a public organisation, failed to gain promotion, despite making the short-list for a number of roles. He recognised that he needed to prepare better for promotion boards.
Charlotte, a technical manager in a fast moving IT business, clashed with her new manager. She ran out of ideas for improving the relationship and wanted help to resolve the conflict.
Karen, an ambitious manager in a food process company, wanted impartial advice to clarify career goals and plan personal and professional development accordingly.
Tim, a manager in a bank, found that his lack of impact in presentations limited his ability to influence senior managers. He asked for help in becoming more charismatic in meetings.
Miranda, an engineer in telecommunications promoted to a supervisory role, found it difficult to improve low team morale and manage poor performance. She came to the coaching session looking for ideas about how to drive the team forward.
Mark, a successful junior manager, found his job less challenging as he became more experienced. He wanted to create fresh challenges in his present role and to focus on possible new avenues.
Molly, an account manager, ran into relationship problems with the purchasing manager in her biggest account. She was eager to do something about it fast.
Ben, a supervisor in manufacturing, worked long hours and wanted to manage his workload and time more effectively.
Contact
Further information is available by contacting Boulden at:
email: coaching@boulden.net
Tel: 0844 394 8877
