BEING IN BUSINESS:
RACIO IS NECESSARY,
YOU CAN'T DO WITHOUT EMOTIONS
Consulting for business and Coaching for executives
My consulting work is based on several basic principles and values that form the basis of each contract with the clients I put effort into:
- People at work want to be effective and I support them in that.
- I help in the implementation of essential changes (“organic change”) of clients – individuals, teams, companies, organizations. In doing so, I strive to provide a healthy and benevolent work environment.
- Using the existing knowledge and expertise that individuals or organizations already have – I do not discover “hot water”, but encourage development of existing capacities and share my own acquired professional knowledge and experience.
- I do not impose “ingenious” solutions, but I listen to clients with full dedication in order to find out the direction of necessary action and ensure the validity of my consulting and coaching interventions and activities.
WORK METHODOLOGY – COACHING AND CONSULTING TO THE CLIENT’S NEEDS!
INDIVIDUALS
STARTUPS
FAMILY COMPANIES
COMPANIES AND CORPORATIONS
PUBLIC SECTOR
FOR INDIVIDUALS
When working with individuals – “one to one”, as a coach I am focused on understanding and analyzing the style of behavior and work of an individual, as well as what the impact is for the individual.
Me –”the coach” and an individual “the coachee” work together to understand both effective and ineffective patterns and habits of her/his working life. The aim for this partnership is to find the best solutions, custom-built for a particular individual in specific contexts.
While coaching I use and combine very different activities which methodologically comply with the needs of a particular individual, her/his work environment and aspirations.
I define the consulting work with individuals through the focus on the most common questions for the individual that are placed in a real working environment.
Focus can be on: changing leadership style, attitude to colleagues’ estimates, planning the future, deciding on continuing or changing issues in a career, correcting a very bad relationship with associates, etc. Most people come up with the real benefit through the process of individual consultations – “coaching” – and find the best solution for a specific issue.
Some of the issues are:
• Promotion to a more senior role and the implications for both the individual and the team.
• Restructuring that creates either a bigger or a smaller area of responsibility.
• Taking on a role after a failed colleague.
• Personal authority for the business role in which the individual is.
• Loneliness in the role of a leader, owner, manager – a burden of expectations and responsibilities.
• Work with the founder of the company to prepare for the transfer of the role and position to the next generation.
How do I work with clients?
When working with individuals as a coach, I follow a “socio-technical” model that examines the interplay of the individual in her/his role the nature of the specific tasks she/he performs, within the system (organization) she/he works. This three-layer perspective helps in the realization that the person and their context are seen as an integrated system that effects and influences the individual, her/his colleagues and her/his work.
At the very beginning of working with an individual, we define a “contract” on the pace, scope and goals of coaching, and in relation to the real workload of the individual. This practically means negotiating a specific rhythm of coaching sessions (weekly, bimonthly, monthly), as well as the required range of sessions (for example – from 4 to 6 sessions), at the end of which a further work is agreed (continuation or termination). Each coaching session lasts from 60 to 120 minutes.
FOR TEAMS, GROUPS, DEPARTMENTS, SUBSYSTEMS
Teams, groups, departments, subsystems within a larger system of the CLIENT (company, corporation, organization), often reflect and act as the microcosm of the whole. Through the process that I follow in working with teams and similar units, strive to help in better understanding of specific business environment, their primary tasks, particular skills they have in relation to those they need in a given time, and also to eliminate everything that blocks them and interferes with work.
Identification of the need for a team and similar units, development occurs in quite different conditions – sometimes during the formation of the team, sometimes during the engagement of the team on specific tasks or at the end of the realization of the job in which the team participated. Team managers or team members express their request for consulting for business consultant intervention in different ways:
• We are a new team and we would like to get to know each other’s work styles, before we get stuck in bad working habits.
• I am a new manager to an existing team and would like to share both my ideas, and their plans before I suggest any changes.
• As a senior manager I would like to recruit a completely new set of team members, how can I do that without upsetting the existing team?
• We are a group of specialists that have been formed into a temporary project group. How can we start to work together?
• My team has given me feedback that my management style is not helpful,. How and what should I change?
• We are a well-established team that have hit a barrier in our communication and have discovered we have completely different ideas about the way we work.
• People in my unit seem despondent and demoralized. I would like to find out why and fix it.
• I run a project team that seems to work as individuals rather than collectively. I would like to change that, and build in co-operation as one of our ground-rues.
• My team, which I have been leading for a long time, has to be disbursed in near future. I would like to close the project in a quality way, help people find new teams, recognize the value of their work and help in their future employment. What can I do?
How do I work with clients?
All of the above mentioned cases, as well as many others, could be fixed in any number of ways. As a consultant, I practice to explore the issues, suggest some steps for further work, exchange ideas within the team, the group, the department, the subsystem, and only then carry out specific activities that should bring about changes.
There are imposed solutions such as “teambuilding” activities, relaxed weekends for team members and so on. Though these are incredibly enjoyable for some occasions, I prefer the contract to be based on work issues, and dealt with by the real incidences, through fully honest and dedicated communication aimed at helping the team and improving the work. This is most often realized through a combination of workshops, trainings and simulation of the assessment center.
FOR COMPANIES AND ORGANISATIONS – ENTIRE SYSTEMS
Working with whole organizations is a very exciting experience and at the same time a huge happiness for me as a consultant. Being in the “external consultant” position, it truly helps to be outside, objective and completely fresh and open to all issues and problems that exist with the CLIENT (company organization, system) without the prior attitude or “toxic” ideas. It helps me to be genuinely curious and able to ask simple questions. This perspective encourages openness and cooperation between me as a consultant and people inside the organization.
Often, the task is to uncover underlying and undetected sets of attitudes and behaviors among employees, which prevent or stop effective work of the CLINET (company organization, system). People realize that something needs ‘tuning’, and come for consulting for business to me with questions like:
• What is the dominant mood of people in the organization?
• Why are so many people leaving?
• I took over the job from my parents, but their employees do not respect me. What have I been doing wrong?
• Where has all the working motivation and positive attitude of employees gone?
• How can we find out why we are doing so slowly in relation to others?
• I want to change the work habits of employees that were valid while my father was running the business. What should I do with them?
• Employees resist new management. What is the cause of the problem and misunderstanding?
• What can be done to make employees think about their future in this organization?
How do I work with clients?
When identifying the areas to be changed within the CLIENT (company organization, system), I follow the standard process through the most commonly several steps:
• Collect qualitative data on specific problems, uncertainties, good experiences from the previous period and practice, everything that is evident and relevant in the CLIENT (company organization, system), from as many employees as possible at all levels of the organization.
• Analyze the data to identify themes that were voiced by the contributors (employees).
• Present a draft feedback report of the obtained results in order to receive comments and active consideration with as many employees as possible at all levels of the organization.
• Finalize the report to include the responses.
• Suggest interventions and time-scales to present to the initiators and relevant members of the organization’s leadership – so-called policy/strategy team.
• Formulate and adopt a plan for the implementation of consultancy interventions and activities.
• Work with employees in the CLIENT (company organization, system) – primarily with members of a dedicated structured project team.
• Regular monitoring of the status of the project, in order to check the expected progress, as well as benchmark the changes at the end of the work.
• Completing the project according to the agreed criteria with the presentation of the final report.
I follow this process for a range of issues and requests from companies or organizations, whether culture, behavioral, policy or process changes are needed. The essence is to work with the CLEINT rather than impose a process onto the existing structure / organization. In my work with organizations I use talents and employees’ ideas, who certainly have expertise and experience of their own organization. Finally, it addresses a whole-system perspective that integrates change, without disintegrating working structures.