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EXECUTIVE COACHING & ROLE CONSULTATION

WHAT IS EXECUTIVE COACHING?
Executive coaching is defined as a negotiated relationship, which enables clients to take stock of their current work role and to help them identify new possibilities, to harness appropriate personal and organisational resources in order to enhance their own work performance.

Executive coaching has been recognised as an effective way of delivering changes to the client's critical thinking and of promoting individual confidence and competencies.

IS EXECUTIVE COACHING RELEVANT TO ALL PUBLIC SECTOR MANAGERS?
"At a time of widespread reform in the public sector, the professionals within the system feel ill-equipped to implement these changes. Consultancy (and coaching) offer those involved an opportunity to take stock and reflect on the relentless process of change. It also presents the possibility of seeking local, tailor-made solutions to problems often created in attempting to implement national policy changes."

From: Internal Consultancy in the Public Sector by Clare Huffington and Halina Brunning (editors) 1994, Karnac Books

In so doing, coaching and consultancy can help individual managers to harness their own potential and improve their own role performance by achieving a deeper understanding of their current role and of different factors that influence and affect that role.

WHO CAN BENEFIT FROM EXECUTIVE COACHING?
Executive coaching can benefit anybody in a managerial position, not necessarily only the executives or members of the top teams. Executive coaching and role consultation can help you to clarity and identify your own internal goals, at times when some external goals, such as value for money, best value, risk management, clinical governance, reconfigurations, reorganisations, mergers, de-mergers, partnership formation, multi-agency work, national curriculum, and other rapid changes are driving the overt agenda.

We have all witnessed the effects that such turbulence has upon the staff in the public sector, exactly when personal robustness and resilience is required. As never before, far from feeling robust or resilient, staff often experience doubts, anxiety, uncertainties, burnout, ill-health, or they simply leave their chosen profession due to stress. This has been a publicly documented situation with the nurses and teachers.

Executive coaching, mentoring and role consultation will give you the opportunity to take stock, prioritise your own goals and sharpen your resolve to maximise your performance in relation to your current, or future role, leaving you free to consider where you may wish to invest your professional and personal energy in the future.

WHAT I CAN OFFER YOU
I use my own psychological approach, which is based on the utilisation of six different domains of executive coaching (see an article I recently wrote on the subject titled "The Six Domains of Executive Coaching", Brunning 2001). In working with you, I will invite you to consider your current organisational role, seen within the context of your current work environment, and to evaluate it against your own career progression, expectations and aspirations, your unique skills, competencies and talents.

At the same time, I will invite you to make links to your own personality and own life story. I believe that in order to adequately address issues around your current organisational role you will need to understand the interconnected influence of the remaining five factors in your professional and personal life.

This is not about career guidance, counselling or psychotherapy as such, however, elements of all these approaches may at times be useful during our sessions. This is what I aim to bring into executive coaching and role consultation.

By now, this approach has been tried and tested and it gives my clients a sense of being able to make meaningful connections, to reach deeper insights, which therefore may lead to more lasting and personally owned changes.

WHAT MY CLIENTS SAID ABOUT EXECUTIVE COACHING
"After the first session I felt a heavy burden has been lifted from my shoulders" (NHS Head of Service)

" These sessions have been of immense use and benefit in both personal and professional terms" (Service Manager)

" I loved the use of metaphors in our work, it was so freeing and creative" (Service Director)

" The work has been extremely useful and productive, it has been hard work but undertaken in a safe environment" (NHS Manager)

" I have not only enjoyed the sessions enormously, but I am also truly impressed by your skills" (Service Manager)

ABOUT MY WORK AND EXPERIENCE
I am a Chartered Clinical Psychologist and Associate Fellow with the British Psychological Society. I am registered with GLEA for the purpose of offering training and consultancy to Local Authorities.

I have had over thirty years experience of working in the NHS, where I performed a wide range of roles as a clinician, supervisor, lecturer, manager and internal consultant.

In parallel, I have worked as an Organisational Consultant for the last twenty years with a variety of public sector organisations.

My approach is psychological and psychodynamic and is informed by the Tavistock Clinic's consultancy training, which I completed in 1991. Additionally, I have also trained as a Change Agent, Facilitator, Group Leader and Executive Coach in a number of training organisations including the Institute of Group Analysis, Institute of Family Therapy, the King's Fund Centre, South West Thames Region and Quorum Organisational Psychologists International. I have published extensively on clinical, management, coaching and consultancy issues and have co-written three books on organisational consultancy and the management of change (See home page for details)

HOW WILL I CONSULT TO YOU?
As a result of years of training and experience I bring a wide range of psychological and organisational expertise to my consultative and coaching practice.

I WILL:

• offer you a psychological and a containing framework


• be challenging whilst creating a safe environment for you try to use unique and creative techniques that will match your preferred style of working on personal issues


• create new space and a different conversation to enable you to reflect on the issues and problems afresh


• help you to identify areas of new learning or any skills shortage


• enable you to find your own solution to your problems


• help you to create and appraise various options


• energise you to consider and make decisions more appropriate to your new understanding of your situation


• empower you to deal with change constructively

I WILL NOT:

• offer you a pre-packaged solution


• work with you without first negotiating a contract


• break your confidentiality to anybody, or write a report about our work to your employers


• publish anything arising out of our work without your permission and explicit consent