Executive Coaching - a one-on-one individualised process to benefit both the client and the organisation.
Executive coaching involves an executive, his or her coach, and his or her organisational and private context, and focuses on the needs and goals of both the executive and the sponsoring organisation.Executive coaching is a one-on-one individualised process to benefit the client and his or her organisation and is typically paid by the organisation that employs the executive.An executive coaching engagement may touch on many aspects of the executive’s performance, leadership style, career, health and personal life situations. Creating balance in the entire individual's life situation enables empathic leadership. Developing new ways of thinking, feeling, acting, learning, leading, and relating to others builds individual and organisational effectiveness.
Executive coaching involves developing leadership capabilities and new ways of thinking and acting that relates to other situations and roles. It also involves “learning how to learn” which means developing skills and habits of self-reflection that ensure that learning will continue and creates habits of learning and self-reflection that will last a lifetime, enabling the leader to keep developing throughout the career. This is an important and sometimes overlooked goal of coaching.
Sometimes other key stakeholders are involved in the executive coaching process. Most often the key stakeholders involved are the executive’s manager and/or HR. When other key stakeholder are part of the coaching partnership, it is of utmost importance the coaching partnership is set out as a win-win systems approach and agree on ground rules for confidentiality.
The Executive Coach
The Executive Coaching Forum writes the following about the core competencies needed to call oneself an Executive Coach:“The practice of Executive Coaching demands a broad and deep array of knowledge including Psychological Knowledge, Business Acumen, Organizational and Coaching Knowledge. Developing mastery in these content areas takes place over one’s career.
Psychological knowledge, including an understanding of personality, motivation, learning and behavior change, adult developmental theories, stress management, emotional intelligence, feedback, gender differences, and social psychology.
Business acumen, including an understanding of basic business practices and financial concepts, management principles and processes, strategic planning, information technology, global business dynamics, and human resource management.
Organisational knowledge, including an understanding of organizational structures and functions, organizational design, organizational culture, team effectiveness, leadership models, systems theory, consulting theory and practices, business ethics, and leadership development.
Coaching knowledge, including an understanding of executive coaching models and theories, coaching competencies, specific coaching practices (such as managing confidentiality, assessment, goal setting), various roles of a coach, coaching research, the history of coaching, and developing oneself as a coach.
In addition to this, the Executive Coach needs to have the following attributes and abilities:Mature self-confidence
Positive energy
Assertiveness
Interpersonal sensitivity
Openness and flexibility
Goal orientation
Partnering and influence
Continuous learning and development
Integrity
The Executive Coach constantly strive to increase their competence through continuing education and staying up to date with best practices in coaching.”
The coaching process.
I have a very wide range of working methods and a toolbox that I have collected from many sources. I have integrated this into a self-conscious and personal way of being with the people I work with. I demonstrate an intelligent, sensitive ability to choose a broad approach, and within that approach, appropriate tools and techniques that meet the specific needs of a particular client at a particular time. Coaching becomes wisdom.
Transcendental and transformational coaching
I work with transcendental and transformational master coaching. Transcendence means going beyond. To go beyond one's self and to grasp one's natural innate state. Transform means to convert. To work through challenges, obstacles and barriers that are in the way, and convert, transform, these so that more flow arises, and reach our full power and potential.
Many want to skip meeting their challenges, obstacles and barriers. If you do, you will not develop your full power and potential. My invitation is to consider these challenges, obstacles and barriers as doorways to your full potential, meet them and fully feel everything that is activated. It is helpful to welcome each such doorway as an opportunity for development. Nothing that shall be removed, considered as wrong or something to escape from.
By raising your own awareness of what is going on inside of you, and inviting other perspectives, you get more space for your inner development. Often it is the unconscious side within you that creates difficulties. Increased knowledge and acceptance of how you as a human being is functioning is a necessity for inner growth.
Exponential deep master coaching
Exponential coaching means that with minimal effort we reach maximum effect. MiniMax. By getting to the root cause to your situation and reaching transformation, a steep curve is created upwards from your current position and you reach your innate potential state much faster. When we go deep instead of forward, we create a sustainable change faster.
Transactional coaching takes place in a horizontal dimension where clients get from A to B. I work with transcendent and transformative coaching that goes in a vertical direction, to reach the deep and sustainable states. So you could say I'll help you to be in A. In the present moment. It is when you find your way back to your own true power that lasting shifts take place and you notice that you are looking at reality in a new way, and it becomes clear to you in which direction your journey needs to go.
In the coaching conversations, we go deep. As deep as you're willing to go. Because it is in the depths of ourselves that we find the root cause of our behaviors and inner beliefs that no longer serve us. In our conversations, we work on what is preventing you right now from getting where you want to go, so that transcendence and transformation can take place. And you are getting more and more in touch with your inner true power that can will take you forward on your path.
You can move away from old habits and beliefs that no longer serve you, and find the path that you really want to walk. It makes you a more true version of yourself at work, at home and in your close relationships.
No two journeys are alike
In the individual conversation, I use different approaches, for different situations, for different people - no two journeys are alike. All methods are effective and proven, which lays the foundation for a professional exploratory conversation and a structured process. The coaching conversation creates space for you to find your own way forward.
I have developed a special ability to tailor my coaching processes for each client, so that the individual gets exactly what he needs right now, and thus is offered a development opportunity that goes much faster and straighter than it otherwise does.
The Enneagram shows us our hidden potential
In my coaching programs I use the Enneagram to help my clients identify what their gifts and workons are to become more whole. The Enneagram is a dynamic personality tool for development and change. It shows our potential – both what is easily accessible and what takes longer to develop.
The Enneagram provides us with the best map ever, in my view, of how to reach our fullest potential, and how to get out of our limiting beliefs and patterns. It is one thing to know our gifts and challenges and completely another to work on them. The invitation here is to address our knowing and doing gap.
The Enneagram tries to answer questions about why we do as we do, why we have developed our patterns and defenses, and how we can move forward and develop into whole and well-functioning people. The aim is to identify your potential and the limiting patterns that prevent you from getting there.
Coaching enables new perspectives.
Coaching is a belief that each individual is unique and responsible for one’s own life and actions, and that the individual is fully capable of taking that responsibility. In coaching, no advice is given, instead you as a client come up with your own answers. Coaching is communication, learning, a change and process work.
Professional coaching is more than a result- and solution-focused conversation technology. It focuses on the client's willingness and the choices that arise in the process. The client simply receives a sustainable and long-term learning about himself or herself, and develops his/her self-awareness and focus. The coach acts as a process leader for development by being transparent and valueless. The client is constantly held responsible for his or her process, choices and actions. That is what makes coaching so powerful for creating a change in behaviour.
The basis of the coaching conversation is to see the client as the person who best sees their own opportunities and who knows himself or herself best. By coaching the client and supporting him or her, self-realization can come about and progress happens.
Coaching is an effective technique to help people quickly reformulate, change perspectives and redefine themselves and their situations. The coach acts as a partner and sounding board for people who are stuck in their inner stories and perceptions. They help clients go beyond their blinding fears, inherited beliefs, and assumptions that limit possible actions that would benefit the current situation.
As a result of new perspectives, the client discovers new solutions, takes action on solutions that they have avoided, and long-term behavioral changes are enabled. The goal of coaching is to get clients to pause and get perspectives on thoughts, inner sensations and behaviors that until now have limited their approach, so that they can see a new way forward that leads to living the lives they have the potential to live.
In the coaching conversation, the client discovers his or her inner stories about oneself, which until now has been an unconscious act. Reflective inquiry of what is going on within the client, combined with coaching questions, will be a support for the client to identify internal beliefs and behavior patterns that are activated. In the presence of a coach's patience and respect for the client's process, the client clearly discovers what they need to work on.
Our coaching cooperation.
Our coaching cooperation helps to find the optimal way forward. We are exploring the most favourable direction and what might be in its way, and we are working out workable strategies. Furthermore, we work to develop different abilities that support what you want to do. Any thoughts and old beliefs that are set in motion by itself, we go deep with and find ways to take command of these so that you lead yourself around possible pitfalls. We also look at what takes energy, and explore opportunities to strengthen what gives energy, and remove what takes. This is among many other things that will emerge during the coaching process that we discuss and reflect on for the benefit of your inner development and the current situation. All this with the ambition that the investment in terms of time, energy and money you make in this coaching process, repays itself multiplicity.
It is important that you are an active participant in the coaching process both in and after the sessions. Immediately after each coaching conversation, between sessions and before each conversation, it is significant that you set aside time and space to reflect on the coaching process and your development. If you do this, you will enable the coaching to be successful. Many breakthroughs and transformations take place between sessions. It is therefore of the utmost importance that there is time and space so that this can happen.
It takes time to develop your empathic leadership. It is one thing to understand it intellectually, it is a completely different thing to integrate it and live it. With professional help, the process goes faster than if you do it on your own. Nevertheless, it must take the time it needs. Each individual has their own pace and my experience is that it is not possible to force the pace.
After a completed program, there are clients who continue with a new round. I have clients who have been with me for many, many years. The process of discovering oneself, meeting and working one's way through one's obstacles and barriers is like peeling an onion. When a layer is peeled off, a new one comes :-) This is what I find so incredibly exciting to discover, both in myself and in my clients!
After we both have committed to start a coaching collaboration, we book our first coaching conversation. According to my experience, it is important to have our coaching conversations continuously at about two weeks apart at the most in the beginning of the coaching program. This is to create the opportunity for the change and transformation you desire. If there is too much time between our meetings, there is a good chance of ending up in old habits, patterns and beliefs again, and thus the coaching process does not give the transformation that is possible.
For clients who come to me on an ongoing basis, we meet approximately once a month.
We meet on Zoom or by phone for our coaching conversations. Zoom or phone is the client’s choice. In my experience, both channels work very well.
The four levels of inner maturity and development.
Liberation – Beyond the personality
Balance – Essence has taken over
Normal - Driven by the ego-fixation
Imbalance - Unaware of the ego
There are many of my clients who want to know where in the process of the inner development journey they are. Many years ago, I came to the conclusion that there are four prominent levels in our inner maturity and development. Only now have I put it down on paper, with the intention of providing a map.
This is not a hierarchical structure. It's the ego in us that wants to see it that way. My invitation is to see these levels as a help to understand where I am in my process, and what I have in front of me to work on. There is no right and wrong in where you are, no one is better or worse depending on where you are on the map. The important thing is to actually know, for real, where I am. Only then can I optimize my development path.
These levels are also helpful in any type of relationship we have. Where am I, where is the other(s)? Which gives guidance to how to handle the relationship and why some relationships are perceived as simple and smooth, while others can be challenging and tiresome.
I share this map in the hope that it will bring clarity and understanding to your own inner workings. This is not a linear journey. You go back and forth, up and down. The important thing to notice is where your anchor sits. That point serves as your home base for the time being and changes as you move forward or backward in your progression.
1. Liberation – Beyond the personality
At this level, we operate effectively in the world. We relate to others from our essence, our organic essential self, where our identity is centered and we are guided by divine awareness. We are imbued with love, gratitude, reverence, and elation. There are still aspects of the ego left, though we no longer perceive the ego as our center. The ego is restored to its natural balance and function. We've let go of our self-image, and we've worked our way through our basic fears and broaden our awareness. We are getting more and more glimpses that the individual self and the divine self are the same thing. Some of us feel that there is no longer any distinction between the observer and what is being observed: the experience and the one who experiences is one. We live our potential. The personality experiences this level when faced with its death – the ego death.
2. Balance – Essence has taken over
We have worked our way through our inner wounds, traumas, robot-like behaviors and challenges. We still live to some extent from the perspective of the ego and compensate in different ways for our basic desires and fears. Even so, our essential and organic self has taken over the steering wheel most of the time. We are guided by our inner world, our true nature. We can contain our emotions and respond instead of react. We are perceived as a very balanced, mature and high-functioning person. Staying at this level requires an active intention to maintain balance and be present and awake. This means that we need to have daily exercises and routines to cultivate and maintain our increased awareness. We are expressing more and more of our potential.
3. Normal - Driven by the ego-fixation
We are aware that we have an ego and we recognize when we fall into our automatic behaviors. We find it difficult to catch ourselves in the act and break old habits and patterns in the moment. We are starting to become aware of our trigger points step by step. We are driven by the personality's (ego's) projects and areas of interest. We understand that there is something more outside of our ego-fixation and we can only express a small part of our full potential. We have a strong belief that we have to be a certain way and that we need a response from those around us that confirms that self-image. We are driven by the external world. We can get entangled in a mutually frustrating dance where we reward and reject each other just enough to keep us in the interaction.
4. Imbalance - Unaware of the ego
We have no awareness of our ego and how it controls our life. Our ego is fragile and needs to be protected, leading to an overactive ego where we identify with our feelings and thoughts. We are very reactive, take things personally and go on the defensive. We want others to solve the problems for us. We are stuck in our opinions and judge others who disagree. We start from polarization: Us and them. Right and wrong. Black and white. We cannot take the perspective of others or think multidimensionally. As a reaction to the basic fear of being hurt or controlled by others, we use different strategies to protect ourselves. We have completely lost touch with our true nature, and have thus abandoned ourselves and lost touch with reality. We get lost in a maze of reactions and illusions.
