Our Process

Initial Contracting

First, we get to know each other. What issues are you facing? Where are the perceived gaps in your team or organization? What led you to contact us? At this phase, we define the commitments and outcomes we need for a successful relationship.

Assessment

Next, we often conduct confidential interviews with team members—all individuals in small organizations, or selected members in larger organizations. Our goal is to understand your big-picture strengths and challenges toward achieving your purpose. We then compile our learnings, protecting individual confidentiality, while presenting patterns, trends and our suggested approach forward. At this phase, we can also examine survey data and important organizational information.

Initial Intervention

Now, we examine your team's issues and challenges in a new light. There are many ways to move forward in mutually agreed-upon ways. Sometimes, we begin with Enneagram training. The Enneagram creates open curiosity among team members, providing a language for exploring people's similarities, differences and opportunities in a safe environment. We ideally spend time off-site together, introducing our customized foundational tools to your team. We can spread this phase across a series of full-days, half-days or shorter sessions, if required.

Implementation Plan

In this phase, we follow through on our initial learnings by creating collective and individual action plans. As a group, we discuss the most powerful way to integrate new perspectives into the organizational culture. On the individual level, participants identify two or three impactful goals that will shape them into better leaders. Through short, frequent action and reflection cycles, along with collective and individual accountability commitments, we help you build new insights into your business.

Ongoing Consulting & Coaching

To ensure your team's or organization's success, we often establish ongoing coaching relationships with senior leaders. Through regular meetings, consultations and adjustments, we support your progress towards your purpose and goals.

Initial Contracting & Goal Setting

At our first meeting, we get to know each other, determining if we're a good fit together. We ask about your strengths, challenges and goals, while clarifying expectations and potential coaching tools. If appropriate, we may meet with your manager, HR rep or organizational leader to ensure that our coaching aligns with the overall organizational goals.

Assessment

Now, it's time to go deeper, forming a better understanding of who you are, while analyzing your work context. We jump-start the process with an in-depth questionnaire to learn more about you, while incorporating assessment tools, such as the Enneagram and Kolbe. At times, we conduct confidential 360-degree interviews with your manager, peers and direct reports. Asking your team about your strengths and challenges, we report patterns and trends back to you.

Ongoing Coaching

Here's where the intensive coaching begins. Whether it's in-person, video, phone or email conversations, our approach is always highly collaborative and engaging. Often, our sessions will take place every two to three weeks, giving you time to test our new approaches. Through frequent action and reflection cycles, your learnings will have the greatest impact. In this phase, if appropriate, we may invite you to a Leadership Tools workshop, where you'll collaborate with other coaching clients, and then build on your learnings over time in individual sessions.

Ongoing Assessment

At consistent intervals, we ask for your feedback on how to improve our coaching relationship, checking on the progress and results of your action and reflection cycles. Sometimes, we elicit feedback from your manager, while fully protecting your privacy and confidentiality.

The Comma or Pause

Even when our coaching comes to an end, we always leave the door open to you. At this phase, we may simply engage in quarterly sessions or ongoing email exchanges. We also work with you to create a sustainable, ongoing plan for stabilizing your gains and building further skills. Sometimes, we conduct a three-way meeting with your manager or another organizational stakeholder.

Initial Contracting

First, we get to know you and your organization or team. What's your organization's purpose, along with your strengths and challenges in moving toward your goals? Where are the most important gaps? How will success be measured? At this stage, we determine individual and collective accountability structures for you to integrate ongoing action and reflection cycles into the daily work.

Determining the Leadership Curriculum & Format

Now, we mutually agree on your training curriculum and format. Most often, we meet with groups of up to 30 leaders once a month. Dividing up the group, we form small cohorts of four to five leaders from diverse areas of the organization, who will then work together between sessions. While we have a general plan for each session, we also adapt to challenges and issues that arise in the moment.

Leadership Training

Through active and engaging sessions, we promote a safe and trusting environment that fosters active dialogue. We conduct frequent table discussions, where we break participants into separate groups to speak about a topic, and then report out to the rest of the group. Sometimes, we divide the entire group in half, providing focused training to each team on a specific tool, such as organizational culture, high-performing teams or coaching skills. Based on each session's outcomes, we assign action learning to each individual and cohort. We then start the next session with a rich dialogue about their actions, results and learnings. We customize each session based on the previous session, while still holding to the overall curriculum content and structure.

Ongoing Assessment

In this phase, we collect data to dynamically steer our curriculum. Surveys and open, honest feedback are helpful here. In some programs, we introduce avenues for leaders to apply their new knowledge, and then use this information to examine what perspectives they've integrated and where need more attention is need.

Completion

To integrate and stabilize learnings, we create both individual and collective action plans. Often, we conduct follow-up sessions, usually six months and then one year later, to build on each leader's skills.