Executive Coaching

“Coaching is the art of improving the performance of others.” (Eaton and Johnson)

Our aim is to facilitate our clients through coaching to make the changes they need to make.

Increasingly , coaching is being viewed as one of the most practical and cost effective ways to provide development opportunities for people, especially those who hold management and leadership roles. It is focused on the coachee’s own experiences, their specific needs and provides a confidential environment to discuss what may sometimes be difficult issues for an individual leader to address.

Our Approach

We believe coaching in a work environment has many similarities to coaching in a sporting environment. It is not a remedial activity just to be given to people who are under performing, it is actually a technique to help everyone to perform even better. As in sport, the coach does not have to be an expert in the client’s field of work, but they do need to be an expert in coaching and helping people to learn from their every day experiences. We are confident that you will find this to be the case with Azure coaches, who are all qualified in their field and highly skilled members of the International Coach Federation.

The Azure guiding principles of coaching are:

Trust in the resourcefulness of your coachee
Be guided by the agenda of each coachee
The coach and coachee are equals
Coaching should facilitate personal change

We believe that coaching can only be successful when coach and coachee are truly ‘in rapport’ and as such, we spend time at the outset developing a trusting relationship between the two parties.

At the first meeting, the coach and coachee will find out more about each other, we will discuss the coachee’s current job role and circumstances and begin to understand the coachee’s self perception of the issues that need addressing. When a 360 degree feedback exercise has already been completed, the personal development plan is the ideal starting point to discover suitable areas for discussion in a coaching context.

It is also essential that ground rules for the coaching relationship are discussed and agreed, for it to be as effective as possible.

Coaching relationships work most effectively when the coaching sessions are planned over a period. Coachees know exactly when the next meeting will be and always have specific goals to work towards.

Coaching sessions usually take place every 4 – 6 weeks at times to suit both parties. When new to a role or if major changes are taking place, the coachee may wish to meet more regularly.

Each session normally takes place at the coachee’s own place of work in a private room for approximately 2 hours. We suggest that 6 meetings are agreed at the outset, as it is difficult to see significant progress within a shorter timescale. For some, a longer period of coaching may need to be agreed, depending on the development areas being undertaken.

When the coachee is deemed to have made significant and sufficient progress towards the initial objectives, the coaching relationship will normally come to a natural end point, although the coachee may choose to resume the relationship with a person they know and trust at a later date should a set of new challenges arise.

At Azure, we seek to make coachees independent through improved confidence, not dependent upon our coaches for the longer term.

The coaching sessions themselves have a broad agenda around:

coaching flow chart

Further than this we do not prescribe, as we fundamentally believe coaching is about promoting discovery, with the coachee being held accountable for making agreed changes.

Our relationship is primarily built between coach and coachee, with confidentiality respected. Support for learning may also be provided by an ‘in house’ sponsor.

As we often work with a range of coaching clients within the same organisation, we ensure we are clear about the objectives of the whole organisation. For example, clients often wish to change the culture and it is important for us as coaches to understand what that culture change needs to be to carry out our coaching within this context.

We do not specialise in working with one particular industry, as we believe it can be of enormous benefit to have experience across a range of sectors. All our Coaches have worked in senior positions within a variety of public and private sector organisations.

The effectiveness of all coaching assignments is measured against the initial coaching objectives our clients set themselves, along with an evaluation of the coaching relationship.

Quality Assurance, Supervision and Development

All Azure coaches receive regular supervision. This takes place on an ad-hoc basis for each client, as well as a regular periodic review of each coach’s client portfolio. One of the Directors always carries out the supervisory role. If required, we have a full range of alternative professionals to whom we can refer/recommend to clients.

Our Coaches participate in a wide range of continuous professional development and will bring many tools and skills to the coaching relationship taken from NLP or Gestalt approaches.