Mentoring & Coaching
Mentoring and coaching can be confronting work. It can also be the best way to get useful, relevant and truthful feedback about —and step-by-step guidance on how to improve — your most pressing communications issues or challenges.
For the mentee, it requires courage and tenacity because there will be times when you feel vulnerable and resistant. That’s normal. Still, it’s important to work with someone you can trust and who demonstrates compassion. And it’s just as important that the mentor-coach is able to hold your feet to the fire. (As someone who values my own professional development with a trusted mentor, I really do get how important this balance is.)
My mentoring and coaching work has two sources:
- Individuals who wish to actively influence their reputation and career or who are taking on a high level role for the first time.
- Organisations that want to prepare their high potentials for the next level or support their senior executives to achieve specific results.
The results
Some of the results my clients experience when we work together:
- They have more passion and enthusiasm for their role — or preparedness for the next level — which usually leads to their demonstrating stronger leadership qualities
- They have a full yet relevant ‘toolkit’ to prepare and deliver communications: on the page and in meetings, speeches and presentations
- They have greater confidence to take initiative and be distinctive
- They have sharper problem solving skills
- They understand how to manage expectations and influence team communication processes
- They are recognised as ready and able to stretch into even more challenging goals & high profile projects.
The relationship
The great thing about the right mentor-mentee relationship is that it gives you a place to ‘unpack’ and debrief your successes and your missteps. It also gives you the time and space to reflect, learn and grow — and, frankly, the more senior the role, and the more ‘isolated’ you are becoming, the more important this is.
When I work with you as a mentor-coach, you are building a relationship with:
- A professional who can show you how you to prepare and deliver great communications in a way that builds on what you know and saves time
- A professional who knows what you need to demonstrate to be attractive for the next level (or in the market place)
- A professional who is able to provide integrated support (for this work to be effective and valuable, we can't isolate communications skills from real-world pressures and commercial business objectives)
- A professional who recognises that the bar is high. The people you are writing for and presenting to — like the CEO, Board, Partnership Group, clients or influential stakeholders — all have high standards, little time and expect you to do the work for them.
- A professional who acknowledges you need to be able to influence and ‘speak truth’ to positions of power — and this requires diplomacy, an ability to demonstrate logical thinking, and the clear articulation of both what’s at stake and what must happen next.
Want to learn more?