Join the Leading Coaches’ Center for the next Community Mastermind call featuring Leading coach, Tom Finn, author of Are You Clueless? 7 Clues to Profit, Productivity, and Partnership For Leaders in a Multicultural World.

DATE: Thursday, February 16th at 12 noon Easter/ 9am Pacific

TOPIC: Cluing In to Culture; How a Global Workplace Influences Coaches and Their Clients

DIAL IN NUMBER: CLICK HERE TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT ON THIS CALL! YOU WILL GET THE DIAL IN NUMBER WHEN YOU SIGN UP HERE: http://bit.ly/jLhXw

Tom Finn has coached leaders from all over the world for 28 years. He has distilled those experiences into a book whose precise stories and lessons give his clients guidance on how to be an inclusive leader everyday. Are You Clueless? is frequently shocking in how it shows businesses losing customers, ideas, and great employees – mostly without the organization even knowing! In this session, Tom will engage us with some of those stories, and then have us uncover a cultural lens on coaching.

If businesses need to “clue in” to a multicultural world, Tom is convinced that we coaches can be just as “clueless” to dynamics that may unlock the key to our diverse coaching clients.

Cultural difference may influence:

• Us as Coaches. Could we be misdiagnosing, or suggesting a path, oblivious to a huge part of our coaching partner’s life?
• Our coaching partner. Could she be grappling with a culturally-induced barrier, or creating a culturally-induced barrier?
• Our coaching partner’s leadership. Could he be clueless to conditions his employees face, or evaluating them erroneously with no cultural radar on his screen?

Tom will provide 5 patterns to look for in any cross-cultural situation. If you would like to order the book or ebook in preparation for the session, go here http://www.areyouclueless.com/order_the_book2.php, or to http://www.barnesandnoble.com/.

Tom will focus our discussion on how to be an inclusive coach in a world where difference from gender to generation can have a major influence on your coaching partner or his/her employees…or you! Join this mastermind call for:

1) An overview of “the clueless factor” of Tom’s book – that we can all be clueless to those different from us – and its impact on coaching. When you overlay the clueless factor on the workplace, you can get a host of dynamics that affect both the coach and the coaching partner. The book’s stories show the amazing ways culture shows up for Tom’s customers.

2) Common cross-cultural patterns to look for when you are coaching. Tom maintains these patterns are applicable to any difference – whether you are coaching someone different from you on sexual orientation, generation, race, disability, national origin, gender, and so on. You can use them to see your coaching partner’s world through a whole new lens.

3) Discussion and Q&A on how and when cultural, personal, and organizational differences may influence you in your approach or your coaching partner in their progress.

This session is an optimizer for good coaches. We will try to up your game by adding to your repertoire in a global marketplace. Don’t be clueless – clue in to culture in your coaching.

Have fun learning about the striking influence of cultural difference in the workplace through Tom’s customer stories, such as:

“A Bank For White People”
“Oh, My God, You’re a Completely Different Person”
“Gaining 1000 Customers”
“Iowa and the Cultural Unknown”

You can also get a gist of Are You Clueless? by seeing Tom’s appearance on “Latina Voices,” a Houston TV show, in a seven-minute clip at http://www.areyouclueless.com/clips_latinaVoices.php.

When Cultural Cluelessness Hurts the Bottom Line

Companies that use the power of inclusion gain customers, increase their talent pool, and boost their referral base

A Spanish-speaking couple came into a bank, looking for a recently hired manager who spoke Spanish.

She asked them what had brought them in that day. They responded, “We heard you had someone who could speak Spanish. We never came in before because we thought you were a bank for white people.”

A bank for white people? Indeed … and clueless scenarios like these are replicated untold times each and every business day.

In his ground-breaking book, Are You Clueless? 7 Clues to Profit, Productivity, & Partnership for Leaders in a Multicultural World, Tom Finn shows business leaders how diversity gets business results…if you’re not clueless.

Using workplace anecdotes to drive his points home, Finn clues in managers, giving them cross-cultural radar essential for a diverse, global marketplace.

Clued in, you attract more diverse customers and employees.

Clueless, and you’re like the Bank for White People.

Clued in, you grow and retain employees you have.

Clueless, and you bury talent that shines outside your workplace.

Clued in, you reap ideas from employees and help from customers.

Clueless, and engineers are circulating resumes.

A cultural gap influences business success, and poor cross-cultural skills can mean everything from large lawsuits to customer avoidance and a shallow talent pool. Acknowledge the gap and clue in. Your company’s future depends on it.

Praise for Are You Clueless?

“Want to understand the power and potential of leveraging diversity? Here’s a clue … read this book.”
Tiane Mitchell Gordon, Senior Vice President, Diversity and Inclusion, America Online

“From ‘A Bank for White People’ to ‘A Restaurant for Men,’ Tom’s stories sparkle. Leaders in business and government: You’ve got to read this.” State Senator Janet Howell, Commonwealth of Virginia

“I’m learning things I never knew about myself.”  Reader of Are You Clueless?

ABOUT TOM FINN…

About the Author:

Tom Finn has consulted to leaders and teams of all levels in the United States, South America, Central America, and Asia for more than 20 years. His clients have included Booz | Allen | Hamilton, ETrade Financial, General Dynamics Land Systems, Inova Health Systems, Texaco, Verizon, The World Bank, and the Argentine Education Ministry.

Tom is an executive coach and consultant who improves performance of leaders and organizations by developing skills and plans to succeed in a global marketplace.

Tom has twenty seven years of experience as a consultant, trainer, and coach. He is an author and former organization development consultant of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Tom has consulted to clients on organization system change efforts, coached leaders, led team building efforts, and trained thousands in leadership, positive influence and communication, and cultural diversity He is the author of Are You Clueless? 7 Clues to Profit, Productivity, and Partnership for Leaders in a Multicultural World (Kells Castle Press, Mar 2008). Clueless is a guide leaders can use every day for managing diverse and global workplaces. He coaches leaders on handling overload and pressure through a unique coaching approach called LifeLine.  www.lifelineconsulting.com

Tom has coached and trained leaders and employees at all levels of organizations. Some of his clients include The Weather Channel, Verizon, Inova Health System, International Paper, Prudential, Booz| Allen| Hamilton, NASCAR, Harvard University, ETrade, Barnett Banks, and US government agencies. Tom has an interest and skill in international relations and business, and has coached and trained leaders in Spanish. His international clients include the World Bank, the Education Ministry of Argentina, Civilian Personnel Union, Argentina, and private/public sector leaders in six other Latin American countries and Pakistan.

Tom has a B.A. in international relations from Brown University and an M.S. from Georgetown University. He is fluent in Spanish and does much of his work in that language. He is a member of NTL Institute, one of the leading professional groups in the field of organization development. He is certified on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator instrument, FIRO-B, and MFS, a software program for providing feedback to leaders.

Sherpa has done it again!  They have completed and released their annual survey all about executive coaching, and you can not only access it at the Library of Professional Coaching, but you can download the full report as well!

Next Community Mastermind Call will be January 25th, 2012 (12 noon Eastern/9am Pacific)!

Mark your calendar now!  Happy new year…we will ring it in during our first community mastermind call of the year featuring Leading Coach and author Mike Jaffe, who has an inspiring and amazing story to share as he celebrates the launch of his book Wake Up! Your Life is Calling!

Based on the distinctions outlined in his new book, Mike takes his experience as a 9/11 survivor and shares his powerful, inspiring and touching story of how it served as his WakeUp call. Through this powerful message of self discovery and empowerment, Mike will lead us in a conversation to identify our own WakeUp moment and use it to explore what’s possible, stay accountable and committed, and get started on the path to achieving extraordinary results. You can order the book by simply going to www.wakeupbook.com

CLICK HERE TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT ON THIS CALL! YOU WILL GET THE DIAL IN NUMBER WHEN YOU SIGN UP HERE: http://bit.ly/jLhXw

In this thought-provoking guide to creating the extraordinary life you’ve always wanted, business and personal coach Mike Jaffe will challenge you to dramatically redesign your life.

Jaffe, a 9/11 survivor who worked on the 96th floor of the World Trade Center, arrived 20 minutes late to work that day after deciding to have breakfast with his wife and daughter. This was his personal wakeup call to realize that life is a precious gift and small actions can make a big difference. It’s time to join him—and countless other successful individuals—in the Wakeup RevolutionTM.

Stop floating or drifting. Stop waiting for “someday.” Now is the time to own your path and start moving powerfully toward what you want.

Wake Up! Your Life Is Calling will get you there by inspiring you to:

• expand your universe of what you believe is possible
• develop the internal fire and vision to stop accepting a life that is “fine” and push for one that is truly extraordinary
• land your dream job, create that lasting relationship, and carve out time to achieve bigger goals.

The secret? The five essential principles for rewriting your tomorrow contained in this book. Your life is waiting.

Are you ready to dive in?

CLICK HERE TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT ON THIS CALL! YOU WILL GET THE DIAL IN NUMBER WHEN YOU SIGN UP HERE: http://bit.ly/jLhXw

About Mike Jaffe

Mike Jaffe, President and Founder, MBA, CC, CLPC
As a 9/11 survivor who has transformed his life, Mike Jaffe serves as The Human WakeUp Call™ by using his own brush with tragedy as a message of self-discovery and empowerment. Mike is an inspirational and motivational speaker, facilitator and business and personal leadership coach whose programs WakeUp your potential and get you to take inspired and courageous action, living your live powerfully, and on your terms, without losing another precious day. Mike stands out for his energetic, authentic and thought-provoking approach to the issues and opportunities that people and organizations face in today’s complex, fast-paced world.

As a Business and Personal Leadership Coach, his unique approach and rare insight combined with the power and directness of his coaching, supports his clients in dramatically increasing their business and enhancing the quality of their life. As a Speaker, Mike touches the hearts and minds of a wide variety of audiences, rallying participants into empowered action with life-changing results. He utilizes the power of humor, insightful stories and practical tools to spur each of us to redefine the possibilities in both our personal and professional lives. Mike’s new book, “Wake Up! Your Life is Calling – Why settle for FINE when so much more is possible” is a thought-provoking guide to creating the extraordinary life you’ve always wanted.  Within its pages, Mike will walk you through the five essential principles for rewriting your tomorrow.

Mike’s work has helped unlock the potential for organizations such as Yahoo!, Prudential, Acxiom, NCR, About.com and Discovery Channel, among others. An energetic and passionate professional, Mike received his MBA in Management and Marketing from New York University and his BBA in Management and Finance from SUNY Albany. He is a certified life coach and is a senior trainer for the Life Purpose Institute (LPI) of San Diego.

CLICK HERE TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT ON THIS CALL! YOU WILL GET THE DIAL IN NUMBER WHEN YOU SIGN UP HERE: http://bit.ly/jLhXw

What exactly is The Human WakeUp Call?

As a business and personal coach, I love supporting professionals in dramatically increasing their business and enhancing the quality of their life. Most are looking for what I call Gentle Fire. They want a jumpstart, that boost of energy, increased confidence, more personal power and strength, all with a lot of support and encouragement. They want to reach that goal, get that promotion, write that book, make those changes, whatever is most important to them.  As The Human WakeUp Call, I help them wake up their potential, get them to take inspired and courageous action, and live their life powerfully, and on their terms, without losing another precious day.

Mike’s Book page: www.wakeupbook.com

CLICK HERE TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT ON THIS CALL! YOU WILL GET THE DIAL IN NUMBER WHEN YOU SIGN UP HERE: http://bit.ly/jLhXw

FACEBOOK WITH US DURING THE CALL!

Also, to enhance our connection during this community call, we’ll be communicating live using the “wall” on our Facebook page during the call. Search for “Leading Coaches Center” on Facebook or copy and paste the following url into your browser and “Like” us so we can stay in touch:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Leading-Coaches-Center/134526634180

Then, when we’re on the mastermind call, we can comment to each other and ask questions, make comments, introduce ourselves, etc. during the call.

Meanwhile, you can access and download all the recordings from the past Mastermind Calls here: http://leadingcoachescenter.com/clubhouse/category/mastermind-live

Early returns from Sherpa’s 7th annual survey reveal hot new  trends and opportunities in leadership and organizational development.

Read the free  executive summary here.

Go here to participate: http://qsurvey.net/coach

Free downloads, complete research reports, from Sherpa Coaching and Executive Education partners at the University of Georgia, Texas Christian, Miami University.

Erik de Haan’s (2008) research into “The inherent conflicts arising in the professional development of coaches” encourages us, as coaches, to become “simultaneously thicker and thinner skinned.” Through his research with 60 coaches, he examined 69 critical moments, that is, “turning points” and “dilemmas” (p. 529), moments when coaches “did not quite know what to do” (p. 529). Through analysis, de Haan then identified the circumstances which led to such critical moments and their impact on the coaching relationship, highlighting that “it is primarily the doubts of the coach that come to the fore in moments of tension” (p. 534).

COACHING RESEARCH:

De Haan identified several common critical moments in coaches’ development. Interestingly, they all stemmed from self-doubt:

1. At the outset, with the question, “Who am I to think I can do this work?” (p. 531)
2. After enrolling a client, wondering what is going to happen, and whether they will be capable of contributing to the relationship once it is in place
3. During the relationship, when something critical arose and coaches doubted how to respond to it

He then continued to outline further doubts, which arose at different moments during coaching conversations. These included:

• “Doubts stemming from the nature of a coaching conversation” (p. 531)

This relates to the unstructured, question-based moments that tap into coachees’ emotions when coaches doubt “whether they are the right coach and whether they will be able to maintain the coaching relationship when it comes under pressure” (p. 532).

• “Doubts stemming from the coaching relationship and transference” (p. 532)

This relates to the phenomenon of transference, when coaches doubt their own internal responses to incidents in the coachees’ experiences.

• “Doubts stemming from the boundaries of the coaching relationship” (p. 532)

This relates to the coaching contracts, codes of conduct and ethics, as well as the boundary between coaching and theory. Internal coaches also experience additional boundary-related doubts.

• “Doubts stemming from guiding the coaching conversation”

This relates to doubts as to whether to explore an issue or not, not wanting to seem too controlling or too passive, not wanting to over-direct or under-direct, and wanting to maintain the right balance. This also included doubts around the particular approach coaches chose.

IN PRACTICE:

“The attendant uncertainty and feeling of not knowing appear not to be the obstructive by-products of coaching, but actually more like the starting point for coaching, having a decisive influence on the quality of the outcome. These doubts, tensions and questions cannot be answered or resolved in advance of the incident, so it is crucial for the coach to be receptive to as many signals as possible, and to explore how their doubts can be responded to productively” (p. 534).

Four patterns seemed to emerge in these critical moments and recognition of these critical moments and possible responses to them could help you accelerate your development as a coach. Therefore, when you notice yourself in a critical moment, rather than try to banish your doubts, value them and remember:

• “It is precisely in and as a result of such moments that the coach can learn something about him or herself, about the coaching relationship and ultimately about the coachee” (p. 534).

• “Critical moments are potential breakthrough moments” or “missed opportunities” (p. 534), depending on your response to them.

• “The more critical moments, the better the coaching” (p. 535). While this does not mean you should deliberately “create as many critical moments as possible” (p. 535), simply do not avoid or repress critical moments when they arise. Also, consider the coachee’s critical moments. In fact, “[c]oaching is about getting coachees to share and (re)experience their own critical moments” (p. 535).

• “Without critical moments coaches cannot continue to learn” (p. 535).

• Don’t try to banish doubt. Instead, use it to create learning for both you and your clients. Indeed, de Haan points out that this is often the reason why the inexperienced often perform better than the experienced, as the inexperienced tolerate a higher level of doubt.

De Haan, E. (2008). Becoming simultaneously thicker and thinner skinned: The inherent conflicts arising in the professional development of coaches. Personnel Review, 37(5), pp. 526-542.

Coaching Research in Practice is delivered free to all ReciproCoaches (including free members) once a month. As a ReciproCoach, you can access all past issues of Coaching Research in Practice via the members area. To see the titles of our issues to date, visit our public website: http://www.reciprocoach.com/coachingresearch.php

Translating coaching research into coaching practice,

Dr Kerryn Griffiths
Global ReciproCoach Coordinator

ReciproCoach: Reciprocal peer coaching, mentoring and supervision
Web: http://www.ReciproCoach.com

Next Community Mastermind Call will be Tuesday, December 13th (12 noon Eastern/9am Pacific)!

Join us at the next call as we discuss The New Relationship Marketing (a proven nine-step program for building a sizable, loyal network comprised of quality relationships that garner leads, publicity, sales, and more) by my friend, Mari Smith. If you don’t know Mari, she’s one of the foremost leaders in the social media arena – with particular expertise in Facebook marketing.  In fact, I hired Mari years ago to teach me about a new social network called Facebook that was growing like gangbusters!  I can tell you from experience that she’s the real deal…she actually practices what she teaches and is a delightful, authentic, sparkly gal!

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN.  Click here to get the dial in number: http://bit.ly/jLhXw

Topic: The New Relationship Marketing: How To Build, A Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web

You know the importance of integrating social media into all your marketing efforts. However, there are still so many nuances to keep up with, not to mention all the unspoken rules of etiquette on each of the platforms. Mari Smith just published her latest book where she walks us through a proven nine-step process for mastering relationship marketing. It’s about connecting with your prospects and customers – online and offline – and building lifelong relationships with them such that you are always the obvious choice. She’ll be discussing this and more on the next Leading Coaches’ Mastermind call.

CLICK HERE TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT ON THIS CALL! YOU WILL GET THE DIAL IN NUMBER WHEN YOU SIGN UP HERE: http://bit.ly/jLhXw

Mari wrote this book specifically for those business owners and entrepreneurs who have only just dabbled with social media marketing, or who have reached a plateau with their online marketing efforts, and wish to propel their business to the next level and beyond. The pressure is on to shift your approach to using social media marketing, to better understand the new soft skills required for success on the social web, and to improve your own leadership skills through emotional and social intelligence.

What is relationship marketing? It’s all the actions you take online and offline to nurture the connections you have with your prospects, customers, alliances and partners… even with your so called competitors.You’ve heard of B2B and B2C (business to business, and business to consumer). Mari talks about how it all comes down to P2P: People to People.

Many businesses have not fully embraced the power of today’s social technologies due to a number of reasons, including fear of exposure, fear of negative comments and fear of wasting time and resources. In her new book, Mari skillfully walks you through her proven nine-step program for building a large, loyal and profitable network using the social web.

More about Mari Smith:

Mari Smith is passionate about people! She is a Relationship Marketing Specialist and one of the world’s foremost experts on using Facebook as a marketing channel. She is coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day and her next book The New Relationship Marketing is now available, both published by Wiley.

Fast Company describes Mari as “a veritable engine of personal branding, a relationship marketing whiz and the Pied Piper of the Online World.” Dun & Bradstreet Credibility named Mari one of the top ten Most Influential Small Business People on Twitter.

Mari’s background includes over ten years in the fields of relationships, marketing and Internet technology, making social media her ideal arena. She travels the United States and internationally to share her wisdom and provide social media keynotes and in-depth training. She has shared the stage with the likes of Sir Richard Branson, the Dalai Lama, President F.W. de Klerk, Tony Robbins, Dr. Stephen R. Covey, and Paula Abdul. Through her consulting and training business, Mari helps business owners to accelerate their business profits by integrating proven social media marketing strategies. After applying Mari’s methods, her clients typically experience a significant increase in traffic, subscribers, clients, affiliates, lucrative strategic alliances and targeted media attention.

Mari also mentors up and coming social media professionals in a variety of specializations. Sixty-five graduates have gone through Mari’s intense social media professionals training since 2009 and thirty-five students are currently under Mari’s mentorship.

With her popular blog at MariSmith.com, and her large, loyal following on both Facebook and Twitter, Mari is considered one of the top resources and thought leaders in the world of marketing. She regularly appears in media locally and nationally in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., and Success Magazine.

A self described “bubbly Scottish-Canadian,” Mari was born and raised in Canada to Scottish parents, then lived in Edinburgh for 20 years and has been living in San Diego, California since 1999. Mari has a penchant for turquoise and bling and is frequently known for “owning” the color turquoise; she only ever wears shades of blue in public.

FACEBOOK WITH US DURING THE CALL!

Also, to enhance our connection during this community call, we’ll be communicating live using the “wall” on our Facebook page during the call. Search for “Leading Coaches Center” on Facebook or copy and paste the following url into your browser and “Like” us so we can stay in touch:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Leading-Coaches-Center/134526634180

Then, when we’re on the mastermind call, we can comment to each other and ask questions, make comments, introduce ourselves, etc. during the call.

For the seventh year, Sherpa Coaching and its university partners are asking for your thoughts about leadership and executive coaching. You get the complete research report, first and free, when you participate.

To begin, please click the link below or copy and paste it into your browser.

Click here: http://www.qsurvey.net/coach

The survey is commissioned by Sherpa Coaching and its executive education partners at the University of Georgia, Texas Christian and Miami University.

This survey is being conducted by third party research firm IQS Research. Feel free to be completely candid with your responses. If you have questions, contact Ryan Gore at IQS Research, 502-244-6600, or by email at RGore@IQSResearch.com.

As you know, we gather roughly once a month or every six weeks to connect in real time on the Leading Coaches Community Mastermind Call.

Well, mark your calendars, and gear up for some juicy conversations with some amazing leaders in the field!!

Here’s the line-up:

Jeremy Robinson

November 10th at 12 noon Eastern — author of Becoming an Exceptional Executive Coach!

Mari Smith

December  13th at 12 noon Eastern — author of The New Relationship Marketing

Mike Jaffe

January 25th at 12 noon Eastern — author of The Human Wake Up Call – (book available 11/11/11!)

As always, details will be posted as available on the Members Only page, which you can access if you’re logged in. 

Next Community Mastermind Call will be November 10th (12 noon Eastern/9am Pacific)!

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN. Click here to get the dial in number: http://bit.ly/jLhXw

Join us for our featured Leading Coach, Jeremy Robinson, who will be joining us on 11/10/11 at 12 noon Eastern (9am Pacific)…it’s a Thursday.

Jeremy is the author of Becoming an Exceptional Executive Coach! You can take a peek inside the book by clicking to the book site, which is http://www.becominganexceptionalexecutivecoach.net/book.php

Join us as Jeremy Robinson shows how to Professionalize your Executive Coaching Practice Now! He’ll share ten ideas -and possibly more- to consider to sharpen your “professional saw” from his perspective as an experienced coach who still wins 70% of beauty contests. How’s that for an impressive hit ratio? Come join us for insider tips to up your game. Jeremy knows the secrets and will be discussing how to hit it out of the park.

CLICK HERE TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT ON THIS CALL! YOU WILL GET THE DIAL IN NUMBER WHEN YOU SIGN UP HERE: http://bit.ly/jLhXw

You can visit Jeremy’s blog at this link here: www.ceocoachrobinson.com

You may also know Jeremy as the head of the Executive Coach Academy, the mission of which is to bridge understanding gaps between worlds of business and psychology and to create a learning community of emotionally intelligent coach-sages.

He’s also one of the principals at another coach training institution, iCoachNewYork.

He’s an MSW and MCC, and a well-known coach, trainer and supervisor of executive coaches based in New York City. He was co-creator and co-academic Director of the Wharton Executive Coaching Workshop at the Aresty Institute Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1999, he has been the Dean of Executive Coach Academy.

As a coach and coach trainer, Jeremy has specialized in using an Emotional Intelligence Behavioral model in working with his executive clients, many of whom are at the highest levels of their organizations. He has also focuses on coaching African-American, Latino and LGBT executives towards increasing their organizational influence and visibility. He has presented on executive coaching to the American Psychological Association, the Executive Coaching Summit, the Minority Corporate Counsel Annual Conference, and the International Coach Federation. He is a co-author of the Coaching Development Assessment (CDA), a coach self-development tool. He has a certificate in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy from the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, as well as graduate degrees in Social Work and English Literature/Creative Writing.

FACEBOOK WITH US DURING THE CALL!

Also, to enhance our connection during this community call, we’ll be communicating live using the “wall” on our Facebook page during the call. Search for “Leading Coaches Center” on Facebook or copy and paste the following url into your browser and “Like” us so we can stay in touch:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Leading-Coaches-Center/134526634180

Then, when we’re on the mastermind call, we can comment to each other and ask questions, make comments, introduce ourselves, etc. during the call.

In the light of the current drive to generate more evidence on which to base a profession of coaching, it was with interest that I read David B. Drake’s recent (2011) paper, What do coaches need to know? Using the Mastery Window to assess and develop expertise (Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, Vol.4, No.2, September 2011, 138-155).

Drake highlighted an irony in that professionals do not necessarily make decisions based on evidence, but rather on limited evidence that usually supports their (existing) position and their own experience, rather than on a breadth of empirically validated knowledge. Therefore, he says, “Mastery = Artistry + Knowledge + Evidence.” This coincidentally forms yet another coaching acronym, MAKE, but I’ll consciously overlook that in the pursuit of “a better understanding of how great coaches actually develop and are able to perform at higher levels” (p.139).

COACHING RESEARCH:

The MAKE framework acknowledges that coaching is both an “applied science and an applied art” (p.140) and proposes an approach to “help practitioners to integrate knowledge and evidence, science and art, at higher levels in order for practitioners to more fully develop themselves and work at their best” (p.141).

Drake goes on to outline the characteristics of masters, based on the types of knowledge:

• Personal knowledge e.g. self-awareness, self-confidence
• Foundational knowledge e.g. comprehensive content knowledge
• Professional knowledge e.g. a superior procedural knowledge, “knowing ‘what’ to do ‘when’” (p.142)
• Contextual knowledge e.g. “awareness of motives, needs, resources and contextual constraints” (p.142)

Thus, “Any notion of mastery, then, must include a path for coaches to grow in both their technical/professional proficiency and their personal/relationship maturation” (p.143). To this end, Drake proposes a “Mastery Window” (p. 144), consisting of a four-squared window to look through:

• Personal knowledge – Awareness of evidence
• Foundational knowledge – Attention to evidence
• Professional knowledge – Adaptation of evidence
• Contextual knowledge – Accountability for evidence

Drake then explains that through this window, “we can see that coaches need to continually develop across the four domains of knowledge and, in doing so, enhance their Awareness of what is going on… their sense of what to pay Attention to; their ability to effectively Adapt; and their Accountability for their work and its consequences” (p. 146).

IN PRACTICE:

Interestingly, Drake argues that “it may be more useful to see evidence from an artisan’s viewpoint as a verb, a way to think about and engage in coaching so it works more effectively – more than from a technician’s viewpoint as a noun, something added to coaching so coaches are seen as being ‘right’” (p.141).  This is precisely the approach that has been adopted in each issue of Coaching Research in Practice. When I read the research, my main lens is focused on ‘How can coaches use this research to become better coaches?’ and I frequently ask the “So what?” question. This question is not intended to be rude or impolite (as it is often mistaken to be), but rather to distil from the evidence the opportunities for the application of research to raise the standard of coaching practice.

True to his word, Drake provides his own suggestions for how a coach may put his model into practice, explaining that coaches may “move through the model with a client by asking themselves questions from the MAKE framework such as: ‘What do I need to Know right now and how will that help me and the client?’ ‘What Evidence is relevant and meaningful in making decisions in this situation? ‘What is the role of Artistry in bringing together knowledge and evidence in this moment and for what aims?’” (p.146).

I would also like to add a few suggested applications of my own. To continually develop your:

• Personal knowledge – Engage in coaching (as a client) regularly yourself
• Foundational knowledge – Engage in mentoring regularly
• Professional & contextual knowledge – Engage in supervision regularly

As you will see if you follow the above links, these essential resources are all available from ReciproCoach, and they’re so affordable that there really is no reason why every coach shouldn’t be engaging in such practices on an ongoing basis as they develop towards coaching mastery.

Coaching Research in Practice is delivered free to all ReciproCoaches (including free members) once a month. As a ReciproCoach, you can access all past issues of Coaching Research in Practice via the members area. To see the titles of our issues to date, visit our public website: http://www.reciprocoach.com/coachingresearch.php