What do women want and need?
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Woman's day the 9th of August and woman's month is around the corner. The question remains, what is it that women want? The answer is highly complex if not totally elusive. Dr Renate Volpe explores woman issues in leadership roles in this article from the Star Workplace Business Report, 6 August 2008.
The macro perspective
Modern casual conversation and perception would have us believe that there is equality between the sexes. Never a less truer word has been spoken. One just has to look at the top structures of large organizations to see a dearth of female representation at the upper levels. I believe the current figure is 14 women (yes 14 women not 14%) head up JSE registered companies ( BWA census).
What concerns me more than this frightening figure is that the women who get to the top of organizations seldom are sufficiently resilient to serve significantly long terms in order to make a real difference. Some where along the line they change jobs, start their own businesses and become coaches or entrepreneurs. The reasons cited are disillusionment, loneliness, lack of supportive networks, having to maintain the political games, life priorities, family demands and pure physical and emotional exhaustion. Furthermore this lack of tenure does not make the case for senior female advancement any easier!
Why is this so? Why does this divide continue to exist between men and women? What are the influencers? The reasons?
For me they are multiple, they have to do with:
- the women themselves,
- male suppression and hidden agendas
- our psychology and development,
- and most significantly our social, traditional and religious spheres.
Let us explore some of these dimensions: Organizational scenario
We establish legislation and policies for gender equity. We make popular gender friendly statements in our company vision and mission, yet everyone knows that the informal company culture is the only one that counts.
A typical real life scenario follows from an organizational perspective. Company A decides that it needs to take a stand to recruit and retain their senior women. A steering committee is established. Everyone, who is anyone, has a place on this committee. All the formalities are put in place, yet when it comes to brass tacks, like sourcing exit interview information, (which would have provided deep insight into why senior women leave the company,) this information surprisingly suddenly became unavailable. From a politically astute perspective this is an example of - the informal culture rules. The overt statement was that change was desired, yet the system and the people representing the system ensured that no such change would occur.
Leadership imperatives :
Men are masters of the game at work. It has oft been said that the place of work is a place designed by men for men with wives! Over the last seven years I have qualitatively researched the arena of female leadership to find that indeed men are unquestionably, currently more suited to functioning in the corporate context. Women can learn much from men in the fields of:
- Corporate politics and game playing
- Strategic thinking about career advancement
- Negotiation tactics
- Networking transactionally instead of, confusing networking with friendship
- Being visible and credible and branding themselves in a manner that is acceptable to the organization
Thinking patterns:
The senior women that come to me for coaching appear to be singing from the same hymn sheet. They have serious intellect and are multi competent, they are proud of their integrity, display deep values, and have an inherent bent towards honesty. They are however somewhat naïve, are mostly politically illiterate and surprisingly their intellectual ability has outstripped their emotional maturity. It is the emotional back log that brings them into coaching. Once they unpack their confusion, and mature somewhat emotionally they are then, once again able to fly. Should they not be wise enough to come for coaching at this point, many of them will become job hoppers or simply leave the corporate world.
Two competencies which are non-negotiable for higher level thinkers are:
- The ability to work with radical and persistent change and
- The acceptance of ambivalence, uncertainty and ambiguity as a constant.
People who think in terms of black and white, right or wrong find themselves severely challenged if not traumatised by the corporate context.
Developmental challenges
Even in this day and age (generally speaking) boys and girls are raised significantly differently :
- Boys from an early age are taught to go after what they want.
- They are competitive, goal oriented, and spend much time playing team sports
- They are often excused from the finer details of home care
- They are taught to take care of themselves and are expected to stand on their own feet.
- Burping and f.... are regarded as amusing and typical of male behaviour.
Girls on the other hand are
- expected to care for others
- to suppress their own needs
- they are dressed and raised preciously
- they are not encouraged to express their needs but are reminded to be "nice"
- their activities involve participation and inclusion of others
- Home care tasks, and expectations of sibling, or house care fall within their influence
- Many are still raised to expect a man to care for them financially
Religious influencers
Although a hot topic one cannot disregard the role of Holy Scriptures, Tradition, Culture and a male God.
From birth onwards, these confirm the role of the female as secondary and inferior, they define the role of the woman as secondary, and as supportive to that of her husband or men in general. In crude terms this is known as brain washing.
My wish is that instead of blind acceptance, both men and women become independent, thinking individuals with the courage to review the impact and applicability of these influencers on the modern day woman. In my opinion this dimension is tantamount to emotional abuse which we know results in the break down of a persons self esteem and confidence.
Physical superiority
There is no contest here between men and women. Men win hands down. Sadly those who are not men of stature, or honour use this physical strength to intimidate, rape, murder and abuse their daughters and wives.
Change in roles and the liberation of women.
With woman making inroads to the workplace and most families requiring dual incomes a woman's dilemma has become more complicated.
Now she needs to be a super women, have a lovely home and garden, keep her youthful figure and face, always have abounding energy, be positive, be an involved and model mum, and be a significant contributor towards the household income.
No where in these multiple roles is there a space for the woman herself? Heart attacks, infertility and an aggressive increase in breast cancer tell their own story. Interview any woman and her favourite refrain when asked about time for herself or the pursuit of her own passions, relative to the care of others will be "guilt, guilt, guilt". A tongue in cheek comment from my side - By the way , emotional intelligence teaches us that guilt, is anger, which one does not feel the right to express!-
So what do women want?
It is therefore not surprising that when you ask a woman what she wants she often has no clue. Her natural roles of child bearer and mother alone dictate the direction of much of her energy Over and above this she has spent her life being told by her parents, educators, religious figures and scripts who she may, may not, and should be. She has been influenced to take care of others rather than herself. Her self esteem is shattered. The connection between her mind, heart and spirit has effectively been broken by these multiple influencers.
The solution?
Every change brings with it a sense of loss. All women need to look around and decide whether they like what and who they see in the mirror. If they spend their days feeling fatigued, suffering from multiple ills, and aches and pains, sleepless, depressed, over worked and stressed out, they need to make a start a determine the following:
Who am I really?
Who was I born to be?
What are my unique talents?
When do I feel passion and joy?
The answers to these questions will dictate the direction that these ladies need to begin to walk in, so that they may:
- Work like you don’t need the money
- Dance like no one is watching and
- Love like you have never been hurt.
Dr Renate Volpe is a leadership coach, facilitator, author and CEO of the HIRS Women's development consultancy.
Labels: coaching, HIRS, leadership, renate volpe, woman
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posted by Telana @ 10:03 pm,
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Coaching matchmaker keeps the cowboys away
Monday, June 30, 2008
Interesting article from the Business Day about the challenge of matching a coach and a coachee. For a documented guide from Inner Coaching on how to choose a coach, send us an email requesting one on info@innercoaching.co.za.
Business Day Article published 18 June 2008
From: http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/TarkArticle.aspx?ID=3246858
COACHES are the new consultants. They are everywhere, promising all manner of executive development and realisation. However, while just a couple of years ago a coach was considered a prerequisite for anyone who aspired to be anyone in business, they have been around long enough now - and with varying enough degrees of success - for organisations and individuals increasingly vociferously to question their worth.
Does coaching deliver on its promise? Does everyone potentially benefit from coaching? And if so, how does one decide what kind of coach one would best benefit from? How does one most accurately match coach-coachee? How do you measure the success of a coaching relationship? And what do you do if it all goes wrong?
Indeed, the questions are many and, as more and more coaches come a-knocking, the uncertainties mount. If you buy into the value of coaching, how do you distinguish the oft-dazzling "cowboy coaches" with their whip-fast promises, from the quality coaches who really know their stuff? And then, if you get that right, how can you accurately assess the qualifications and experience of those coaches to establish the best fit for your needs?
According to Jessica Jarvis, adviser of learning, training and development at the London-based Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, there is growing concern internationally about the number of coaches "entering the market who are inexperienced, have little training and lack the appropriate knowledge and skills".
This, she explains in the institute's guide to coaching and buying coaching services, arises from the fact that the coaching industry is fragmented and has neither a cohesive professional body nor sets of qualifications and standards to direct interested parties.
It is a problem which a Cape Town-based coach matching company, Ekin Astengo Coaching, has turned into an opportunity. The organisation - a partnership between entrepreneur and business owner coach Simon Ekin, and human resource specialist and leadership coach Susi Astengo - was established in 2006 after nine months of extensive research on what clients and potential clients perceived to be the shortcomings of coaches and coaching in SA.
"Worryingly, we saw coaching was increasingly falling into disrepute," explains the British-born Astengo. "Because there are no barriers to entry into the business, you can trot off on a weekend seminar and the next week add the word 'coach' to your credentials.
"We also saw that while many coaches were great at sales and marketing, they were unable to deliver on their promises. So, what emerged was a pattern of people who had experienced coaching, initially with great hope, who were now increasingly disillusioned."
"In fact, some organisations had begun absolutely prohibiting the use of coaches because of bad experiences. "
"This was hugely concerning to Simon and I, given the benefits we know good coaching provides," she says.
After thoroughly examining what people and organisations wanted and expected from coaching, and what frustrated them about it, Astengo and Ekin narrowed the top three requirements down to transparency; measurability; and consistency and rigour.
They were determined that there was a way to bridge the widening gap between coaches and their target market.
"We then carefully evaluated the primary successful coaching models available, and developed a methodology to accurately assess high-performance coaches and, as importantly, to match coach and coachee," Astengo says.
High-performance coaches, she clarifies, are "remarkably resourceful coache" available to their coachees 24 hours a day, seven days a week and who guarantee that they will encourage their coachees to venture at least 30% beyond their present comfort zone.
Astengo's international recruitment, selection, training and development experience includes work with Fortune 500 companies in the UK and, just before establishing Ekin Astengo Coaching, Deloitte in SA.
The Ekin Astengo Coaching process begins by evaluating coach hopefuls "who have already qualified as high-performance coaches after training at one of a number of institutions approved by the International Coaching Federation" against exacting assessment criteria based on Astengo and Ekin's original research. This includes a series of tests, interviews and observed coaching sessions.
It is essential, says Astengo, that the process is transparent: "We believe that a coach matching company should be able to demonstrate the rigorous process it uses to select its coaches."
While the organisation has a long list of applicants waiting to be assessed, 80% of the coaches Astengo sees fail the selection process. Although professional qualifications and experience are essential for coaching, she says, the matching company is looking for more.
"By the time we take a coach onto our books, we know them intimately enough to be able to accurately assess which clients to partner them with."
Astengo and Ekin believe that finding the right coach is as important - and as potentially difficult - as finding the right business partner. If the match does not work, there will be limited or no return on the investment of clients' valuable time and money.
"It's not good enough to rely on chemistry and a basic hunch to feel if the coach is a good egg," she says. "A matching process is necessary to manage and mitigate the risk, and to maximise return on investment."
Ekin Astengo Coaching's primary objective is to develop the tools and services necessary to ensure a perfect coach-coachee match, and so guarantee that organisations and individuals get the results they want.
The key, claims Astengo, is to be systematic: "As many companies have discovered in the past, trying to find a coach on their own carries the risk of making an uninformed buying decision. It is so easy to get it wrong."
"Unless you know the criteria for what makes a good coach, as well as who will be best for you," she says, "you are relying on luck and instinct to make a decision. And these are not the criteria for making a successful business decision."
The process also requires a thorough interview with potential clients. To match its clients' requirements and personalities with the right coaches, Ekin Astengo Coaching needs to establish what results they are hoping for, the kind of communications they prefer and what they are like.
It is also, the company says, vital to explore each client's other professional relationships to identify which have worked, which not, and why. "Once we have made the match, further steps need to be put in place to ensure the relationship succeeds," says Astengo.
"You need to set the rules for the game. It is not like dating where you meet someone, there is chemistry and you see where it takes you. It is like finding a business partner. You need to set up the contract terms upfront. You and the coach need to put measurable goals in place so that both can assess the return on investment."
The premise is that working through a company using a scientifically developed matching model offers a new level of professionalism in coaching, in terms of process and outcomes.
Having a professional third party to mediate and manage the relationship also helps ensure that the integrity of the relationship between the coach and coachee remains intact.
Indeed, it's a sure way of keeping 'em cowboy coaches out of the corral.
Labels: coaching, Ekin Astengo Coaching, guide, Simon Ekin, Susi Astengo
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posted by Telana @ 7:26 pm,
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Personal coaching grows in SA
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Here is an article about coaching and how it is growing, especially in South Africa, from fin24.co.za
Personal coaching grows in SA
Apr 17 2007 04:19 18
Staff writer
Cape Town - While coaching has some distance still to travel in SA, there is huge interest in the field locally.
This is according to Janine Everson, a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of business and academic director at the Centre for Coaching, who was commenting on the findings of an international survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers on behalf of the International Coach Federation (ICF).
The ICF is a non-profit, individual membership organisation formed by professionals worldwide who practise business and personal coaching, and is also the largest worldwide resource for coaches.
Coaching has gained a firm foothold in the marketplace and now contributes more than $1.5bn to the global economy, according to the survey, which is the first of its kind and has helped to provide a definitive global baseline to use in defining and understanding what is a fairly new profession.
Nearly 6 000 coaches across 73 countries took part in the survey, including the UK, United States, Australia and South Africa, with South Africa registering the highest response rate of any country taking part.
USA dominant
The key findings of the research shows that the USA remains the dominant market for coaching with just over 50% of respondents coming from that country, reflecting the importance of this market in the development of the industry.
Other highlights include revelations such as the average annual earning power of coaches is $50 510 and that coaching clients are typically professionals between the ages of 38 and 45.
More coaches are female (at 68.7%), older (the average coach is 46 to 55 years old) and have an advanced level of education (53% of coaches hold either a masters degrees or doctorates).
SA some way to go
"South Africa has seen an explosion of coaching with a proliferation of people offering their services as coaches and an increase in the number of programmes and courses on offer," says Craig O'Flaherty, a director of the Centre for Coaching at the UCT Graduate School of Business - the only university-based coaching organisation in South Africa to be affiliated to the ICF.
"The Centre for Coaching at the UCT GSB alone has had to double the number of courses it offers in 2007 to meet demand and now runs courses in three of the country's main cities - the Centre launches its first course in Durban in May this year."
Everson says that the importance of coaching as a tool to help us sustain and build on South Africa's change processes cannot be underestimated.
"There is strong evidence now to show that coaching can have an impact at two vital points: improving the performance of leaders and managing the process of change within organisations. This would include the introduction of accreditation procedures and qualifications to improve reliability and manage expectations of what coaching is and what it can deliver. The country's participation in the ICF survey is an important step in this regard. That we get it right is vital."
Labels: coaching, Craig O'Flaherty, ICF, Janine Everson
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posted by Telana @ 11:58 am,
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Dispelling Coaching Myths
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Here is a wellwritten article about the Myths of Coaching by Bryan Hattingh, taken from:
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/industryinsight/humanresources/hattingh050705.asp?S=Human%20Resources&A=HRS&O=S
There is a myth that coaching is for people who are under-performing. In fact, coaching is for high achievers and people who want to realise greater amounts of their potential.
In his best-selling sports book, The Inner Game of Tennis, pioneering coach Tim Gallwey developed a revolutionary programme for overcoming the self-doubt, nervousness and lapses of concentration that can keep a player from winning.
He later applied these principles to the corporate world in The Inner Game of Work, his precept being that there is always an inner game being played in your mind, no matter what outer game you are playing. Gallwey believes that in every human endeavour there are two arenas of engagement: the outer and the inner. The outer game is played on an external arena to overcome external obstacles to reach an external goal. How aware you are of this game can make the difference between success and failure in the outer game.
Coaching is a relatively new activity, but one which has had a great impact on the business world since its emergence and adoption in the 1990s. In a period of 10 to 15 years the coaching profession has grown exponentially, particularly in the US, Australia, Europe and SA.
As with any high-growth industry that does not have prescriptive parameters of control and conduct, there are both great and poor coaches out there. The former includes people who are well positioned to assist and enable people who wish to make major leaps forward in terms of who they are and what they do.
Companies need to be diligent and stringent around the selection of coaches. Factors such as background, experience, references, timeframe and modalities all need to be taken into account prior to the appointment of a coach. Occasionally, people may have a negative coaching experience, but it would be unwise then to conclude that all coaching is ineffective - that would be like suggesting that one bad romance means you should never fall in love again.
Rather than demonising the experience, companies should seek to determine what went wrong. Why did the participants have a bad experience? How did the coach in question make it through the system? Where was the flaw in your system of engaging with external suppliers? These lessons must be applied to other service providers so as to prevent a recurrence.
The quality of reference is a key criterion when it comes to the selection of a coach. Talk to people they have coached and find out what were the outcomes, and how long the engagement lasted.
Qualifications are equally important. There are almost no formal professional coaching qualifications, but there are a variety of accreditations being provided by business schools. Find out what it is that equips them and qualifies them to be a professional coach, and what qualifications they have to do the work you require of them.
- Coaches should themselves look to being coached on an ongoing basis, so find out who coaches your prospective coach.
- Ask what methodology they use, and find out their areas of specialisation.
- Know what you want to accomplish, and your desired outcomes, and make sure the person you choose is equipped to assist you with that.
Coaching misconceptions
Coaching is not the transfer of knowledge, insight, wisdom, skills and expertise via instruction, demonstration and collaboration; therefore it is not mentoring. Coaching is not about advising people on the way forward, so it is not consulting. It is not counselling either - that is the work of psychologists and therapists. It is the teaching of technical skills, but it is not teaching. Most importantly, coaching is not about telling - it's about asking, listening, and facilitating the changing of perspectives, views, expectations, aspirations and the sense of purpose of the individual. Importantly, it is about the development of action plans to inculcate the behaviours required to bring about the attainment of the desired outcomes and consequent lifestyle.
Coaching enables people to constantly improve their concept of "best" and to continue to strive for it. It enables them to create, maintain and express an ever-enriching sense of purpose. It allows them to develop, pursue and live the dreams that impassion them. It empowers them to increase their sense of ownership and to take action in their lives. It prepares them to transform ideas and concepts into capabilities and reality, ultimately unleashing their latent potential. Coaching can be a catalyst for new ideas and a vehicle for transformational learning.
When should you be coached?
There is a myth that coaching is for people who are under-performing or in a state of inertia. In fact, coaching is for high achievers and people who want to realise greater amounts of their potential, because the truth is that in today's world, the more successful you become, the more difficult it is for you to increase and reach your true potential without some form of focused assistance.
Coaching can take numerous forms, the most prominent and impactful one being transformational coaching for business leaders and executives.
The role of the coach in every instance is to pave the way for increased performance and capability. Transformational coaching brings about revolutionary changes in people, through which they can change their behaviour and themselves on a permanent basis - it's all about inculcating new behaviours. But people will not do that unless they have a meaningful reason and basis for doing so. Behaviour change requires significant effort, and breaking down of historical self-limiting beliefs. It demands that people move into spaces that are not comfortable, so they had best have a clear vision of why they are doing that. The primary outcome of transformational coaching is to give people a richer, broader, deeper view of what they want in and from life, why they may not be experiencing it, and how they can attain it.
The ideal candidate
The ideal candidates for coaching are high achievers and current or potential leaders. More than anyone else in an organisation, CEOs have few available sounding boards and ways to compare and measure themselves. If nothing else, he or she can benefit simply from having a creative, attentive listener who will help to ask the questions neither the executives nor anyone else will ask.
These questions are determined by the depth of the coach's ability to listen and assimilate. Coaches are there to open pathways, but they must not lead the coachee down them. One of the greatest challenges for coaches is to develop a gift for listening and to quell any desire to offer advice or ideas.
The benefits to business are numerous. Coaching enables top achievers to realise more business and personal goals than ever before and extend their view of "best". It puts an end to burnout, and enables people to manage their time more effectively. People who have been through a successful coaching programme thrive on change instead of merely coping with it, and can thus make better choices and decisions, both for themselves and their companies. Link
posted by Telana @ 5:31 am,
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Defining Coaching
Monday, April 16, 2007
To explain what coaching is, let me start by explaining what is isn’t, and how it differs from the other helping modalities.
Coaching is different to CONSULTING. A consultant is usually an expert in a field and s/he gives ADVICE.
It also differs from MENTORING. A mentor is also an expert who takes another under their wing and GUIDES them from their experience.
TRAINING is about TEACHING someone new skills, and thus it also differs from coaching.
And coaching is not COUNSELLING or therapy. Counseling is based on solving problems, recovering and exploring things from a person’s past. It’s about FIXING problems.
Well, if advice is at the heart of consulting, and mentoring is about guiding, and the centre of training is teaching and of counseling is fixing, then was is coaching about?
At the heart of COACHING is FACILITAITION. It’s facilitating individuals to maximize their existing skills and resources to take their performance to the next level.
Coaching is a one-on-one solution focused, outcome orientated, collaborative partnership where you and your Coach spend time focusing on just you – you and your life and your challenges and your skill levels and your dreams. With this focus on you and your development, you will experience having someone there who believes in you, listens to you, doesn’t judge you, and totally supports you. You will develop holistically in that you work not only with your mind, body, actions, and behaviours, but also with your feelings, beliefs and higher levels of your mind.
The heart of Coaching is about choice. It’s about choices in your life and making those choices.
So how much more interested are you now in finding out more about coaching?
Labels: coaching, consulting, counselling, facilitation, mentoring, training
posted by Telana @ 9:41 am,
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The Author
Telana Simpson
Telana Simpson is a Professional Personal and Communication Coach. She is a caring and focused facilitator who has a passion for expression. She helps executives, individuals and entrepreneurs find authentic ways of communicating their inner potentials.
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