The Berkeley Centre - Executive Coaching

Executive Coaching

What is Coaching?

Coaches can act in a number of ways – as a sounding board, as a guide, as a person you can confide in, someone who will help you through difficult times and confirm you in the good times. Hopefully they can give you wise counsel and expand your options and choices for action. They rarely, if ever, give advice and will ensure that it is you who stays in control of the conversation.

Most coaches operate from one or a few key principles taken from their approach in training. There are different schools of practice, though they share common approaches. Your coach should make it clear the principles and values that lie at the heart of their practice, working with you to ensure that you are both clear as to the nature of the ‘coaching contract’.

Coaches work with people who are already operating effectively in the world and assume that you have the resources you need. They will use dialogue or focused conversation to help you become ever more effective and assist you navigate through change and/or solve problems or deal with challenges that face you. Coaches use questions and give feedback and can be pretty challenging at times. A good coach will not let you off the hook and insist that you follow through on agreed actions and commitments.

What is Coaching Not.

Coaching is not teaching, training or telling or playing an expert in some specific knowledge domain.

Coaching is not therapy, which focuses on problems and their sources and the symptoms that arise from these problems.

Executive Coaching

Executive coaches have typically worked at high levels in organisations themselves and so will have a good idea of the issues facing senior executives. The coaching process itself may not in fact be so different to other approaches. However it will acknowledge common realities– such as that an individual working at high levels in organisations will be under severe time pressures and often significant stress, and may often have absolutely no one with whom they can confide safely at their level and can often feel pretty lonely. Typically a senior executive is aware that mistakes can cost their organisations dear – in terms of budget, their careers and also the futures and livelihood of a significant number of people.

Merilyn Parker Armitage

Merilyn is a business psychologist and former HR Director known for her work helping organisations through transition and for her energy, perceptiveness and enthusiasm in making things happen.

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Daniel Doherty

Daniel has over 30 years of experience of strategy and organisation development consulting and executive coaching to blue chip corporations across a wide diversity of countries and cultures.

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