What is coaching?
By providing an objective, third-party perspective for our coachees, by supporting them through the changes they want to make and by holding them accountable to the commitments they make, we facilitate increased self-awareness and the achievement of meaningful personal and professional change.
At its simplest, workplace coaching is about helping people move from feeling stuck to being unstuck. That ‘stuckness’ can take many forms – a pattern of behaviour that is not serving you, a career decision you cannot seem to make, a relationship at work that keeps causing friction, or simply a sense that your performance at work could be better – but you’re just not sure how to get there.
Boiling coaching down to its essentials, working with a coach can help you:
- Learn more about yourself
- Clarify what really matters to you
- Identify where you want to get to
- Consider what's holding you back
- Take meaningful action to do what matters
- Develop your self-awareness
- Learn how to coach yourself
Who is coaching for?
We work with professionals at all organisational levels, from newly-qualified graduates to members of the c-suite. And while their contexts, challenges and areas of focus will differ, at heart they are all humans with a mind, a personality and aspirations. As psychologists, we're experts in understanding the role of thoughts, emotions and behaviour at work.
Coaching for Leaders
Senior leaders can benefit from coaching as they deal with the challenges of leadership, of making change and setting a strategic direction, all while simultaneously attending to the needs of their direct reports and working on their own development. It can be lonely at the top – we want your leaders to thrive and role-model your organisation’s values. We support leaders to boost and maintain their wellbeing, to navigate change with intention, and to nurture the talent of the people that work for them.
Coaching for Managers
A manager’s job is never done. In fact, managerial roles tend to expand over time and managers can feel pressure from both above and below as they navigate the day to day challenges they face. We’ve coached managers at all points on the continuum, from the newly appointed to those with significant experience under their belt. We support managers to work in a sustainable way, to have difficult conversations and to provide consistent support to their team members.
Coaching for Graduates
Moving from the structure of the university to the ambiguity and politics of the workplace, graduates can benefit from professional support to understand how they can leverage their strengths and work on their development areas. This ensures their employer feels the benefits of their contributions and talent sooner. We support graduates as they work on learning who they are, how they can bring their skills to life at work, and what they want from the world of work.
Coaching for Individual Contributors
We want to make coaching available to everyone, not just the most senior members of the team. That’s why we’ve created ‘Coach on Tap‘, a flexible and cost-effective coaching solution aimed at offering coaching to more of your talented employees.
This gives your more junior employees access to accredited and experienced coaches on an as-needed basis.
How does coaching support wellbeing, productive and effectiveness?
Coaching is an incredibly flexible activity and can be used to support employees in a wide variety of contexts.
Coaching can be used to improve any aspect of performance at work, as well as its prerequisites: wellbeing, productivity and interpersonal effectiveness. The following is just a sample of the topics we work with.
Coaching for Wellbeing
Stress management · Building resilience · Developing psychological flexibility · Coping with pressure · Adopting health change · Return to work
Coaching for Productivity
Procrastination · Workload management · Delegation · Prioritisation · Time management · Beating distractions · Sustainable working style
Coaching for Effectiveness
Leading others · Managing conflict · Adapting to change · Transition to seniority · Relationship management · Self-management · Having difficult conversations
What does coaching involve?
Regardless of the topic at hand, a coaching programme involves a cycle of the following activities:
Discovery
A phase of discovery, to clarify your desired coaching outcomes, your motivation for change, and your perspective on how you want coaching to work for you.
Challenge
Experiments
You’ll leave each coaching session with a task to complete, a new approach to practice, or a reflection to undertake.
Reflection
Taking the time to think about your coaching journey; what you’re learning, how you’re putting your insights into action, and how it feels to try new things. Ideally, done in writing, not just thought.
Accountability
Whatever you commit to, we’ll discuss next time. Your coach will hold you accountable for your commitments and explore your experiments with you in detail.
Support
Ongoing support from your coach to achieve you valued outcomes. This could take the form of encouragement, of clarification, of acknowledgement of your effort or simply provision of resources.
Coaching: the essentials
The practicalities
The vast majority of our coaching sessions take place via video. We can of course schedule face-to-face sessions if that’s your preference, or a mix of the two. This will all depend on where you’re geographically located and the coaching team member you match with. Coaching sessions usually last between 60 and 90 minutes, and we meet on a monthly basis.
Your coach will provide you with any resources you need (e.g. handouts, articles to read, videos to watch) and agree with you the tasks you’ll complete between each session. This might involve maintaining a journal of your development, experimenting with new behaviours or trying some relaxation techniques. The key point is: you’ll take action and come to your next session ready to share how it went.
Confidentiality
The coaching relationship is different to most other relationships in your life and one core difference is the confidential nature of coaching. With very few exceptions, what we discuss in our coaching sessions doesn’t leave the room.
These exceptions are concerned with legal and wellbeing issues, and we’ll elaborate on them during the chemistry meeting. And if you’d like us to intentionally speak to a third party (e.g. your manager) about the coaching in detail, we can do with your permission.
Involving others
If coaching is being organised and sponsored by your employer, then they are also part of the process. We’ll take input and feedback from someone appropriate (e.g. your manager) and liaise with the business as we progress.
Confidentiality will still apply, of course, though we’ll be able to confirm with your employer what’s in the coaching contract and indicate your level of engagement or progress in very general terms. And of course, you can be as open about your experience with them as you like.
The coach
We understand how challenging it can sometimes be to find a suitable coach. There are no barriers to calling yourself a coach, so we emphasise our experience and professional skills in everything we do.
All our coaches are accredited and qualified psychologists. This means they’re registered with the British Psychological Society and have additional coaching skills training on top of their professional psychology education. As coaching psychologists, we can leverage our deep understanding of how people think, feel and act while using practical coaching techniques to unleash our clients’ potential. Find out more about our core coaching team below.
Coaching outcomes
Each coaching journey is unique. And yet, at its best, coaching can deliver a host of benefits for each coachee. Working with an effective coach, taking action between sessions, engaging in ongoing reflection – together these can result in the following benefits:
- Increased self-awareness and self-knowledge
- Clarity on what really matters and awareness of how to bring this to life
- Increased willingness to persist through discomfort to attain valued outcomes
- A host of concepts, frameworks and skills to navigate future challenges long after coaching has ended.
Evidence-based coaching
As coaching psychologists, we use evidence-based methods to support our clients in achieving their valued outcomes. We combine this with our deep understanding of the psychology of work and the workplace.
As evidence-based practitioners, we avoid fads and fashions, using only the coaching methods that have scientific support, designed to build self-awareness, unlock potential and support action.
At WorkLifePsych, our coaching approach is rooted in contextual behavioural science, which works to understand the person in context and help them to do more of what matters to them.
There is a before and an after working with Richard. Once you embark on the coaching journey, be prepared for a tremendous positive change in your daily life. Thanks to his strong experience, focus, kindness and skills, Richard successfully and gently steers you towards personal breakthroughs and discoveries. The impact of having Richard as a coach has influenced me to sign up my leadership team for the same programme
Alvaro Duarte
Voodoo
WorkLifePsych have helped us successfully design from scratch a leadership programme which has been deployed across the Group which is now in its fourth year of delivery. It has been received extremely well, resulting in delegates making measurable change in their approach to leadership in their role and deployment into their teams.
Tammy Lillie
Spirax Sarco
We asked Richard and the WorkLifePsych team to assist in the start-up phase of our new business. As a new talent-based creative business, unencumbered from legacy ways of working we were determined to put in place the most contemporary and relevant people strategy. Richard worked closely with us to develop our people strategy, including how to clarify and communicate our organisation’s values, how to identify and nurture talent and how to create a sustainable people development strategy. Richard continues to support Untold Studios. He is insightful, attentive and challenging in all the right ways. He has been instrumental in our launch and remains a supportive and trusted advisor. I have no hesitation in recommending Richard to other startups - I’ve no doubt Richard and his team will have a huge positive impact on any new business.
Darren O’Kelly
Untold Studios
I worked with Richard as my coach across 2016/17 with my goal of being an “intrapreneur" who makes the business I’m taking care of sustainable. I want to innovate to surprise our audiences, foster people around a vision and multiply others’ talent. And in my business, there is a lot of passion and emotions, everything moves very fast and things change constantly. As I was gaining seniority, it was hard for me sometimes to keep a “cool head" when taking decisions. Thanks to Richard, I got way closer to achieving this goal! I became a better leader by clarifying my innate talent, managing my emotions better, understanding the complex system I’m working within and multiplying others to get their best. Richard provided me with tips and frameworks that help me navigate through this system better every day . There has been a before and after Richard for sure!
Delphine Sassi
King
We recently invited Richard to our first learning festival, to deliver a keynote as well as a workshop on the topic of psychological flexibility. Working in the public sector brings its own challenges and this is why it was really important to us to offer personal development opportunities centred on wellbeing, and practical tools for us to use on a daily basis when we may be feeling overwhelmed or experiencing anxiety. Feedback from those taking part was extremely positive and we are already looking at working with Richard on other initiatives.
Ruxandra Stewart
Essex Country Council
Richard has worked with DCC Group for over eight years within a variety of organisational contexts so we were delighted to invite him recently to present on the topic of “Coping with Change” to our employees in DCC Vital. Richard has a unique mix of broad experience, an ability to appropriately adapt a message to suit different audiences and is very practical. The feedback from our employees on his session was excellent and they appreciated the tools and techniques he shared through the session. Presenting virtually is a challenge to the best of us, but Richard makes it look easy! There was such a logical flow in his messaging that he hit the right note with our diverse workforce. We couldn’t recommend working with him more highly and we look forward to working with him on other projects going forward.
Orla Dempsey
DCC Vital
Book a chemistry session today
A chemistry session is your opportunity to have a free, no-commitment conversation with one of our team. This gives you the opportunity to get answers to your coaching-related questions, while we learn more about what you want to get from coaching.