SoL Coaching

Download our two page SoL Coaching Handout

A mutual learning relationship between a coach and an individual client in the context of a sponsoring organization.

An organizational initiative to develop the individual capacity for shared leadership.

Contact Jeff Clanon at jclanon at solonline.org or 1(617) 300-9555 or Frank Schneider at frank at solonline.org or 1(617) 300-9535 to discuss how SoL's services can meet your organization's leadership development and coaching needs.

SoL Coaching Success Story – From Competition to Collaboration

An individual in an executive coaching relationship with a SoL consultant articulated "I'm stumped. I'm a leader but I have to work collaboratively with others. I have to work through influence and collaboration, not power. I have ideas, other people have ideas, I have a pretty good track record for my ideas.

Lately, I'm extremely frustrated... If I push my own ideas, I'm accused of running rough-shod over other people, of being a tough-guy, a bully. They're right, but sometimes I feel the choices are so important, I go ahead anyway. If I don't push my own ideas, then I feel like others will just walk over me, like I'm a carpet on the floor. How do I find a balance here? I don't want to be a bully, but I don't want to just lay down either. Compromise doesn't feel right for critical decisions." Read More...

Partnered Reflection for Learning and Results

SoL’s approach to coaching is based on two decades of learning and research in the field of organizational learning. SoL’s coaching quality standards are rooted in our experience coaching over 200 executives and managers in the public and private sectors.

While many coaching approaches focus entirely on the individual client, SoL’s approach focuses on the client and the specific systemic context in which they are operating. Understanding the interdependencies of the context and the context’s impact on the client, as well as the client’s impact on the system, is often critical for a successful outcome of the coaching relationship.

In addition, SoL coaches participate in an ongoing learning/research community in which they share best practices, insights, and themes that arise from the coaching relationships in a particular organization. This ensures continuous learning and improvement for both the individual client and the sponsoring organization.

Download our two page SoL Coaching Handout

SoL's Coaching Philosophy

• A trusting, open, honest, and mutually respectful relationship between client and coach provides the foundation for a successful coaching outcome.
• Both the client and coach need to recognize that there is a gap between current reality and the client’s full potential.
• Viewing the client from a systemic perspective is key to understanding the client’s situation and setting and achieving appropriate goals.
• The coach plays a significant role in challenging the client to consider transformational outcomes of the coaching relationship which the client might not identify on their own.
• The coach can be of service by holding the client responsible for their choices and for authoring an effective life.
• Learning, on the part of the client and coach, is fundamental to a meaningful coaching relationship as well as a successful outcome of the coaching process.

Discrete Practice Elements

1. Define/Commit to/Renew the Coaching Relationship

• get to know one another
• test the “fit” between coach and client
• build trust
• discuss expectations
• describe the coaching process, including likely methods
• establish norms: e.g., mutual candor, focus on the results client wishes to achieve and on performance in the sponsoring organizational context, mutual responsibility for the coaching relationship
• explore the continuum of possibilities for focus (e.g., from life coaching to career to work to problem solving on current work issues)
• establish groundrules (e.g., confidentiality)

2. Clarify Aspirations and Current Reality

• establish overarching aspirations for personal development in this coaching context
• position these aspirations within broad life purposes
• determine client values/priorities as a foundation for coaching
• envision what success might look like
• explore alignment between client's personal vision and the organizational vision
• link broader aspirations to current situation
• begin to understand where the client is in the system, how he/she sees the system and other players in it
• review existing assessment data, e.g., 360 feedback report, MBTI, DiSC, etc.
• generate new data where useful, including direct observation and the client soliciting new data from others

3. Set Goals for Development

• obtain client commitment to specific areas of development
• set appropriate balance between leveraging strengths and addressing weaknesses
• link back to broader aspirations
• submit goals to a reality test
• reaffirm client's accountability for goal achievement
• use results (positive or negative) for learning and continued development
• identify obstacles and challenges, and the resources to overcome them

4. Support Learning in Action

• select naturally occurring challenges (“practice fields”) to serve as learning opportunities between sessions
• clarify the desired outcomes and strategies to be used
• challenge client to examine a full repertoire of actions and to consider unintended consequences
• reflect on actions undertaken (including serendipitous events)
• learn together what worked, what didn't, why, and how this knowledge impacts future behavior
• encourage clients to develop relations with others on the job who can observe, give feedback
• use the dynamics of the coach/client interaction as data for mutual reflection

5. Coach to Full Potential

• challenge client to stretch beyond their comfort zone
• challenge client's assumptions and beliefs
• challenge client to explore different and broader perspectives than what initially appear available or possible
• assist client to deconstruct “truths” about who they are and about the world in which they live
• hold for client a higher sense of potential than they themselves may think possible
• engage client at a soul level: who do they want to be in the world?
• work with client to help them play a “bigger game”

Recursive Practice Elements

6. Partnered Reflection for Learning and Results

• hold a coach/client reflection at end of each session, clarifying next steps and their link to developmental goals
• create structures to support client reflection between sessions (e.g., client learning journals shared with coach)
• conduct periodic mutual “big picture” reflection throughout the engagement

7. Generative Conversations

• coach by using listening, paraphrasing, requests, assessments, assertions and other linguistic acts in support of development goals
• create conversations that free clients from past constraints, support them in inventing new futures, and open new possibilities for being and doing

8. Coaches Community of Practice

• coach holds reflection with other members of the coaching team, reviewing/revising hypotheses and sharing/documenting key learnings about the practice of coaching (while holding all client information confidential per agreements)