Question: What’s the Difference Between Coaching and Consulting?
Since I do both, I’ve often been asked, “What’s the differences between coaching and consulting?” Fo businesses, the distinction is straightforward: coaching means the process of working directly with personnel to achieve higher performance – by effectively listening, supporting, challenging, and facilitating personal development and learning. It’s a role, and it’s about interacting dynamically to help someone be […]
What About Bob?
Not all managers come straight from grad school with their MBA. All across the country workplaces promote line employees into supervisory and management positions. And one of the many challenges a new manager can face is having to manage the very people who were previously coworkers and friends. Here’s an audio that looks at an all-too-common scenario: […]
Teaching “engagement,” ignoring discouragement
Thank God we keep finding teachers with enough energy and exuberance to blow right through all the problems and resistance, and they conduct their classes just the way they’d imagined back when they decided to become teachers. Sadly, they’re fewer than ever. More and more, the interaction between a teacher and his or her students […]
Anger Toward Her Anguish
Mine isn’t a high-traffic blog, but I’ve gotten some interesting exchanges anyway. I put this post and comments about coaching highly intelligent people on two of my blogs – I felt there was a poignant quality to the exchange. Now I’ve received a very harsh comment from someone who, I first thought, might even know the writer and her […]
Ask Shaun: Should I Fight the Layoff?
Shaun- To make a long story short, I’ve worked 11 years for a local Credit Union that’s “merged” with (been taken over by) a larger, statewide group of CU’s 18 months ago. It’s the only job I’ve ever had. I started as a teller, and now I manage the office that does collections and billings. […]
Ask Shaun: How Does a Supervisor Handle a “Mystery Man?”
Shaun – I run crews on multiple sites. I’ve got one guy who works for me who’s turned into a mystery man. At first he was a real go-getter who definitely wanted to show me something, and he seemed totally OK with the extra stuff I gave him to do that I was sure he […]
Highly Intelligent People Can Also Struggle and Need Help
This is a followup to the responses on a previous “page.” The more I do this work – consulting with parents, supervisors, managers, and caregivers – the more clear it is that generating some sort of action, doing something differently, always trumps insight for actual results. I’m a left-brained guy myself, and I love insight and […]
Dear Ray: A note to a new mental health practioner
Dear Ray: I remember our last chat in the lobby outside the auditorium waiting for the main speaker to close out the conference. You seemed a little wistful compared to our previous encounters, and I wondered whether being up to your Adams apple in clients now is more of a cold shower than you’d anticipated. […]
Supervisors: Know what your employees do
As a supervisor, you should know what everyone who reports to you does…obviously. Sure, the organizational chart is worth a look – after all, somebody took the trouble to make it – but it’s crucial to understand what the people who report to you are doing every day to contribute to the work product for […]
Want to Be a Successful Supervisor? Avoid these 11 Pitfalls.
Obviously, it’s always best to be positive about being a manager, but sometimes it’s good to keep in mind what not to do. You don’t have to be a natural authoritarian personality to be a good supervisor, but you do have to keep your concentration. You don’t have to be a schmoozer, but your employees are […]
