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XSonia Gill E-mail: soniagill_@hotmail.com Web Site: http://www.ukheadsup.com Info: Sonia is the founder of Heads Up, an education consultancy which combines her years in education and senior business leadership to develop leadership skills and high performing teams in schools. As a psychology graduate Sonia has always had a keen interest and passion in developing people, this led to her to coaching which further compliments her consultancy work.Posts by the author (4)

Feedback is a great skill to master; here are my tips on how to deliver feedback well every time

I was giving a talk to a Local Authority in Birmingham yesterday, helping them understand the difference between mentoring and coaching.  However during the course of the conversation (I always prefer ‘talks’ to be two-way whenever possible), the issue of giving feedback came up.

I have to confess I’m a big fan of feedback, as long as it’s done well, and I think it’s one of the key features of my own coaching style.  Why am I a fan?  Well when I’m working with leaders and teams many of them are surprised to find out that one of the most crucial parts of high performance is the ability to effectively manage and deal with conflict.  Feedback is part of this, yet very few people know how to give feedback well.  Why?  I think there are two key skills which, like all skills, take practise:  the first is the ability to hone into what is the most relevant, useful and honest feedback, which really requires being present with those in the room.  The second is the delivery of feedback which isn’t easy because it needs to be straightforward and easy to understand (trust me it’s so frustrating to get feedback you can’t understand!) but also gentle enough to reduce both conflict and damage to the person’s self-esteem.  How is this done?  I follow a few basic rules of thumb:

Positive: The feedback should be to support the person in whatever they are working on or trying to achieve.  Start with what is good and make sure you mean it otherwise you undermine all the feedback you give.

Non-judgemental: It’s about focusing on behaviour and the impact it has on others e.g. ‘when you behave like ‘x’ it comes across/affects me by ‘y’

It’s not about ‘you are lazy/you are uninteresting/you are idle/you are rude’.  Hopefully you can feel the difference in emotive content just by reading these two approaches.

Evidence: Always give evidence for your all feedback, positive and negative, and make sure you are as specific as possible.  If you don’t have evidence don’t give the feedback until you do.

Open it up: Ask them what they think.

Remember feedback is a gift (even if it doesn’t always feel like it!):  Everyone is within their right to use it or not, however I would say you have to take it.  And make sure you are able to take feedback yourself.

Used correctly feedback is a valuable resource.  Once mastered you will have a skill that is, sadly, rarely used to its full potential.  Of course there is even greater skill in allowing people to reflect and discover this themselves, but not everyone can always do this or see how their behaviour is having an impact.

The highest performing relationships manage conflict effectively, within that quality feedback, delivered well is key.

Filed Under Coaching in Action

XPeggy Guglielmino E-mail: peggy0027@googlemail.com Web Site: http://www.lifetherapycentre.com Info: Posts by the author (3)

NLP Case Study #1: working with trauma

(This is a real case study – names have been changed)

My first client today was Carol, a lady suffering from depression and high level of stress, who has been coming to see me for a few months. Carol had been recommended to me by her husband, Peter, who had weight issues and got amazing results in only 4 sessions (he lost two stones in a month.)

Carol had been abused physically and sexually as a child and suffered all her life from the aftermath.It quickly appeared that Carol’s core issues were lying in her sense of self-worth.

Very often young victims of abuse develop a sense of guilt and question their inner worth as a survival mechanism and carry this burden into and throughout their adult life. It affects their relationships and their health, like Carol, for example, who put on a lot of weight after the trauma to unconsciously appear unattractive and avoid further abuse.

Carol’s case is one of the most complicated ones I had to see in my practice as there’s a complex underlying net of core issues that are deeply embedded. Read more

Filed Under A Day in a Coaching Life

XHolly Worton E-mail: holly.worton@gmail.com Web Site: http://hollyworton.com/ Info: Posts by the author (5)

Combining coaching and mentoring for powerful results

I loved Sonia’s To advise or not advise; that is the question post last month. When I first started training and getting in my coaching practise hours I was terribly concerned about advising. I was so afraid that a bit of advice would slip, either directly or in the form of a leading question.

In the end, advice giving wasn’t an issue for me. Maybe it was because my radar was on, but few leading questions passed through my filter, and I can’t remember a session where I actually gave a client direct advice.

Now that I’ve got more coaching experience I, like Sonia, realise that sometimes advice is in order. I’ve moved from focusing on my life purpose coaching niche to social media coaching and consulting. In reality, it’s more consulting than coaching. And if I were purely focusing on coaching, I don’t think the sessions would be as beneficial to my clients. Read more

Filed Under Coaching in Action

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