We have invited people development professionals, who have become VoicePrint trained and accredited, to share some of their thoughts and insights on working with the tool.
This blog comes from guest contributor, Master executive coach and accredited VoicePrint practitioner Helen Mundy of Wide Awake Leadership.
So frequently, as an Executive coach, my clients present scenarios where they have tied themselves up in knots around a particular working relationship. The relationship is taking a disproportionate percentage of their energy to deal with and has become a drama that feeds their negative emotions, keeping them stuck in a vicious cycle of judgement and reaction.
We would all benefit from becoming more talk-wise, more adept and more consistently successful with our communicating, both how effectively we speak and how well we listen. But if there’s one occupation above all that needs to be outstandingly talk-wise, it’s the personal coach. Information technology skills may be the only other sphere of occupational practice that has grown as fast as coaching. It has been estimated that 83% of employers now use coaching as a means of developing their people [1], that 72% of organisations expect to increase their spend on coaching [2] and that there are now more than 53,000 executive coaches worldwide. [3]
How my confusion helped me to see the value of choosing my words carefully.
I was talking to a new coaching client just the other day. When we came to the end of the conversation she said “I want to say that you’re really simple Liz – but that’s not what I mean!”. I suspect my family would have something to say about that.
She went onto say “what I mean is that you bring clarity to the conversation” – I think that’s the bit I’ll share with my family.
Given my work with VoicePrint, I take that as an enormous compliment.
Are you good with numbers but less good with words and with people? Many people, especially perhaps those with quick and active minds who have a lot going on inside their heads, are not as effective as they would like to be when it comes to communicating their thinking to others.
Tom’s office is going to lose nearly a third of its people. When the moment comes, he will have to break this news.
Tom is passionate about his work. He is a compelling ambassador for the business when he speaks about it publicly, which he enjoys doing. He is proud of the improvements that his office has delivered since he became General Manager, and he is protective of his people. He demands a lot of them, and when the pressure is on he knows he can sound sharp and critical, but he also takes a lot upon himself; working hard and pursuing improvements are among his core values.
What does he want from his coaching? ‘To learn more about dealing with pressure.’