Coaching & Leadership
Coaching & Leadership focuses on providing new knowledge, tools and opportunities for executive coaches to develop their skills and explore key issues when working with clients: performance, resilience, strategic thinking, change, inspiration, accountability and cultural competency. This track will also deepen some ICF Core Competency skills such as: coaching presence, developing powerful questions when coaching leaders and building trust by understanding what clients really, really want. - Damian Goldvarg, Ph.D., PCC (Argentina/USA), Chair, Coaching & Leadership Subcommittee

• Join Dr. Dave Logan as he cracks the code wide open on rewriting the future for breakthrough performance-for yourself, your clients, and organizations. Discover and apply the concepts behind the Three Laws of Performance, including: Why people do what they do-and what to do about it as a leadership coach.
• Susan Farwell will define various cultural dimensions identified by experts such as Trompenaar, Hofstede and Hall and will discuss how she applies these distinctions and tools in helping her clients lead effectively in today's multicultural business world.
• Jane Cocking, MCC, and her client Jeremy Brown will encourage you to visit our profession through the experiences of our clients, today's leaders, and see what they have to offer us. You will hear one global business leader share his coaching experience and evolving partnership with his coach and step into the mindset of today's leaders and explore, "What do leaders really, really want from their coaches?"
• Barry Goldberg, PCC, will present on how tools and timing can expand the effectiveness of coaching to reintroduce even the most hard-nosed "alpha" executive to the realm of influence, inspiration and human relationships. He will examine common traps and work with tools that can be used to introduce both spiritual and emotional domain capacity as drivers of sustainable productivity and profitability.
• Mark Samuel will provide coaches with strategies and tools to assist leaders in creating and maintaining transformational changes in their business. By focusing on accountability, participants will develop the ability to support their clients in sustaining those results through the challenges of human error, a strained economy and other changes in business conditions.
• Marilee Adams will challenge us to develop powerful questions to leaders. Through new distinctions, stories, models, tools, and interactive exercises, her session introduces a practical methodology, called Question Thinking^TM, for designing and delivering powerful questions.
• Doug Silsbee, PCC, will focus on our clients' access to presence, and the resilience that follows, as an essential outcome of coaching. Presence-Based Coaching offers a range of inner (self-regulation) and outer (relational) coaching moves and practices that support the development of presence and resilience in our leader clients. This interactive session provides critical distinctions between the components of resilience, and includes exercises, a coaching demo, and an immediately applicable coaching toolkit.

Full session descriptions and schedule, along with CCEU assignments for each session, will be posted shortly.

CCEU:  CC = core competency / PD = personal development / BD = business development & marketing / OT = other tools & skills

Great Results Begin with Great Questions: Powerful Questioning for Coaching Leaders
Marilee Adams (USA) - View bio.
Thursday, December 3: 2─3:30 p.m./1400─1530
CCEU:  1.50-CC
The heart of coaching lies in asking questions that help leaders discover their own best answers-because their own answers are their most important source of wisdom for achieving the results and changes they want. That's why the route to the most successful and satisfying results begins with the most powerful question, whether those questions are asked of oneself or by someone else. While all coaches appreciate powerful questioning as a core coaching skill, knowing how to do this consistently can sometimes be a challenge.

Through new distinctions, stories, models, tools and interactive exercises, this session introduces a practical methodology, called Question Thinking^TM, for designing and delivering powerful questions. This expands awareness of the profound power of internal as well as interpersonal questions to shape and direct thoughts, feelings, behavior and outcomes. It includes the Learner/Judger^TM mindset distinctions, which allow people to shift from blame-focused questions that impede success to solution-focused questions that facilitate it. Coaches can use these insights for their own personal and professional development as well as a source of practical interventions with leaders. In the spirit of "teach ‘em to fish," they can also share this material with leaders to use generatively after coaching is complete.

What Do Leaders Really, Really Want From Their Coaches?
Jane Cocking, MCC (USA) - View bio.
Jeremy Brown (UK) - View bio.
Thursday, December 3: 4─5:30 p.m./1600─1730
CCEU:  1.25-CC/.25-OT
Today's leaders' challenges are many and unprecedented in complexity. They are called upon to deliver profit for shareholders, meet the demands of their boards of directors, down-size, upsize, re-engineer, have high quality products and services, inspire and motivate their employees, be a responsible corporate citizen, and have a balanced, healthy life. Many of them travel the globe, are on call 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, move jobs every couple of years, and are under scrutiny constantly for their integrity and authenticity. Others face burnout; some are at a crisis of meaning having achieved both financial and personal success. Some engage us to coach them and their teams and most tell us through personal or survey studies that we add value and they would hire us again. Reassuring for us to hear, for sure!

But as a profession which has emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual sweat equity invested in building itself to a place of credibility from the ground up over the past 20 years, we invite you to step out of "we the coaches" for 90 minutes. We encourage you to visit our profession through the experiences of our clients, today's leaders, and see what they have to offer us.  
In this interactive session you will:

• Hear one global business leader share his coaching experience and evolving partnership with his coach.
• Step into the mindset of today's leaders and explore, "What do we really, really want from our coaches?"
• Explore these important questions:

1. What are the "sacred cows" of our profession? Where are they helping clients?  Where not?
2. What will leaders require of their coaches in the future? Are coaches up to the task?
3. Where might coaches need to modify their approaches?

You will leave this session with a deeper appreciation of our clients' views of us as we walk by their sides as their coaches. 

Coaching Leaders to Succeed in a Multicultural World
Susan Farwell (USA) - View bio.
Saturday, December 5: 2─3:30 p.m./1400─1530
CCEU:  1.25-CC/.25-OT
Globalization, offshoring and shifting workforce demographics are changing the business landscape. Today's leaders need intercultural competencies. They are interacting with employees, peers and bosses that have different worldviews and leadership expectations than their own. They are collaborating and negotiating in a complex, high velocity world with competitors coming at them from all over the globe. This is happening at a dizzying speed and as coaches we play a critical role in helping leaders navigate this changing world. As Fortune magazine noted, "Coaching bridges the growing chasm between what leaders are being asked to do and what they have been trained to do."
 
In this thought-provoking, lively and interactive presentation Susan Farwell, executive coach and cross-cultural specialist, will test your cultural assumptions. She will define various cultural dimensions identified by experts such as Trompenaar, Hofstede and Hall and will discuss how she applies these tools in helping her clients lead effectively in today's multicultural business world. Farwell will draw on the experiences of her coaching colleagues from Europe, Asia and the Americas as well as her own experience coaching global leaders since 1994. You'll have a chance to work with your peers and analyze and explore solutions to Farwell's real-life client case studies.

Emotional and Spiritual Domain Coaching in the Executive Suite:
Translating "Soft Skills" into the Language of Productivity
I. Barry Goldberg, PCC (USA) - View bio.
Thursday, December 3: 11 a.m.─12:30 p.m./1100─1230
CCEU:  1.50-CC
Recent research has shown that emotional intelligence (EQ) is lower among CEOs and their direct reports than at any other level in the organization. Yet, the same research shows that the top performing "C level" executives are those with the highest EQ scores. Most leaders at the top of their organization are masters of task competencies. Getting results fast has made them successful. Though shareholders and even the board may value and reward their pure task orientation in the near term, even at its best this form of leadership is not sustainable. At its worst it creates confusion, anger and unnecessary business risk.
 
Proper understanding, tools and timing can expand the effectiveness of coaching to reintroduce even the most hard-nosed "alpha" executive to the realm of influence, inspiration and human relationships. This is a practical session for coaches who work with middle to senior executives, especially those in or preparing for the "C Suite."  We will work from the business case through the process of connecting softer skills with business outcomes. We will examine common traps and work with tools that can be used to introduce both spiritual and emotional domain capacity as drivers of sustainable productivity and profitability.

Applying the Three Laws of Performance to Leadership Coaching: Breakthroughs Even in Impossible Situations
Dave Logan (USA) - View bio.
Saturday, December 5: 9─10:30 a.m./0900─1030
CCEU:  1.50-CC
While most of us may not be aware of it, we have already created a future formulated upon our hopes, fears, dreams, expectations and life perceptions. Similarly, organizations have futures written by history, circumstance, culture, successes and failures. Join Dave Logan, as he cracks the code wide open on rewriting the future for breakthrough performance-for yourself, your clients, and organizations.

Discover and apply the concepts behind the Three Laws of Performance, including:

• Why people do what they do-and what to do about it as a leadership coach.
• The behaviors of leaders that allow for breakthrough performance in their organizations.
• How one's "terministic screen" determines perception and action.
• Seven commitments designed to break performance barriers in conversations.
• Learning to craft a vision to promote positive outcomes by using descriptive vs. generative, or future-based language.
• How leaders can support a new platform of communication that will elevate and unify organizations.

Transformation through Accountability: Coaching Leaders to Embody Change Mentally, Physically and Emotionally
Mark Samuel (USA) - View bio.
Saturday, December 5: 11 a.m.─12:30 p.m./1100─1230
CCEU:  1.25-CC/.25-OT
Leaders set goals every year only to find a year later that many of these goals remain unachieved. During this highly interactive presentation, coaches will learn strategies and gain tools to assist leaders in creating and maintaining transformational changes in their business. Participants will develop the ability to support their clients in sustaining those results through the challenges of human error, a strained economy and other changes in business conditions. Specific strategies and tools for guiding leaders through the process of quickly producing measurable business results include:

• A roadmap for creating breakthrough business results by changing mindsets and habits within teams;
• An "inner-outer" questioning tool for giving leaders ownership of the transformation process;
• A new approach to vision statements based on accountability;
• The ability to predict and respond to resistance as the leaders you coach experience roadblocks in their work environment; and
•  An accountable approach for assisting leaders to expand their role as change agents even as the current economy requires that their organizations do more with less.

Evoking Resilience in Leaders Through Presence-Based Coaching
Doug Silsbee, PCC (USA) - View bio.
Friday, December 4: 11 a.m.─12:30 p.m./1100─1230
CCEU:  1.50-CC
As coaches, we frequently talk about presence. What we sometimes miss is that our clients' access to presence, and the resilience that follows, is an essential outcome of coaching. Presence is the very basis for anyone's ability to contribute to the radical changes that we are all moving through.

Presence-Based Coaching offers a range of inner (self-regulation) and outer (relational) coaching moves and practices that support the development of presence and resilience in our leader clients. This interactive session provides critical distinctions between the components of resilience, and includes exercises, a coaching demo, and an immediately applicable coaching toolkit.