EXECUTIVE COACHING

Executive Coaching and Employee Assistance Programs.

Dr Helen Nightingale is an occupational Psychologist and Work Coach.

For the most successful outcome from coaching help in the work situation we need to use CB Techniques to bring about change for the individual.

Current executive coaching uses a range of Cognitive and Behavioural goals to assist the process of helping people cope, change and manage.
Coaching usually applies to improving the coping with stress, relationships and performance.

A work coach will ask you to approach your problem by doing the following:

  • Identify what your problem is.
  • Define it in terms of your behaviour and other work colleagues responses to it.
  • Look at the range of behaviours associated with it.
  • Then identify the range of thoughts and cognitions associated with the behaviour (thought record).
  • What specific behaviour you need to change and carry out some behavioural experiments to check if this is what you want to change. ( behavioural exposure)
  • Change your internal dialogue by questioning and challenging beliefs.
  • Sometime this is difficult because you have a set of beliefs or core beliefs that is unhelpful or dysfunctional; these need to be identified and challenged by you.
  • Coaching will assist you to identify the thinking patterns that cause the difficulty.

For example in a work related stress situation the core beliefs you may have are that:

  • Perfection is the only way to work.
  • I cannot go home until all the work on my desk is cleared.
  • The longer the hours I work the better the worker I am.
  • Promotion only comes from a dedicated worker who gives work the priority all the time before home and family and partner.

These are some of the unhelpful thinking patterns that can lead to stress related conditions.

Can you try and identify some unhelpful beliefs about relationships at work?

Take a look at the handouts Link here to handout page

If you need an executive coach you can write to Helen via the blog and she may be able to assist you. (She is a member of the Centre for Coaching) a coaching network that is led by Professor Stephan Palmer at the Centre for Coaching and Stress Management. Click here

If you are on an employee programme you can also contact Dr. Helen she has been a listed EAP counsellor for over eight years.

But either way you can request a CBT coach to help you.