Integral Coaching

Integral Coaching

What our clients love most about our integral coaching process is that every coaching engagement is an experience that is custom tailored to you as a unique individual. How exactly do we accomplish that? Read on, to learn more about what to expect.

HOW IT WORKS

Integral Coaching typically consists of:

1. Chemistry call with your Integral Coach: This introductory 30-60 minute call will be conducted via zoom, and is simply a chance to get to know one another. This first meeting isn’t for coaching, it’s looking for fit, compatibility, and alignment.

2. Intake: Your Integral Coach will schedule a 60-90 minute zoom with you to engage in an intake. This session feels natural and conversational, not like a questionnaire or interview. In the intake you will have a chance to discuss your presenting issue in depth, and tell your Coach more about what you wish to work on. There will also be space to look at your life more broadly beyond the presenting issue you are bringing. Your Coach will want to connect with you, and understand you as a whole person in your social context.

3. Purpose and Outcomes: After intake, your Integral Coach will generate a proposed purpose statement, as well as a handful of outcomes for your growth during the coaching engagement. The purpose statement will describe the renewed confidence you will have in your ability to inspire yourself, and will open up a new world —it will address the inner difficulties you are experiencing and bring more ease and space to your personal day to day experience. The outcomes will be improved competencies observable by others—these are the measurable and tangible results others will notice and reflect to you at the end of your coaching engagement.

4. Offer and Contract: Before proceeding to design and active coaching, your Integral Coach will provide you with an offer based on the intensity of your specific coaching program. This offer will include the coaching package price, and proposed length of engagement (usually six - twelve months). Once the offer is accepted, the coaching contract is signed and active coaching begins.

5. Ongoing Coaching: The time commitment for ongoing coaching through the term of the coaching engagement includes one 60-90 minute zoom every two weeks. Coaching is most effective when the entire coaching engagement can be scheduled with consistency and reliability with a repeating schedule at the beginning of coaching, however it is possible to move sessions around due to vacations and/or illness. Ongoing coaching sessions are where the coaching design will be implemented, and adjustments will be made throughout the process to deepen into newly developed competencies, integrate growth and learning, and build upon insights. The experience of working with an Integral Coaching design is that it is not a static template, rather it is a design that is alive and responsive, and your Coach is following you with sensitivity, intelligence, and honesty. Your Integral Coach will provide you with notes following each session, as well as reflections and practices to be done in between sessions. Most Clients find the homework easy to integrate into their daily routines, where engaging with the practices increases their productivity, quality of life, and overall sense of ease and lightness.

6. Results of Coaching: At the conclusion of your coaching engagement you’ll find that you didn’t just collect a handful of skills to add to your toolkit. Instead, you’ll find that you’ve grown in your capabilities and that your newfound effectiveness happens automatically and effortlessly. Because of the integration that occurs throughout coaching, you will show up differently, with a greater depth and power of presence. You’ll experience the purpose statement that may have seemed just out of reach at the beginning of coaching, as your new normal—an embedded and reliable baseline. You will have more ability to self-correct and self-generate. Results will extend well beyond the ones intended. You will listen more fully, respond with more wisdom, and draw on deeper wells of creativity.

INTEGRAL COACHING FOR LEADERS

We also offer a more robust coaching engagement suitable for those in leadership roles.

At Blind Ambition, we use 360 conversations to get a more comprehensive view of your leadership performance, but the view we’re looking for has nothing to do with eyesight! After all, vision isn’t what you see around you, vision is what comes from deep inside you.

The clarity that comes with 360 conversations gives us a well rounded perspective that goes beyond your intentions, to your impact on others. This is because when leading others, we need to know how others are experiencing us, so we can lead them more effectively.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT INTEGRAL COACHING FOR LEADERS?

Expectations for the process of coaching for leaders is similar to the process above, with a couple of differences:

• Intake & 360 conversations: In addition to your 1:1 intake, your Coach will also invite you to select between 5-8 colleagues—peers, directs, and managers—to participate in 360 conversations. Your Integral Coach will then schedule a 60-90 minute intake zoom with you, and a 45-60 minute conversation with each colleague. After the 360 conversations and intake, your Integral Coach will integrate the feedback from your team with the assessments from your intake in order to design your purpose and outcomes. This process takes several weeks to complete.

• When the Client is not the Sponsor: What are the considerations when a Company is sponsoring leadership coaching for their employee (Client)? In this case, for coaching to be effective, the Company (Client’s manager) is typically involved in the Offer and Contract step of the onboarding process. The Leadership Coach will first discuss the purpose and outcomes directly with the Client for alignment and approval, and then the offer and contract will be forwarded to the Company for approval. Confidentiality will be maintained for all other aspects of the coaching engagement, including 360 conversations, intake and assessment, and ongoing active coaching sessions. If the Company wishes to obtain progress reports throughout the coaching term, then those factors will be negotiated with the Client’s consent at the time of the offer and contract. It’s important to note that Company-facing progress reports will focus only on observable outcomes, and no confidential information will be discussed. However, we find that most companies do not need progress reports because progress on outcomes are noticeably visible through job performance.