Get Results from Systems-based Coaching

Don Blohowiak, the founder of Lead Well, provides leadership coaching to individuals and executive teams.

Who I Work With

I specialize in coaching:

• Teams of executives who want to work together more effectively in leading their organization (Think: Less friction, more flow.)
  
  
• Accomplished professionals and managers with any of the following characteristics:
  
  
  • Newly charged with broader, higher-stakes leadership responsibilities
    
    
  • Basically introverted but responsible for producing results through the efforts of other people
    
    
  • Said to be "rough around the edges" in their people skills
    
    
  • Feeling a bit overwhelmed by increasing pressures or
    growing responsibilities
    
    (E.g., hard-charging executives, technically-oriented scientists, engineers, accountants…)
    
    

Outcomes to Expect from My Executive Coaching Process

• Improved targeted results from your improved leadership
  
  
• Better relationships with all the people you work with (direct reports, peers and colleagues, customers and clients)
  
  
• Greater confidence in your own abilities
  
  
• Enhanced capacity to obtain results — to achieve both what's expected of you and what you want
  
  
• More satisfaction in your work and your life
  
  
  

How We'd Work Together

Coaching is a series of learning conversations designed to work with your inherent strengths to help you achieve important objectives.

Usually, you and I would meet in-person one or more times a month, and by phone a few times a month, as well as exchange some emails along the way. My preference is to spend some time with you in your work environment, unobtrusively observing you do what you do.

My mindset as a coach: You don't need fixing. You don't need a personality transplant. You don't need to conform to some model of an idealized leader.

My goal is not to change you. After all, you're not going to be more effective if you're feeling phony and frustrated.

My objective is to assist you to build on your native strengths, to help you see new alternatives for your energy and talents, to provide you with some new methods to mix in with those you already use, and encourage you to try these new tactics, while supporting you all through the process.

Through coaching, you'll add to your repertoire — not repress who you are.

My Approach to Coaching

In working with you, I'll use the following methods to help you meet your objectives:

• Asking questions that help you to discover, and understand at a deeper level, what you already know, believe and feel. Sometimes, your own most helpful insights have been pushed aside to make room for the crushing onslaught of daily distractions. I'll help you to reacquaint yourself with your own best thinking by asking helpful questions — some that you may not be asking yourself, some that have been lingering unaddressed for a very long time.
  
  
• Ascertaining how others perceive you, identifying the impact of those perceptions on your effectiveness. Sometimes, others see us in ways that seem quite distorted from how we see ourselves. Using a qualitative multi-rater (360-degree) feedback process, you'll receive important insights that will provide you critical information about how you are perceived by people important to you.
  
  
• Making occasional suggestions for you to consider. I don't pretend not to have the experience that I do. When it's appropriate and helpful, I'll suggest a tactic to you. What you do with that information is, of course, up to you.
  
  
• Giving you action learning "assignments" to aid your growth. Sometimes, the best way for you to get the results you want is to try some new things or do some things differently. My job is to help you identify those helpful tactics, and support you as you put them into action (usually at a level that's initially shy of mastery).
  
  
• Providing you with tools to enable the actions you've chosen to undertake. With an executive and consulting career of some 30 years behind me — in a wide variety of organizations, I've developed quite a tool box. I'm delighted to dip in and share when it's appropriate.
  
  
• Guiding you to discover a deeper, fresher, and more useful understanding of yourself. My bias is to help you reach a point where you can honestly say to yourself: "Yes, I know who I am. And I am living with integrity, with authenticity. I feel fulfilled in the important dimensions of my life."
  
  
• Helping you to both remain who you are and become the person you are capable of becoming.

You might also like to know that I adhere to the Code of Ethics of the International Coach Federation to which I proudly belong.

A Little Different

My approach to coaching executives and teams is, admittedly, a bit different than many others.

Clients choose to work with me because:

• I do NOT do touchy-feely coaching. Sure, I'm a nice guy. And we might really like each other. But I'm not going to ask you for hugs or speak to you in airy-fairy language that will confuse or frustrate you. (Some people really like that sort of thing and find it helpful; my clients tend not to.)
  
  
• I do NOT want to coach you forever. My goal is to help you achieve your goals — not develop a dependency.
  
  My goal: Help you reach your goal so you can live your life without depending on your coach.
  
  Most of my clients do come back now and then for an assist. That's what I'm here for. But clients call me. I never pester or "up sell." Ever.



• I do NOT try to change you. I will make suggestions to you, but will not tell you what to do. I won't try to make you into a clone of some idealized model: You wouldn't like that. And it wouldn't work anyway.
  
  
• I do NOT approach coaching assignments with starry-eyed naiveté. My perspective is grounded in the real world. Because that's where I live and work.
  
  My real world experience includes:
  • Running businesses (large and small; for profit and nonprofit) for more than 20 years.
  • Struggling with intense competition.
  • Wrestling with competing obligations between family and work.
  • Raising kids through adulthood.
  • Hiring, firing. Re-orging. Downsizing.
  • Enduring serious illness in the family.
  • Wining. Losing. Playing the hero. And the fool.
  • Doing all the grown-up stuff.
    
    
• I trained seriously to coach executives.
  
  My formal coach training was done at the graduate level, on-site, at Georgetown University in its Leadership Coaching certificate program. The Georgetown program is notable for a few reasons. It obviously carries the credibility of Georgetown, but it also is accredited by the International Coach Federation as a coach training program. And it is one of the few coach training programs in the world that focuses on the complexities of coaching senior managers on leadership issues within organizations.
  
  I know a great deal about leadership -- having written and published about a million words on leadership and management issues in several books and many major publications around the world.
  
  Furthermore, I am at work on my Ph.D. in behavioral science, focusing on what drives the growth and development of already capable and accomplished adults.
  
  When we meet to discuss your developmental needs, you'll receive the attention of someone who brings a full-range of perspective to your unique situation.
  
  Isn't that what you want?




Next Steps

If you'd like to explore the possibility of us working together — with no pressure and zero obligation — please call me, Toll Free at 1-888-LEADWELL (532-3935). I'm happy to provide a confidential, complimentary coaching consultation to see if our working together makes good sense for you.


By the way, I am centrally located in the Northeast Corridor, so I'm personally accessible to clients in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Delaware. Truth is, many of our clients do much of their work with us by phone. But I do like to meet with you the old fashioned way.

Contact: Lead Well 1419 Sunderland Lane Keswick, VA 22947-2750 Toll Free 888-LEADWELL info@leadwell.com    http://www.LeadWell.com Telephone: (434) 295-6551 All contents of this web site copyright © 1997-2008 Don Blohowiak & Lead Well Institute All Rights Reserved