Behavior Coaching for Individuals

Your success is determined by your behavior. If you want to be more successful, change your behavior. Essentially, behavior coaching is success coaching, with an emphasis on determining desired outcomes and developing & implementing behavioral strategies to achieve those outcomes. If you would like to be more successful, or if you would like to improve the success that one or more members of your team are experiencing, we can offer you a coaching program designed to produce that success. Our coaching programs are highly effective in accomplishing results that training programs alone cannot achieve.

Roger Reece is an experienced behavioral coach and works with managers and employees at all levels. Depending on the outcomes you want to achieve, a coaching program may be an all-day face-to-face session, a series of scheduled telephone (or Skype) sessions, or an ongoing program where you schedule face-to-face or phone sessions on an as-needed basis. If you want coaching for yourself and are not sure where to start, we recommend a package that includes four one-hour telephone sessions over a period of 1-2 months. Each session will provide you with behavioral tools for practice, and in each successive session results will be discussed and evaluated. The intent is to produce optimal results in a short period of time.

Reprogramming Your Behavior When you know someone really well, it's not that hard to predict their behavior in a specific situation. Much of our behavior is the result of our programming. Some people are programmed to exhibit a defensive reaction whenever they hear a word of criticism. Some people get loud, obstinate and controlling when people resist their ideas. Some people shut down when they encounter intense emotion, especially when the source is someone in authority. Still others experience uncontrollable fear when they have to present ideas to a group. Why is it that some people are aware of their self-defeating behaviors and still can't change? Why can't people stick to their diets and exercise programs? Why can't some people control their tempers and stress levels when things go wrong? Neuroscientists tell us that our behavior is truly the result of our programming. And if you can be programmed, you can also be reprogrammed. Neural Pathways and Behavioral Programs The neural pathways in your brain, along with unconscious and conscious beliefs that form your programs, are more in charge your behavior than "you" are. In your behavior coaching sessions, Roger Reece will provide you with a simple framework for understanding the neurology of behavior and how you can change it. Frames, Programs and States Your brain unconsciously frames everything that happens to you according to your neurological programs. Your frames filter your perception, and direct not only your behavior, but also your states. Your state is how you feel at any given moment: happy, confident, enthusiatic, creative; overwhelmed, discouraged, apathetic, depressed... all of these are states we have all experienced from time to time. Your programs and frames create your states and behavior. Your states are intensified or changed, in turn, by your frames, programs and behaviors. If you're in an unresourceful state - such as feeling overwhelmed, stressed-out, fearful, nervous, irritated, angry, discouraged or depressed - you can learn to manage and change that state. You can learn to reframe situations in real time, neutralize self-defeating programs, and elicit resourceful states such as confidence, calmness, creativity and enthusiasm. Rewiring Your Brain During your coaching sessions, Roger Reece will provide you with tools for breaking old habits, forming new habits, changing your behavior, and essentially rewiring your brain for success. Roger's proven tools and techniques have been distilled from research in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), cognitive behavioral psychology, and sound leadership practices. Tools are available to rewire you for success. Contact us to begin using them.

The Coaching Process

The coaching process begins with goal-setting. Once we have agreed on your goals and how we will measure success in the achievement of your goals, we will define a framework for the process, which includes session format, frequency, overall time frames, tools and expectations. The tools that we will use in the coaching process may include assessments, 360 surveys, event logs, tools for managing your work, communication techniques, and tools for reprogramming your thinking, emotions and behavior. Many of the tools you will learn to use will allow you to continue to coach yourself long after the coaching sessions have concluded.

Setting Coaching Goals: Determining the Desired Outcomes

Your coaching goals may include skill development such as:

• Improving your listening and general communication skills
• Improving your skills in influencing, negotiating and selling your ideas
• Improving your managagement/supervisory skills in coaching employees, correcting behavoral problems, motivating team members and giving feedback
• Improving your conflict management skills and your ability to confront and offer feedback without creating hostility and defensiveness
• Improving your teamwork and team building skills
• Improving your time, project management and workflow management skills
• Improving your interviewing, presentation or meeting facilitation skills
• Improving your skills in dealing with other people's anger, hostility, negative emotions, bad behavior and negative attitudes
• Improving your process improvement skills
• Improving your general goal-setting and goal-achievement skills
• Improving your leadership skills
• Improving your stress management skills

Your coaching goals may include relationship improvement such as:

• Improving your relationship with your manager
• Improving your relationships with specific "difficult" people
• Improving your reputation and the perceptions others have of you
• Improving your relationships with key customers (internal and external)

Your coaching goals may include habit change & behavioral reprogramming such as:

• Breaking the anger habit
• Breaking the fear habit and developing courage and confidence in difficult and challenging situations
• Breaking the habits of negative thinking and depression
• Breaking self-defeating habits and additions that lead to low self-image
• Breaking any habit that serves to sabotage your goals

In clarifying your desired goals, we define reasonable and attainable outcomes as well as milestones and methods for measuring progress over time. Typically, the goals are established and agreed upon during the first coaching session.

Uncovering Your Behavioral Blind Spots

Coaching can significantly promote personal growth because it helps you to see your behavioral blind spots. If your relationships aren't working it may be due to your communication and listening behaviors. You may have poor listening skills. Other people's words may trigger your defensiveness, which could be sabotaging your communication. It's possible that you don't really understand the problem but you do recognize the results. We define communication effectiveness this way: "The effectiveness of your communication is measured by the response you get." This definition puts the responsibility on you to learn new skills and behaviors in order to achieve the desired outcome. You can blame other people for the way they respond to you, or you can start looking for your behavioral blind spots.

Abraham Maslow's Competency Model defines four stages of learning, which can be viewed as a model for getting past your behavioral blind spots:

1. Unconscious Incompetence: Your behavior is getting in the way, but you're blaming other people or situations;
2. Conscious Incompetence: You recoginize that a change in your behavior can be the solution you want, but you don't know how to do it;
3. Conscious Competence: You learn the new behavior, but it's not natural and you really have to focus to break the force of old habits and practice the new behavior; and finally,
4. Unconscious Competence: You have mastered the new behavior and do it naturally, without having to force yourself to do it.

The purpose of behavior coaching is to not only uncover your blind spots (or to move you from Stage 1 to Stage 2), but to then guide you through the stages of competence (Stages 3 and 4). Coaching gives you the insights, the tools and the strategies you need to accomplish this process. Getting to Stage 4, though, also requires practice; and behavior coaching is highly valuable for establishing accountability for that practice - which assures that your new learnings aren't merely academic.

A DISC Behavioral Style Assessment

One effective tool for identifying some of your behavioral blind spots is a DISC assessment. The DISC model is a widely-used method for understanding behavioral styles. Prior to your first coaching session, you will complete an online survey which will generate a 20-page assessment, outlining your behavioral style. Many people look at personality as something that is encoded into your DNA. Your behaviors, however, are not who you are. They are what you do. Your DISC assessment is an insightful tool that will give you an objective framework for looking at your behavior in the context of your coaching goals and desired outcomes. During your first coaching session, Roger Reece will go over your assessment with you, and throughout your coaching it will continue to be useful as a tool to help you develop the right coaching strategy for your success. For more information about DISC, please visit our DISC Training Workshops website at www.DISCtrainingworkshops.com.

360 Interviews and Surveys

Depending on the nature of your coaching goals, we may suggest a 360 survey, in which we use an automated survey tool or live interviews (by phone or face-to-face) with peers and with people above and below you in your organization's hierarcy. All live 360s are conducted by Roger Reece, and provide additional coaching feedback. 360 surveys can be very helpful when the focus of the coaching is on managing a team or building teamwork among a group of people. It is also helpful when multiple people are involved in the coaching process, or when major disruptive changes have taken place within an organization and a goal of the coaching is to improve morale. 360 surveys and interviews are extremely helpful in uncovering the blind spots of an individual receiving coaching.

Changing Incongruent Beliefs, Defining New Behaviors, Building New Skills

During coaching, participants often come face-to-face with incongruent and self-defeating beliefs. Roger Reece is an expert at listening to your "story" and getting to the heart of the beliefs behind your story. Some people won't confront problem behavior because they are "nice." These "nice" people often build up resentment towards those exhibiting the problem behavior - and then, in reaction, act unfairly. So is unfair behavior nice? Often fears, insecurities, projection, and beliefs conflicting with current values will get in the way of successful people in their personal and career development. Behavior coaching gets to the heart of inconsistent, incongruent and self-defeating beliefs, and gives you the tools to recognize and restructure those beliefs. New beliefs in turn pave the way for new behaviors and new skills, to take you out of your comfort zone and on the way to personal mastery and goal attainment.

Your Behavioral Change Practice

Any new behavior, skill or habit requires practice. Practice makes perfect. A major function of behavior coaching is to give you the structure, tools, motivation and accountability for practice. Roger Reece is your coach and personal trainer, and works with you in building your comfort with using new tools, and in actually committing the practice you need to perform in order to achieve your goals. Your practice may include turning anger reactions into team-collaboration responses. You may receive tools for transforming a fear state into a high-confidence state when presenting to a group. Your tools may be for listening, confronting, or persuading, or for getting into a flow state when working on tedious and difficult tasks. Your tools will only help if you practice them, though, so Roger Reece may ask you to keep a log with dates, times and results in order to monitor your progress in future coaching sessions. Behavior coaching is not just about new ideas and concepts. It's about learning and changing through doing (behavior).

Telephone, Skype or Onsite Coaching Sessions

Telephone or Skype are ideal vehicles for behavior coaching. These sessions are a time for inner reflection, self-examination, self-awareness, oppenness and vulnerability. It is often easier to do this through a phone connection, and it's easy, convenient and economical. There are also times when the situation dictates that we need to be face-to-face - particularly when mediation may be a component of the coaching program. Contact us for our telephone/Skype and onsite coaching fees. Sessions are scheduled in advance and can be done during working hours, evenings or weekends.

Behavior Coaching: Getting Started

Getting started is easy. Just contact us by email, contact form or telephone and we will be happy to answer your questions and schedule your first session right away. Take your career, your relationships, your performance, your leadership and your success to the next level: get started in a behavioral coaching program now.

Behavior Coaching for Someone on Your Team

If you are a manager or Human Resources Professional and have someone else in mind, contact us today for a free consultation. Stop sending employees to anger management, communication skills and leadership training classes to "fix" them. They might learn something, but it's highly doubtful that sitting through a training class will result in real behavioral change. If the manager or employee you have in mind is worth saving, invest in a program that will bring about lasting behavioral change.