ONLINE COACHING FOR INDIVIDUALS & TEAMS 

DR BARBARA WATTERSTON

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

Barbara has extensive experience in education and has held a number of executive leadership positions across Australia within the education and not-for-profit community sectors. An engaging facilitator, Barbara’s national and international research, consultancy, coaching, and speaking engagements centre on leadership development that emphasises the impact of high-quality leadership on student learning.

Recognised for her contribution to educational leadership and professional learning, her national research report, Insights: Environmental Scan Principal Preparation Programs contributed to five major national recommendations for preparing future school leaders.

Barbara’s advocacy for women in leadership was fuelled by the lack of representation of women in leadership roles. Together with the importance of enriching a more multi-faceted and inclusive perspective of leadership, she saw this as missing out on the incredible potential of women to influence and positively impact on reforms and outcomes. She also found that a significant component to enabling greater diversity meant women letting go of some of their own self-imposed barriers. Barbara’s doctoral thesis focused on gender, leadership, and learning, which informed her contribution as co-editor of the book Women in School Leadership: Journeys to Success, and more recently, Step In, Step Up with co-author Jane Kise.

Barbara has been recognised for her contributions to leadership and professional learning. She was the inaugural recipient of the Women of Achievement Award (Western Australia, 2005), is an Honorary Fellow of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and is a National Fellow of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders. Her expertise is regularly sought out to contribute in an advisory capacity as a member of numerous university, departmental, school, and professional boards.

Her Australian and international projects include emerging, executive, and system leadership programs. She has a special interest in the links between leadership sustainability, wellbeing, and impact on performance to ensure learning, for all, can thrive.

SISU Coaching: supporting and empowering women in leadership, from where they are to where they want to be

Sisu is a Finnish concept encompassing tenacity, hardiness, resilience and bravery. Synchronisticly it is the acronym of Step In, Step Up, (SISU): Empowering women for the school leadership journey (2019), Drs Kise and Watterston’s book on women in education leadership. While women constitute a majority of educators, not only are they underrepresented in top leadership positions, they still face more barriers and different challenges than men. Unconscious bias and the demands of balancing career with other commitments prevent many women from achieving their leadership potential.

SISU coaching will take valuable women leaders, and those who aspire to become leaders, on a developmental journey – from where they are to where they want to be.   The SISU coaching approach is underpinned by taking a broader, more diverse view of what leadership in education is or can be, recognising that leadership can have multiple faces, acknowledging and celebrating that there are many ways of successfully leading schools and education systems.  Through guided personal reflections coachees will consider their own challenges and goals together with the styles and attributes of high-performing leaders in the context of their own leadership strengths and potential.  The book provides a guide and stimulus to inform a reflective journey, to unleash potential, highlighting the interconnectedness of our chal­lenges and experiences as women and how we tacitly support, motivate, and empower each other no matter where we are.

The coaching cycle will distil actions and steps to guide the coachee in ways to impact positively on system (education) outcomes and to enhance the mindset, the skills and capabilities, for career progression to maximise career and leadership impact.  Coachees will determine where they would like to be guided through the various themes and chapters in the book to support their purpose and goals, and to enhance personal leadership capacity and their impact in current and future roles to, for example:

• Understand the unique issues facing women in education leadership through an exploration of gender construction in the context of the related biases in how they view education issues and other educators.
• Enhance awareness of effective and high impact leadership attributes and core capabilities within and beyond the education sector.
• Gain insights into personal qualities contributing to one’s own leadership identity supported by tools to inform next steps in leadership growth and development.

As a personalised and significant leadership development opportunity, the SISU coaching approach will take coachees from where they are to where they want to be. Working with a coach can help women build on their strengths, recognise and address gender-based biases and proactively influence the collective changes we hope to see in education.  Specifically, the approach will:

• Situate development in the work of the leader: focus on the ‘why’ of goal/s, and leadership styles and attributes informed by context.
• Tackle mindsets: growing as a leader, recognising and addressing blind spots and the double bind of leadership for women.
• Measure progress: linking back to achievement and development orientated goals to determine personal and professional impact and influence.

Costings

DR BEN PALMER, BAppSci (Hons) PhD, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
GENOS INTERNATIONAL

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

With a background in Psychology, Dr Palmer is an experienced and sort after executive coach and adult learning specialist. He has worked with many C-level executives across iconic organisations such as Qantas, ANZ, Rio Tinto and State and Federal Government agencies. In Education Ben has coached senior leaders in Victoria, NSW and QLD across both the public and independent school systems. He has developed and facilitated award winning leadership programs for School system leaders through to school Principals.

For his PhD Dr Palmer developed the first Australian model and measure of emotional intelligence. He has an extensive publication list in this area, has contribute chapters to books and guest edited special issues of journals on the topic.

Dr Palmer is also a successful CEO himself. Together with Swinburne University’s commercialization arm, Ben founded Genos International in 2002 to bring his model and measure of emotional intelligence to the market. Genos, and the model and measure of emotional intelligence that forms its core business, is now a national and Australian export success story. Genos has operations in Australia and Europe and distribution partners servicing clients in the USA, India, China, South Africa, South East Asia, the UAE and New Zealand.

Ben can help you improve your:

1. Stress management and well-being
2. Self-awareness and empathy
3. Capacity to positively influence and persuade others
4. Executive confidence and leadership presence
5. Behaviour, how to flex it to be a more situational leader 

Costings

SIMON COOK, DIRECTOR, SPRINGFOX (QLD)

RESILIENCE

Simon’s passion lies in inspiring individuals to strive to be the best version of themselves that they can be, thereby enabling teams of all sizes and types – including remote teams – to achieve a sustainable level of high performance by actively supporting each other.

Simon has had over 30 years of successful leadership experience in multi-site and major retail businesses, safety and global franchising as well as corporate commercial roles in both the UK and Australian energy sector. He has a track record of increasing the resilience, positivity and performance levels of individuals and teams. Those he works with come to appreciate that the method of achieving results is just as important as the result itself.

As a sought-after coach and mentor, he is valued for his insight and ability to deeply connect with those he works with, cultivating a safe, authentic and trusting environment where positive challenges deliver positive results. When facilitating, Simon draws on both his professional and personal experience to bring many concepts around resilience, compassion and well-being to life.

Simon’s approach is anchored to a set of personal values that are based on family, balance and an optimistic and positive approach to life. He is often complimented on the relatable way he brings sessions to life and makes them resonate as relevant and real and builds pathways for participants that allow them to integrate the learnings easily into their circumstances.

He holds a Masters of Business Administration from the Australian Catholic University.

Springfox’s approach to coaching is built upon personal insights and delivered in a supportive way by challenging participants to take accountability for their own development and resilience, working collaboratively on setting measurable and achievable goals.

The program requires a minimum of 2 coaching sessions and participation in the Resilience Diagnostic. The coaching comes with 12 month’s access to insights, goal trackers and additional material that the participant and coach can use to support achieving desired outcomes.

The most effective outcomes are achieved when 4 or more coaching sessions are included in the program.

Costings

TINA RADFORD, MANAGING DIRECTOR RADFORD HR

HUMAN RESOURCES & CORPORATE RELATIONS

Over the past 25 years, Tina Radford has been advising,  coaching and developing leaders at all levels  of an organisation, and across all industries globally.

Tina has worked alongside CEO’s, Business Leaders, CFO’s, HR Managers and Line Managers, and a diverse range of  employers to provide coaching, practical advice and training  workshops in the areas of leadership development, culture, high performance teams and best practice HR strategies.

Having led and grown her own successful HR Consulting practice, Tina has hands-on experience and offers a refreshingly practical and straight forward approach to her HR Solutions. With experience across almost every industry on a national and global level, Tina is widely sought after for her leadership expertise, insights into organisational culture and focus on HR performance management. Her toolkit of HR Solutions is abundant.

CEO’s and business leaders call on Tina and the Radford HR Team to deliver HR consultancy services in a flexible and professional way. Tina is especially passionate about creating the link between people and profit for organisations.

Tina spends most of her time providing strategic HR advice to clients and working in the leadership development space in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast. Tina is a regular conference presenter on HR Matters and Leadership topics, and a popular workshop facilitator. Tina is proud to be the trusted advisor to many wonderful clients.

Tina’s coaching programs are aimed at achieving the following outcomes:

• improved self-awareness of the leader’s personal ‘style’ of leadership (via 15FQ+ personality profile and de-brief)
• identification of individual’s development needs
• awareness of the impact of the leader’s style and communication preferences on others
• understand how to apply the principles of situational leadership on the job to get the best performance out of others
• learn how to influence peers and ‘manage up’ more effectively in the workplace
• learn to conduct effective leadership conversations, including asking the right questions and developing skills to provide feedback
• explore the impact of stress and resilience on leadership behaviour, learn coping strategies to better manage stress
• identify individual ‘blind spots’, skills deficits or personality traits which may hinder the leader’s success on the job.

Tina’s Coaching Philosophy

From our experience there are 3 key critical elements to a successful coaching program. They are:

1. Chemistry: the right chemistry needs to exist between the coach and the leader to build trust and credibility.
2. Self-awareness: the leader needs a level of self-awareness and acceptance of their leadership strengths and weaknesses (eg: via personality profiling or 360 feedback) in order to grow.
3. Willingness to change/learn: the leader must be motivated and have a genuine desire to learn and practice new skills and be invested in the coaching process.

Tina utilises the GROW model to underpin coaching conversations and will provide scripts, templates, tools and practice sessions to assist the leader to develop new skills. We believe that for coaching to be effective it needs to be a coachee-driven process.

Coaching is about creating positive behavioural changes that enhance a leader’s performance.  One-on-one leadership coaching can help leaders to reach their full potential in a safe and supportive environment. Working with a coach will help increase the leader’s self-awareness and provide opportunities to develop new skills. 

A healthy dose of self-awareness is required before an individual can attempt to modify behaviours that they identify as being counter-productive to their success and personal job satisfaction at work. The role of the coach is to help inspire self-reflection and behavioural change in the coachee.

The Coach will provide the leader with practical strategies, takeaways and coaching as well as guiding the leader to uncover their own solutions.

An example of 6 coaching meetings is outlined below:

1. Chemistry meeting – the Leader and coach will discuss elements of the 15FQ+ Profile in relation to job performance and identify personal development goals in order of priority.
2. Individual Development Plan Focus – identify and work on key development areas as identified by the leader in the first session.
3. Coaching Meetings 3, 4 and 5 will be to focus on IDP goals and practical strategies.
4. Final coaching meeting to review progress over the past 12 months, identify highlights and lowlights and potential personality or leadership ‘de-railers’ to be mindful of in the future.
5. The Principal Coach, Tina Radford, will provide a report summarising any common themes that emerged from the coaching process and provide recommendations and continuing areas for development for each leader as well as the identification of any group needs.

Tina is flexible in her mode of delivery. Some of these options include:

• Telephone/Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams coaching sessions
• Face to face coaching meetings
• Group coaching to encourage peer collaboration
• One-off remedial or specialised coaching
• Focus on resilience, stress management, interpersonal conflict, managing up, burn out, career crossroads, leading in tough times, leadership.

Costings