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Career Coaching and Mentoring

Coaching and Mentoring; Onboarding, Team Repair, Retirement Preparation, Performance Improvement

Coaching and Mentoring

Team Repair

“Team; a group of people organised to work together.”
A team’s dysfunction usually stems from one or more of the following being out of alignment;

  • Values: the values being displayed by the team leader, the team or the organisation do not match those of one or more of the team members. This mis-match will cause a lack of commitment and the concomitant lack of performance and the resulting antagonism and dysfunction.
  • Role: if any team member is in an unsuitable role that does not match their skills, interests and aptitudes, they will lack enthusiasm and contribute to the overall dysfunctional behaviour of the team.
  • Fit: if the personality of the team members differs sufficiently in style, especially that of the leader, then misunderstandings, impatience, retribution and gossip ensues.

Our Team Navigator program
Team Repair is essentially bringing these issues to light through giving each member clarity about themselves and on the key issues, clarity about their differences with others.
This leads to greater understanding and tolerance, and where necessary, an early recognition of when a more intrusive intervention is required and the consequent plans.

Executive Onboarding

“Onboarding: the induction and assimilation of a new employee or an employee new to the role.”

When an organisation is considering moving a middle ranking, functional Manager to  a Senior Manager or Executive position, there is often a discussion about the development program required. This is also a time when the employee is feeling at their most vulnerable and insecure. It is a phase, if properly supported, can result in a high failure rate.

While a potential executive can demonstrate great grounding and potential, it’s helpful to understand their gaps for the new role and how their personality and values will enhance or restrain their success.

As with any role, employees must know who they are, what their commercial offer is and a clear practical idea of their aspirations.

With this knowledge and an understanding of the key tasks that will confront them, a gap analysis can be performed and appropriate plans can be compiled and approved. Typically these plans will consist of internal experience/guidance on-the-job  and external training.

An external mentor is a confidential source of review and a sounding board which can accelerate the assimilation and confidence of the employee resulting faster in an effective new employee and less disruption to the organisation’s continuity.
The Executive Navigator program provides these catalysts.

Retirement Preparation

“Lifestyle; a manner of living that reflects the person’s values and attitudes.”

Retirement today is more a change in lifestyle governed by a set of personal criteria than a cessation of all activity.

In the past, when people ceased work, and it had been hard manual labour, they went home to recover and live an easier life.

Most retirees nowadays are retiring from knowledge work, which they may well have enjoyed and found stimulating; to ask them to cease is unreasonable and soul destroying.

Today’s retirement is more about maintaining your interests on your own terms, rather than on your employer’s terms.

Typically, when people consider retirement, they usually have considered the financial viability, understand their health situation and hence what is possible. But for some people, retirement is forced upon them with no immediate plan, this can be very destructive.

For anyone considering retirement, or who is about to be forced to consider the retirement mode of life, a plan enables them to feel in control,  useful and have a continuing  purpose that is dictated  by their interests and passions.

There are typically, three phases of thinking around Retirement.
A. Impending; the wind down in employment and repositioning in your mind of what is expected of you, assessing the financials and preparing the “Laundry List”.
B. Laundry List. The 2-18 month period immediately following cessation of full time work includes all the things one wished for while occupied at work such as travel, house repairs, golf every day, learning a new skill or language….. but the list or the money, or the golf partners run out…..
C. Lifestyle Change. After about 18 months, you settle into the new way of life, based on what you really like to do with your time, it can be regarded as a well-earned self-Indulgence, is very rewarding and satisfying.
The Nine Lives Consulting Lifestyle Navigator Program
Assists people to engage joyfully  with these opportunities, we review your past career and your future aspirations through  structured discussions  and psychometric instruments. We then develop a longer term  plan of activities and actions to provide focus and enable you to feel in control  and useful, before you embark on the Laundry List phase.
The end result is you have  higher self-esteem and are more attuned to the major impending changes and more in control of your destiny.
You are then better positioned to assimilate the changes and enjoy your new way of life.

Coaching and Mentoring
The definitions are blurred and confused in the workplace.
Nine Lives Consulting defines these as follows:

  • Mentoring:  regular confidential discussion with the recipient on topics of concern to the recipient.
  • Coaching; a structured process of developing the recipient to achieve a specified outcome with an agreed and documented methodology, time frame and goals.

Nine Lives Consulting will compile a plan of action which:

  • is agreed to by all parties prior to commencement.
  • will involve separate interviews with the sponsor and the recipient to ensure clarity and consistency of purpose.
  • ensures the suitability of the proposed Coach or Mentor for the proposed participant.
  • is structured and focused on defined outcomes in an agreed timeframe.
Career Navigator - Hybrid Onboard

“Your plan to negotiate a flexible work place arrangement, based on facts and benefits to both parties.”

Employers and employees can have differing views and differing priorities on what constitutes a reasonable amount of time in the main office.

This is causing significant levels of anxiety for many employees who have experienced the benefits of a more flexible approach and now fear being forced to comply with new requirements.

The anxiety is triggered by uncertainty on how to present their case for arrangement that suits their needs to their supervisor, who may well harbor different values and societal attitudes, and avoid embarrassing discussions.

Employers also face some risks if there is not a sympathetic but systematic, consistent and fair method of determining each person’s office attendance requirements. Leaving these decisions to individual supervisors at their discretion will leave the organisation vulnerable to claims of inconsistency, nepotism, bias, discrimination, incompetence, bullying and could impact their employment brand.

Just as it is not for the employer to judge how an employee gally spends their money, the same applies to how employees organise their lives.

The best approach is to use facts, not reasons.

Our 2 step program, HYBRID ONBOARD is designed to provide both parties with facts about the employee’s work style and role to present a dispassionate, logical argument to support the flexible work proposition and demonstrate commitment to being an excellent employee and an inclusive employer.