| Team Building & Career Enrichment |
Offering the Guerrilla Teambuilding Program, 2004
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Coaching has come to define a range of services that focus on assisting individuals and organizations achieve specific goals through supportive interaction, collaborative discussion and problem solving activities. This field of endeavor is not historically new, but has been recently popularized. The scope has broadened to include personal related goals, and other "non-traditional" areas, that many would typically not have view as a "coaching" application. The goals and practice are not exceptionally unique from the traditional usage in sports, personal training, or dietary/nutrition applications, where these have been accepted services utilized for many years. The personal coaching movement is a more recent development, and not quite as situated as its organizational/business consulting counterpart.
Coaching, in its current popular form, seeks to assist in moving individuals and groups towards a skill acquisition or goal that a client has set. While the Coach may possess particular educational or technical expertise in specific areas, the key to the coach’s role is in assisting the client in establishing, moving towards, and achieving a goal. This is where the coach’s true expertise emerges. The coach’s ultimate effectiveness need not rest with their technical expertise in a given area, but in their ability to assist individuals and organizations in moving towards their chosen goals.
Coaching differs from traditional "therapy" services, in several key and important ways. In the coaching model, the focus rests in the here and now, and in a future orientation. Past determinants of individuals behaviors are not the arena of focus. Within this approach, the coaching client is seeking a service from a perspective of “health” and pro-active life advancement--no model or paradigm for client "pathology" or "illness" exists within this framework. While traditional therapeutic skills such as empathy, emotional support, and pro-active listening are strong components of the effective coach’s repertoire, the therapeutic techniques focusing on past insight and other dramatic methods of promoting behavior change are not applicable. A coaching professional must have strong interactive skills, but need not be a trained "therapist", as the focus and goals of the process are quite different. Indeed, many professionals approaching the coaching role coming from more traditional therapeutic backgrounds will require additional training in achieving this shift of focus.
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| Coaching Related Organizations: |
As few formalized training
programs exist for this specialty, consumers should be cautious of the
background, skills, and qualifications of individuals presenting themselves as
professional "coaches". In attempts
to regulate and offer a higher degree of consumer confidence, several
organizations have arisen in attempts to develop professional standards and
certification of individuals delivering services termed as
"coaching".
The largest such
organization is called the International Coaching Federation (www.coachfederation.org). The ICF has provided extensive efforts in attempts to establish
standards and regulate services provided under the coaching title. An additional organization, the Professional
Coaching and Mentors Association (www.pcma.org), fulfills a similar role as the ICF, but focuses more
specifically on business professionals and organizations. The PCMA's activities
encompass both the formal and informal processes through which professional
development occurs in an organizational setting. We encourage the reader to visit both these
websites to learn more about the coaching process and these organizations.
The organization that has
provided specific training for the coaching staff at J. F. Zagotta &
Associates, LLC, is the "College of Executive Coaching" (CEC).
The CEC was founded and is headed by Jeffrey Auerbach, Ph.D. Dr. Auerbach
is a trained Clinical Psychologist who had transferred his clinical practice
into the coaching/consulting arena, where he has practiced for many years. He has developed a highly effective
coaching training model aimed at professionals who hold advanced degrees in a
mental/behavioral health area, who seek to transition towards a
coaching/consulting based practice. The
program, (I feel), is uniquely suited for doctoral level psychologists making
this change, and maximizes the strengths they have to bring to this field of
endeavor. The majority of the faculty at the CEC are doctoral psychologists who
have transitioned into, or have worked throughout their careers in the
coaching/consulting field.
The J.F Zagotta & Associates, LLC,
coaching/consulting professionals are all experienced doctoral level
psychologists, who have worked in a variety of professional settings (including
medical and community based institutions, not-for-profits, and
business/corporate organizations). All
of our direct coaching/consulting staff have completed an initial 36 hours of
coaching training through the CEC, and are involved in completing the CEC's
Master Coaching Certificate Program. We
encourage you to visit the CEC website (www.executivecoachcollege.com)
to learn more about this organization, its training programs, and the
other professional services offered by the college. Dr. Auerbach has authored a very useful
introductory book on understanding the coaching process entitled "Personal
and Executive Coaching". The book
is geared towards behavioral health professionals seeking to transition or
diversify into a coaching based practice, but also offers a wealth of general
information related to professional coaching and consultation services. The book can be purchased at the CEC website.
Two additional worth
mentioning as leaders in the arena of business/organizational
coaching/consulting are The Center for Creative Leadership, and RHR
International. The Center for Creative Leadership (www.ccl.org) is
extensively involved in research and coaching/training of business leaders and
top executives, including many fortune 500 company professionals. The Center has an international reputation
for assisting in the development of highly effective managerial professionals,
and serving as a world class coaching and research institution. Several of the
CEC faculty have direct affiliation with the CCL. We would encourage you to visit the CCL's
website, and learn more about this organization, and the many open
enrollment leadership training programs they offer. The RHR organization (www.rhrinternational.com),
additionally, is a well established and predominantly psychologically focused
organizational consulting group. A wealth of information related to this
aspect of professional coaching can also be found at their website.
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J.F. Zagotta &
Associates, LLC, specifically focuses on career-based coaching and
consultation services. This focus helps maximize our strengths in
utilizing scientifically based service models. We feel our expertise can be of specific
value to professionals and organizations seeking to adopt a research oriented,
and scientifically grounded approach in addressing their career enrichment
and organizational performance related questions. Additionally, these areas hold specific
meaning to our staff, who during their professional careers, have pursued
many of the same transitions, and encountered many similar challenges our
clients are facing (be they individuals contemplating a career change, those
seeking more fulfilling avenues in their current endeavors, or organizations
seeking a competitive edge and increased investment in their most valuable
resource--their personnel).
We are a new and very small
company, consisting of a core staff of psychologists/entrepreneurs, and a
network of experienced fellow professionals.
We have entered into this endeavor, related to our passion for assisting
others in discovering their true potentials, in promoting more fulfilling
careers, and in creating more comfortable, challenging, productive and
rewarding workplaces. We do
not encompass the scope and size of other career and organizational
consultants/trainers we have mentioned.
We do, however, endeavor to provide a similar service to our clients,
utilizing the research and innovations these organizations have brought to this
field. We also believe our fledgling
status serves as a notable strength, allowing us to provide highly
individualized and novel approaches to addressing our clients’ needs and
concerns.
We hope this gives you an
overview of the coaching field and of our particular focus within this large
arena. We encourage you to explore the
entirety of this website, and visit the links to the organizations we
reference. These linkages are also
centralized on our "Contact and Linkage" page for your convenience. We hope the information contained within this
website will help educate our visitors to the scope of our practice; to
our goals as an organization; and to other valuable resources within the fields
of professional coaching, career enrichment/transition, and organizational
development.
We appreciate your inquiries
and feedback. Thank you for your interest.
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2003, J.F. Zagotta & Associates, LLC
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