How We Work/Overview

We help you become
a High Performance Learning organization.

What exactly is a high performance learning organization? It’s one where people
want to learn and perform at their best, they enjoy coming to work and they fully embrace what their organization needs them to do.

For the past fifteen years, I have worked with elite athletes in a wide variety of sports
helping them learn and perform optimally under pressure by better understanding how to win the “inner game”—the game that is played inside the mind of the player against such obstacles as lack of focus, fear, self-doubt, and negative self-talk.

We Coach Coaches. Six years ago, top sports organizations like the NY Yankees and USC football team, and companies like Union Bank of California and Kaiser Permanente came to me and asked me to teach their leaders, managers and coaches how to become better, more effective teachers and coaches.

So whether you want to improve morale and productivity, get more bang for your buck from your training programs, unite your entire organization around a corporate change initiative, or develop people for the long term, we can help. We want to become your coaching resource company and partner with you in your success.

The Imaginative Coaching Advantage

Imaginative Coaching works closely with each client to custom design a program that fits their needs and is, therefore, highly relevant for each participant. Here’s what our clients have come to expect from us:

• Leaders and managers learn how to coach and become better teachers. Most managers can teach. It is a tried and true, fast and efficient way to help people learn and perform. But it isn’t always the most effective way to transfer knowledge or improve performance. Coaching is different than teaching. It requires a new way of seeing and a new set of skills. Imaginative Coaching programs help leaders and managers learn how to coach effectively and become better teachers—something few other coaching programs can claim.
• Improved performance and productivity. Imaginative Coaching helps individuals manage themselves more effectively, grow as professionals and contribute fully to the success of the organization.
• Increased employee retention due to greater morale. People don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Managers learn how to create an environment for coaching that boosts people’s confidence, makes them more accountable, helps them reduce distractions and focus on factors critical to success, and reawakens their innate desire to succeed.
• Maximizing investment and effectiveness of training programs. We offer a framework that help managers provide the coaching workers need to change their habits and routines, embrace new ways of doing things put training into effective action.
• Build high performance teams. Based on my on going work with Pete Carroll and the USC football team I have come to understand clearly the principals, techniques and philosophy needed to create a championship team. Your teams will learn to trust each other more, work more collaboratively, learn how to resolve conflict and commit to doing what they say they are going to do.

Our approach is based on these core principles and beliefs:

• Work can and should be a fulfilling experience. We spend more of our waking hours at work than we do with our loved ones and in our places of worship. If work isn’t meaningful then we’re wasting our lives. Companies are now learning what elite athletes have long known: high performance is not sustainable over time in a high stress environment.
• Learning from your own experience is empowering. We cannot perform well if we don’t continue to improve. Imaginative Coaching programs help individuals and teams learn how to coach themselves and learn from their own experience.
• People are creative and resourceful. In most organizations it is not safe for people to bring all of themselves to work. They must leave a part of themselves behind. Paradoxically, this self—the learning, creative, adaptive self—is exactly what corporations are wanting in their people. Imaginative Coaching creates an environment within which learning and creativity are highly valued, and vital, though difficult, issues may be brought to the surface, confronted and then dealt with.
• People get in their own way. Your people aren’t stupid. Most of them already have the knowledge they need to perform better, they just get in their own way. Lack of focus, confused priorities, self-doubt, negative thinking, and environmental distractions can all interfere. We help leaders and managers learn how to get to the root cause of performance problems.

Our Approach

No cookie cutter coaching programs here! We work closely with our clients to custom design a program that is right for them. As a result participants get to address vital, though difficult, issues and deal with them effectively through coaching.

Our programs are highly educational and a lot of fun! We use a unique blend of experiential exercises, lecture, coaching practice, video, and group discussion so that all learning modes are covered ensuring an enjoyable and meaningful experience for every participant. (Our post-program average ratings are typically 9 – 9.5 out of 10) Also, if facilities allow, people love getting out of the meeting room and onto the tennis court or golf driving range where they can get a direct experience of the difference between teaching and coaching; discover how important focus, trust and commitment is to learning and performance; and better understand how people get in their own way.

Learn more about our services, or Contact Us for more information.