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Fátima Ribeiro's diploma in team coaching

Certified Practitioner in Team Coaching

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My learning journey in team coaching began in 2019, studying with Professor Peter Hawkins in Portugal.

 

In 2021 I completed an advanced level in this learning and professional development path as a Team Coach, receiving the “Certified Practitioner in Team Coaching” certification.

 

Currently I also received the “Team Coaching Individual Accreditation (ITCA), level Practitioner” credential from the EMCC – European Mentoring & Coaching Council.

 

Doing the internship programme with Global Team Coaching Institute (GTCI) last year was an excellent and very rewarding learning experience, with great teachers and with colleagues from all over the world.

 

I am grateful for all the lessons learned, alliances, and friendships developed on this journey.

 

Thank you Professor Peter Hawkins, John Leary-Joyce, Dr Hilary Lines, David Matthew Prior and all the excellent GTCI faculty members and co-dean Professor David Clutterbuck.

 

Thank you, Susana Azevedo, for being an excellent partner, co-coach and friend on this learning journey.

 

Thanks to the colleagues in our internship and supervision group. I learned through the experiences and knowledge shared with everyone.

Credencial Certified Practitioner in Team Coaching de Global Team Coaching Institute

ITCA Practitioner Accreditation in Team Coaching from EMCC Global
Two people talking during a coaching session

Do we need to change for 2022?

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This article was originally published in the newspaper “La Estrella” and is part of a biweekly column from the ICF Panama Chapter to disseminate what Professional Coaching is. It seeks to inform, create more awareness and differentiate professional coaching, in which the Coach is governed by ethical principles and is continually improving his or her skills.

See the original article in this link.

 

We live in a context in which change is no longer an event but a constant; in which stopping, thinking and consciously dedicating time to learning is increasingly important (as well as difficult due to the pace of life) to face the challenges of the future.

 

We are approaching the end of the 2021 year and I invite you to pause, reflect and integrate the lessons learned and plan for 2022.

 

How are the changes affecting us as individuals, families, teams and organisations?

  • What do we see and credit? What thoughts inhabit us? What beliefs are we focusing on?
  • How do we work and relate? What alliances, relationships and connections are we building?
  • Who are we being at different times, with different people and in different contexts?

 

Bringing awareness to how we feel, think, and are impacting our people of interest is important in a process of learning and change.

 

Complementarily validate our perception, with the perception of others, in periodic feedback and feedforward actions (suggestions for improvement) from our people of interest.

 

Having identified our values, talents, aspirations, patterns, environments in which we flourish, reactions and the impact on others, brings us a higher level of self-knowledge and self-awareness and allows us to clarify our strengths and weaknesses, perceive what differentiates us, what internal barriers we perceive, what resources we need and what we want to learn to enhance our value proposition considering the opportunities and threats of the context.

 

Identifying our triggers and perceiving where the stimuli that impact us come from helps us choose the behaviours that best serve our objectives, and not use emotional volatility as a tool for self-management and in the management of others.

 

Where are we on the curve of change? In denial, in resistance, in acceptance, in developing capabilities, or committed, investing time and resources in the process?

 

And what happens in our teams and organisations? How are they reacting to daily challenges, uncertainty and change? What are we looking at and co-creating? What value are we creating?

 

Environments of trust, psychological safety, high standards and responsibility, in which error is part of the learning process, are conducive to learning, taking risks and consequently more prepared for change as a constant. Conversely, environments of high control, micromanagement and low psychological security are related to anxiety and stress in change situations.

 

Having identified what communications we are having the majority of our time is also crucial in the context of change. Are we in the inform, say and ask? In persuading and negotiating? In co-creating and transforming? What mix of the three do we currently have and which one would we like or need to have?

 

The purpose of an organisation is changing, from creating value for shareholders to creating value for all stakeholders. What value are we creating for our internal and external stakeholders? What would our collaborators, teams, clients, suppliers and other stakeholders tell us about the path we are traveling and that we have to travel? What can we not stop paying attention to today, tomorrow and the future, in this context of change as a constant?

 

Increasingly, the management of polarities is a constant. Some examples of polarities we may be navigating are: results and well-being; today, tomorrow and the future; management and innovation; be strategic and operational; individuality and diversity. The current challenge is to manage both polarities simultaneously. It is shared leadership. It is developing a systemic vision, reinforcing relationships, connections and alliances.

 

An individual, executive, group or team coaching process supports, among others, creating new possibilities from the purpose and vision of the future, identifying patterns, adopting a perspective of curiosity, promoting creativity, trust, experimentation and responsibility. A professional coach, according to their specialty, has tools to support you on this path.

 

Author: Fátima Ribeiro

The author is a Coach in Professional Development, Leadership and Teams processes, ACC (ICF Associated Certified Coach), and member of the Board of Directors of ICF Panama.

Certificate recognising Fátima Ribeiro as a speaker at CONANREH 2021

Designing the Future of Organisations – CONANREH 2021

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Very happy to participate as a sponsor of the CONANREH2021, annual congress of ANREH – National Association of Human Resources of Panama, with the theme “Designing the Future of Organisations” and contributing to the development of learning and creating value for people and organisations, reflecting on challenges and exploring opportunities.

A professional leading a team working session beside a whiteboard

Developing Leaders as Coaches

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This article was originally published in the newspaper “La Estrella” and is part of a biweekly column from the ICF Panama Chapter to disseminate what Professional Coaching is. It seeks to inform, create more awareness and differentiate professional coaching, in which the Coach is governed by ethical principles and is continually improving his or her skills.

See the original article in this link.

 

The three main Coaching modalities used in organisations are:

  • External coach, professional with training in coaching who is hired by the organisation for specific processes on a one-time or continuous basis.
  • Internal coach, professional with training in coaching and who practices it within a single organisation, being part of its staff.
  • Leader Coach, manager or supervisor who uses tools and coaching skills in his role as a leader.

 

Some of the challenges of the leader as coach are:

  • How can I effectively coach all my collaborators individually in the limited time I have on a daily basis?
  • How can I do this “virtually”?
  • How can I continually improve my skills?
  • How do I use coaching tools with my team collectively so they can apply them to each other and we can create a culture of team development?

 

To develop as a leader as coach, the leader needs to have specific training for this purpose, which allows the development and application of coaching competencies in the organisation in an ethical and professional manner.

 

The basis for coaching training are the 8 competencies defined by the ICF – International Coaching Federation, divided into 4 large groups:

 

  1. Foundational Competencies or Foundations
    1. Demonstrate ethical practice
    2. Embody a coaching mindset
    3. Co-Create the relationship
    4. Establish and maintain agreements
    5. Cultivate trust and security
    6. Maintain presence
    7. Communicate effectively
    8. Actively listen
    9. Evoke awareness
    10. Cultivate learning and growth
    11. Facilitate the growth of each client

 

This is a very brief description of the competencies by the author for the purposes of this article, and for a broader and more precise definition we recommend consulting them on the ICF website:

 

  • Demonstrate ethical practice, understanding and consistently applying coaching ethics and standards.
  • Embody a Coaching mentality that is open, curious, flexible and focused on the coachee.
  • Establish clear agreements with the coachee, and with the different stakeholders, where applicable, about the relationship and coaching conversations, process, plans and goals, among others.
  • Cultivate trust and security, creating in partnership with the coachee a safe and supportive environment that allows them to share freely, in a relationship of mutual respect and trust.
  • Maintain presence, giving your full attention to the coachee, using an open, flexible, grounded and confident style.
  • Active listening, focused on what the Coachee is or is not saying, for complete understanding in the context of the Coachee’s systems, supporting the client’s self-expression.
  • Evoke awareness, facilitating the coachee’s understanding and learning through the use of tools and techniques such as powerful questions, silence, metaphors or analogies.
  • Facilitate growth, to transform learning, knowledge and vision into action, promoting coachee autonomy.

For a more effective development of coaching skills, support in the training process with professional coaches, mentors and/or supervisors, and internally with peers and sponsors that promote the development of a coaching culture in organisations contributes.

 

Leaders, through the use of coaching tools, contribute to change in culture, promoting a focus on solutions, not problems. They also promote the development of communication and relationships, and an improvement in the trust and commitment of their collaborators. Lastly, the use of coaching tools helps employees become empowered, focus on solutions, and seek support to solve problems themselves.

 

International studies show that coaching is key in developing high-performance teams.

 

Author: Fatima Ribeiro

The author is ACC (ICF Associated Certified Coach), Coach in professional development, leadership and teams processes and member of the Board of Directors of ICF Panama.

Tigo Business invitation to Fátima Ribeiro's conference on team management

Coaching Tools in Team Management

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On September 9, 2021, I collaborated with TIGO Business with the conference “Coaching Tools in Team Management” for the SME segment with transmission for 9 markets (Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and El Salvador).

Coaching is a creative process and the focus is on the future, on developing solutions.

Key coaching competencies such as establishing trust, being present, developing effective communication and facilitating learning and results are very important in the current hyperconnected context, with greater volatility, complexity and uncertainty.

In this conference we explore how leaders can use coaching tools in managing their teams, exploring tools that contribute to enhancing results and taking care of the well-being of teams, supporting leaders and entrepreneurs to face the challenges of today and the future.

Thanks to TIGO Business for the opportunity and to all the participants who joined us!

A team listening to a colleague during an office meeting

Coaching culture in organisations

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This article was originally published in the newspaper “La Estrella” and is part of a biweekly column from the ICF Panama Chapter to disseminate what Professional Coaching is. It seeks to inform, create more awareness and differentiate professional coaching, in which the Coach is governed by ethical principles and is continually improving his or her skills.

See the original article in this link.

 

At a global level, the ICF – International Coaching Federation has developed several research projects on Coaching Culture and to illustrate its importance I like to highlight this phrase from the report “Creating a Coaching Culture” of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) y del Human Capital Institute (HCI) (2014):

“With a better understanding of why Coaching is so important, in terms of developing the company’s workforce as a whole, ensuring the competitive advantage through its people, the organisation can lay the foundation for a culture of coaching successful and lasting. As a result, the company can convey its commitment to the continuous development of its employees, helping to retain better talent and attract better candidates.”

Let’s review then the definition of coaching from the ICF – International Coaching Federation: “Coaching is a process of alliance with clients in which the stimulation of thinking and creativity is promoted, seeking the maximization of personal and professional potential.”

Coaching is a development process that involves structure, focused interaction in accordance with the objectives defined for the process and the use of appropriate strategies, tools and techniques that promote sustainable and desired change for the benefit of the coachee or client. The focus is on the future, on people’s potential and not on their past performance.

It differs from other interventions in companies such as formal or informal “mentoring”, which is a process of transferring knowledge or skills. Mentoring should be seen, not as a “substitute”, but as a complement to “Coaching”.

Coaching Culture

We already looked at the importance of a coaching culture, let’s now look at two definitions of what a coaching culture is.

  1. “A coaching culture is built by leadership beliefs and practices that at the organisational level reflect coaching as a strategic business driver and as a crucial tool for talent development.” ICF and HCI (2016) cite Blessing White, Inc (2009).

Another definition that includes more systemic thinking and shared value is that of Peter Hawkins, who in his book “Creating a Coaching Culture” tells us:

  1. “A coaching culture exists in an organisation when a coaching approach it’s a key aspect how leaders, managers and staff engage and develop their entire people and involve their interested parties, so they create a higher individual performance, of teams y organisational y shared value for all interested parties.”

Coaching Modalities

The three main Coaching modalities used in organisations are:

  • External coach, professional with training in coaching, trained as a professional coach, and who practices it from outside organisations, that is, he is hired for specific processes on a one-off or continuous basis.
  • Internal coach, professional with training in coaching and who practices it within an organisation. Whether or not it integrates it with other roles in the organisation.
  • Coach Leader, uses coaching tools and competencies in his role as a leader.

 

Barriers to Implementation

The three main barriers to the implementation of a Coaching culture in organisations, identified in international studies, are:

  • The lack of time.
  • A limited ability to measure return on investment.
  • Budget constraints.

For organisations to value coaching as a methodology or development tool, it is important that adequate knowledge about coaching and its benefits exists in the organisation, mainly at the level of senior management and the human resources department, since we observe that the greater the knowledge, the more coaching is used as a development tool and the more it expands to different levels of an organisation.

 

Author: Fatima Ribeiro

The author is ACC (ICF Associated Certified Coach), Coach in professional development, leadership and teams processes, and member of the Board of Directors of ICF Panama.

Invitation to the conversation Exploring the Contribution of Systemic Coaching

Exploring the Contribution of Systemic Coaching

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On August 4, 2021, I participated in a discussion organized by ICF Chapter Panama whose main objectives were:

  • Explore the contribution of systemic coaching, from two different perspectives.
  • Analyse/reflect how systemic coaching can impact people, processes and results in organisations.

It was an opening of perspectives from the field of systemic coaching, which allowed participants to learn about two different views of systemic coaching, and interact in a collaborative learning space.

Thanks to the participants who joined us!

A professional gesturing during a tense conversation in an office

Ineffective leadership behaviours

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This article was originally published in the newspaper “La Estrella” and is part of a biweekly column from the ICF Panama Chapter to disseminate what Professional Coaching is. It seeks to inform, create more awareness and differentiate professional coaching, in which the Coach is governed by ethical principles and is continually improving his or her skills.

See the original article in this link.

 

In the leadership development process, through executive coaching, different approaches can be used, depending on the context of the leader and the organisation, the needs identified and the objectives set.

One of them is working from the outside, from what is visible and perceived, such as behaviours (doing) towards the inside (being and thinking), in an iterative cycle to promote sustainable changes over time.

This approach is particularly suitable for leaders who perceive that leadership behaviours associated with their success in the past may not be those necessary to achieve success in the future, in more complex, ambiguous and changing contexts.

This is a work that begins with the identification of the leader’s behaviours, how this is perceived by his or her people of interest or stakeholders, and the impact of their behaviours on their organisation and the broader system. The work continues to promote the interaction of the leader with his stakeholders for integration of their suggestions for improvement into a plan of action, which is evaluated and adapted in a regular cycle, simultaneously facilitating the change of behaviours and perceptions.

Most of us look at behavioural changes that others should make, and are available to provide suggestions for improvement, but in general we are not as perceptive of the behavioural changes that we should implement and have a difficult time doing so on a day-to-day basis.

The impact of our behaviours is significant on the people around us, on our organisation. This impact grows with the level of responsibility of the leaders and with the size of the stakeholders internal and external that we impact.

As a leader becomes successful, this behaviour change is even more difficult to make, because he associates it with past success, he does not understand that he needs new behaviours to be successful in the future.

Benefits can be identified from implementing changes, but we are not always willing to accept the costs, to let go of behaviour that no longer serves us, we can even think and verbalize, but “I am like this, I have always been like this and it has always worked for me…”. This indicates that we do not want to commit to the process, we may not have the humility or courage to do so.

One of the challenges for coaches is to perceive their clients’ willingness to work on their objectives and implement the changes they propose. The success of the process is the responsibility of the coachee with their reflections, learning and actions. The coach facilitates the process and provides the appropriate encouragement, reinforcement and support to achieve the objectives.

One of the authors who most developed and implemented this approach to behaviours is Marshall Goldsmith, internationally recognised as a thought leader in leadership, as an executive coach and as the author of various best-sellers.

In his book “What got you here won’t get you there” Marshall Goldsmith identifies 20 ineffective habits or behaviours in leadership. Among them we can mention:

earn too much, or the need to win in all situations, when it is important, when it is not, and even when it is totally irrelevant. This is the behaviour identified by Marshall Goldsmith as the number one challenge for most leaders.

Other related ineffective behaviours are: add too much value, that is, adding our grain of sand in each conversation or discussion even when it does not add value; he retain information, to gain advantage over others; and the play favourites, to gain allies.

It is also ineffective to devalue the opinions expressed by others by making destructive or sarcastic comments; express negativity, or “I’m going to tell you why this doesn’t work”; or a more unconscious way responder, to comments or suggestions, with “no, but, however…” withdrawing value from what the other is expressing.

They are still ineffective behaviours. speak with anger, using emotional volatility as a management tool and the not listening, not being consciously present for our people of interest, advocating lack of time, overwork, or listening with partial attention due to distractions such as the cell phone.

To develop more effective leadership behaviours, the client must recognise that they need to change and commit to the process. The coach, based on his knowledge and experience, and in alliance with the client, promotes, among others, self-awareness, self-management and management of relationships with people of interest.

 

Author: Fatima Ribeiro

The author is ACC (ICF Associated Certified Coach), Coach in professional development, leadership and teams processes, and member of the Board of Directors of ICF Panama.

A team sharing ideas on sticky notes during a collaborative session

Psychological safety and learning from mistakes

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This article was originally published in the newspaper “La Estrella” and is part of a biweekly column from the ICF Panama Chapter to disseminate what Professional Coaching is. It seeks to inform, create more awareness and differentiate professional coaching, in which the Coach is governed by ethical principles and is continually improving his or her skills.

See the original article in this link.

 

The concept of Psychological Safety popularized by Amy C. Edmondson, a professor at Harvard University in her book Teaming, refers to the belief shared by members of a work team that, within the team, there is a safe environment to take risks and admit mistakes.  Not to say that there should be no consequences for errors, but that errors can be admitted in an environment of psychological safety and at the same time comply with the organisation’s standards and controls. This is the way we can truly learn from our mistakes, find the root cause and creatively focus on solutions.

 

The responsibility for creating this feeling of psychological security in work teams falls mainly on the leaders of the organisations.

 

Through team coaching we can work with organisational leaders and their teams to raise awareness of the existing level of psychological safety and implement actions for its development. Team coaching can help facilitate spaces for conversation and feedback, develop trust in teams through observation and intervention methodologies that promote self-awareness, release of tension, critical self-assessment of performance, and recognition of worth, among others.

 

We can also support leaders to deploy their competencies as leaders who coach, through active listening and direct communication, a creative approach to visualizing options, developing solutions and integrating lessons learned.

 

In his 2011 article, Strategies to Learn from Failure, Dr. Edmondson, talks about creating an organisational culture where mistakes are seen as a source of learning, encouraging teams to detect, analyse and even experiment to learn from their mistakes.  A leader at a technology company said: “We are in the discovery business, and the faster we fail, the faster we succeed.”

 

In this sense, in the aforementioned article, we talk about “The Spectrum of Reasons for Failure”:

 

Reasons with the greatest reason for Individual Responsibility:

  • Deviation: An individual CHOOSES to violate a prescribed process or procedure.
  • Inattention: An individual INADVERTENTLY deviates from existing specifications.

 

Reasons with some Individual Responsibility:

  • Lack of Skill: An individual DOES NOT HAVE the skills, conditions or training to perform a task.
  • Inadequate Process: A competent individual adheres to a prescribed process that is INADEQUATE.
  • Challenging Task: An individual is faced with a task TOO DIFFICULT to be performed reliably every time.

 

Reasons with little or no Individual Responsibility:

  • Process Complexity: A process composed of many elements suffers BREAKS when it finds new interactions with other elements.
  • Uncertainty: Lack of clarity about future events causes people to take APPARENTLY REASONABLE actions that produce undesired results.
  • Testing Hypotheses: An experiment to prove that an idea or design is successful fails.
  • Exploratory Testing: An experiment conducted to expand knowledge and investigate a possibility leads to an undesired result.

 

It is important to emphasise that this is a spectrum and there is no clear and defined border between each of these reasons. The idea is not to find guilty people, but to explore the reasons for the failure. Having knowledge of this spectrum helps to more consciously explore the root cause, find appropriate solutions and implement them in an organisational development process.

 

The leader can apply coaching competencies in a conversation of exploration and creative reflection between leader and collaborator, using open questions that explore the personal or systematic causes of failure, in an environment of psychological safety in which the focus is on integrating learning, promoting the development of people and processes and finding solutions that create value and sustainable results for all Stakeholders. Team coaching can support organisations in creating a culture of learning and responsibility.

 

 

Authors:

Alberto Navarro, He is an Executive Coach and Team Coach, credentialed as a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) by ICF. Vice President of the Board of Directors of ICF Panama Chapter.

Fátima Ribeiro, He is a Coach in professional development, leadership and team processes, credentialed as an Associated Certified Coach (ACC) by ICF. Member of the Board of Directors of ICF Panama Chapter.

 

A screen reflected in a professional's glasses

Agility and Coaching

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This article was originally published in the newspaper “La Estrella” and is part of a biweekly column from the ICF Panama Chapter to disseminate what Professional Coaching is. It seeks to inform, create more awareness and differentiate professional coaching, in which the Coach is governed by ethical principles and is continually improving his or her skills.

See the original article in this link.

 

How do we look at and understand the world around us?

Everything we perceive passes through our the mindset, mindset, which can be defined as a combination of attitudes, beliefs and values that influence our behaviours, daily actions and the way we learn. As mentioned in the study conducted by Ashley Buchanan Margaret L. Kern, our mindset subconsciously affects the way we think, act, and even how we perceive future possibilities. However, mental changes can be generated consciously and in appropriate contexts that could improve one’s own and collective well-being.

Psychologist C Dweek talks in her book “Mindset: the new psychology of success” about 2 types of mentalities. The fixed mindset in which people believe their abilities are innate and cannot change or improve, therefore they fear challenges, give up easily when there are obstacles, and see the success of others as a threat. On the other hand, in the growth mindset these people believe that they can develop their skills through practice and effort, enjoying challenges, seeing obstacles or failures as learning opportunities and successful people as sources of inspiration.

C Dweek explains that in his research he found organisations and managers with a growth mindset, in which employees say they feel more empowered, more committed and that the company values creativity, innovation and teamwork. In organisations with a fixed mindset, there is also talk of creativity and innovation, however, when something does not work as expected someone must pay the price.

There are frameworks or reference frameworks that encompass agile principles and practices that allow companies to increase creativity, innovation, adapting quickly and effectively to the demands of the VICA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world.

The success of implementing these frameworks: Lean-Agile, requires leaders to have a growth mindset, which some frameworks often call the Lean-Agile mindset. This type of mentality allows us to drive the necessary transformation of the organisation, improving culture and business agility.

Through coaching, leaders can be accompanied to evolve from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset that offers great potential to generate changes at an individual level that impact the entire system.

Through executive coaching, we can support the development of leaders with a mindset focused on agile principles or practices, exploring values and beliefs (BE), mental models and cognitive structures (THINK) and/or working on what is visible, at the level of practices, behaviours and perceptions (DO).

The work of coaching can be done from the outside (what is visible and perceived), from the behaviours and perceptions inward to obtain sustainable results, or from the inside (values and thought structures) outward, always in accordance with the coaching contract established between the parties.

The coaching methodology to use is the one that the leader and the organisation recognise as having the greatest value. The important thing is to support the leader to involve his collaborators and other interested parties, to listen to them and value all opinions, in a learning process that is not only individual but collective, and in the creation of an agile and customer-centred culture.

Coaching could become a key piece for the success in the evolution of agile organisations, accompanying leaders in the development of their agile teams, promoting a growth mindset throughout the organisation.

Through the systemic coaching approach, agile teams can be developed as a self-managed team, defining more clearly its purpose, the creation of value, obtaining sustainable results, decision making, work organisation and the way of relating between its members and with other teams in the company. In this way, coaching contributes to reinforcing and consolidating the cultural change necessary in agile organisations.

Authors:

Romina Leveau and Fatima Ribeiro