Coaching Philosophy
Coaching supports you in achieving the results that are important to your personal success and the long term success of your organization. Your Slade & Associates coach assumes that you are the expert on your own situation. Your coach will draw out your expertise through inquiry, curiosity and gentle challenges. Your coach helps you stretch into your best self. To do that, your Slade & Associate coach will introduce self-observation exercises and behavioral practices. Your coach is attentive to your physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual state. Your coach will help you focus on your presence and behaviors. We seek mutual understanding of your organizational culture and systems (including policies and practices).
A Slade & Associates coach is different from a consultant, a mentor or a therapist.
Consultants are hired to produce answers. The difficulty with consulting is getting the client to act on the consultant’s answer. Your Slade & Associates coach asks the right questions and we help our clients generate their own answers. Intelligent Change is creates more commitment to action.
Mentors provides advice from their experience. The difficulty with mentors is their experience may not fit your needs. Your Slade & Associates coach assumes the client’s experience is more important and relevant to the situation. The coach helps draw out that experience.
Therapists focus on healing past wounds. The difficulty with therapy is moving from the past to the future. A Slade & Associates coach focuses on creating future effectiveness. While coaching may address past issues or life conditions that impact the client, your Slade & Associates coach will focus on personal and professional effectiveness.
The anticipated outcomes of your coaching include:
1. Identification of the key behaviors to continue, do more, do less, start and stop doing to increase effectiveness.
2. Involvement and commitment of stakeholders in the process of increasing your effectiveness. For leadership coaching, stakeholders may include the client’s manager, senior organizational leaders, direct reports, peers, support staff and customers. For career coaching, stakeholders include people in the client’s career network and potential employers.
3. With sufficient commitment to the coaching process, improvement will be measurable (by ongoing feedback from stakeholders) on specific behaviors.
4. Long term effectiveness for you and your organization, based on increased capacity to achieve results and build healthy relationships.
Coaching Method
Slade & Associates coaching is based on the Intelligent Change approach:
1. Gain your commitment to solicit feedback, analyze the feedback, work to develop more effective behaviors, involve stakeholders to support desired changes, and measure the results of the behavior change effort.
2. Identify the high leverage behaviors to focus on that will provide the most strategic benefit for you and your organization.
3. Partner with you in understanding and responding to feedback.
4. Support you in engaging more productively with your stakeholders.
5. Conduct regularly scheduled coaching sessions in person or by phone, on average once a week.
6. Use assessments to measure your improvement and create further data-driven insight. As far as possible, we will use assessments that have already been completed for you, such as recent performance reviews, 360 surveys, leadership style inventories, personality profiles, career inventories and employee opinion survey results related to the client’s leadership. Additional fee-based assessments may also be used with your consent.
Confidentiality
Coaching is based on confidentiality. Confidentiality is essential to building the trust needed for an effective working relationship between the client and the coach. You will have sole discretion to share or not share feedback assessments, the content of coaching conversations and any other information from the coaching process.
What Our Clients Say…
I had the opportunity to have Dr. Allen Slade as a mentor and professional coach while attending the College of William and Mary. Dr. Slade's coaching sessions were invaluable to my personal and professional journey while at William and Mary. Dr. Slade is thoughtful, intelligent, and able to provide insight and guidance for nearly every situation. Our sessions were one on one and I always left feeling peaceful and re-invigorated about whatever situation was going on in my life. Dr. Slade provided coaching to me on my professional career path, conflict resolution, ways to work effectively in a team, and more. I would highly recommend Dr. Slade for any of your coaching needs.
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Carin Andrews Rhodes
Federal Advisory Associate at KPMG US
Allen's thoughtful approach and insights on leadership helped me to manage change and to grow as a leader. His guidance led me to a deeper level of self-reflection and knowledge. Allen is a professional with utmost integrity and commitment to his clients.
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Mark Begly
Associate Vice President for Development and Campaign Director, The College of William & Mary
Prof. Allen Slade coached me during my MBA coursework at The College of William and Mary. He helped me understand people and my profession better as an international student. Our conversations ranged across various topics, such as IT, Music, Philosophy, and more. He took efforts to connect with me and help me grow. I highly recommend Allen, as a person and as a coach.
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Gaurav Hombali
SharePoint Consultant at LANTek
Prof. Slade's instruction on leadership guided me to defining my personal leadership brand. His program activities immerse you in safe environments, where you can practice, review, and modify your leadership competency.
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Edmund Amoye
Retail Manager, Moët Hennessy USA
Without a doubt, Allen's gift is helping other people find theirs. Perhaps his greatest skill is that he not only listens, but also helps you listen to yourself as he uses his expertise to draw out your deepest values and passions, and help you connect them to more effective and more fulfilling work. Whether you are seeking more efficiency and joy in your current position or looking for an entirely different career, Allen's highly skilled guidance, paired with his genuine encouragement and authentic care to see you succeed, is a unique benefit that you can't afford to miss!
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J. Katharine Watson
Development Coordinator & Health Literacy Coordinator at Literacy for Life
I first met Allen about 2 years after selling a successful business. I was searching for my next career opportunity and found myself not sure which direction to pursue. Allen's guidance helped me develop a clear vision for my personal leadership brand through thoughtful questions, exercises and dialog. This enabled me to better target my career search and influence potential employers.
Allen’s guidance was instrumental in finding my current position. I have learned valuable skills that will be an asset for the rest of my life. I would highly recommend Allen to anyone who is seeking a to maximize their personal and professional potential.
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John Walrath
Imaging Training and Technical Support Manager at Datacolor
I came to Dr. Slade for coaching/mentoring because he was one of the greatest influences in my life. If you are considering procuring his services; I will tell you three things that you will receive. First, he will help you to visualize your goals. Second, he will lead you through a process that allows you to give a voice to your aspirations. Finally, he will help you to see how you can empower yourself through all of the hubris, naysayers and self doubts and arrive at a place that only you can equivocate, which is victory! If you are willing to let it all hang out, you are giving yourself one of the greatest gifts by having “Doc" work with you! Enjoy what will surely be a life changing experience.
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Martin Williams
Operations Manager, Shaw Industries
Dr. Slade was my LEAD guide and mentor during my MBA at the College of William & Mary. I got to learn a lot about active and intentional leadership from Dr. Slade. He made it a point to have a meaningful conversation. Coming from a different country and culture, my interactions with him were very helpful in grooming and enhancing my leadership capabilities and experience into a form relevant to the environment in the US business world. I continue to consciously use the nuggets of active listening and the power of feedback in my current leadership role and reap the benefits.
I would recommend Dr. Slade to anyone who is interested in furthering his/her leadership capabilities and execution via coaching.
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Alap Desai
Department Manager, Snyder's-Lance, Inc.
Dr. Slade is truly an expert in his field. He dedicated his teaching and coaching to integrating his experience in business with contemporary research on leadership to guide young professionals to become leaders.
I benefited from Dr. Slade’s coaching at a pivotal point in my career on three issues: clarity, courage and composure. I gained clarity through to define the nature of my career goals, unclouded by the distractions of daily life. I built courage to follow-through with my goals using tools such as centering in the moment and overcoming self-restricting barriers. Finally, Dr. Slade patiently directed my composure as I battled a major obstacle in my professionalism by helping slow my speech rate when articulating my purpose and passion.
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Arwa Zabarah
Consultant at the World Bank Group
1. Gain your commitment to solicit feedback, analyze the feedback, work to develop more effective behaviors, involve stakeholders to support desired changes, and measure the results of the behavior change effort.