I’m In Love

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Coaching the Coaches

Competencies: coaching and talent management, conflict management, influence skills

Who benefits: employees and organizations

Consultant Usage: executive coaches, coaches of any kind, possibly useful in mediation, negotiation and training situations

What’s it about?  I’m in love with Tina Mertel.  She is one of the smartest people I have ever met.  I am in love with the SDI (Strength Deployment Inventory), the best personality inventory/style assessment I know of and the easiest to use effectively.  I’m in love with Personal Strengths, the coolest bunch of guys and gals to ever play together in the name of work.  And they love what they create and sell.

I am Blue enough to love them all and what they do.  Not Green enough to appreciate their history and background that they so dearly love and recite.  Red enough to want to get to the point – how do you use this stuff.  And I can go into the HUB enough to appreciate all points of view.

What you say!!?  I am talking about the color-coded Strength Deployment Inventory.  If you are a coach of any sort or a trainer of people skills you need the SDI in your personal tools inventory.  There are some famous personality instruments out there – Myers-Briggs and MMPI to name two – but none as practical and useful on a day-to-day basis as the SDI.  Want to improve your people skills?   Teach interpersonal skills?  Coach personal effectiveness?  Then you need the SDI!

And don’t get me started on conflict management.  I never could get my arms around the term “conflict management” until I took a course on the topic with the folks at PS.  For me they turned night into day.  Twenty-plus years later, the moment I find myself in a difficult situation with another person I mentally turn back to that course and what I learned.  I still don’t like conflict, but I sure am better at dealing with it.

Now back to the aforementioned Tina Mertel.  Tina is one of the cool people at PS.  She has been with them since before I was born – which is most odd since she is quite a bit younger than I am.  And she has now written a book.  An important book if you are a formal or informal coach of anyone: Meaningful Coaching: SDI in Coaching

Why should you get and read this book?  First, if you are going to coach anyone it is a good idea to know yourself – what are your tendencies?  What are your motivations?  What drives you? 

Second, even if you are not a professional coach, you should be aware of and familiar with the 11 recognized needed competencies associated with coaching.

Third, and crucially, you need to understand the underlining motivational values of the person you are coaching.  Your goal as a coach is to help a person get from point A to point B.  How can you help them get to point B if you don’t know where point A is?

Fourth, the Red in me likes short, practical books.

Way to go Tina!

Before closing I need to acknowledge the use of initials and colors without proper explanation.  For more information on PS, SDI, Reds, Blues, Greens, HUBs and a whole lot more go to PS Home.

For a short and interesting read on two above mentioned popular personality inventories, Myers-Briggs and MMPI, check out “Do You Get an ‘A’ in Personality?”, a very recent post by Elizabeth Bernstein.

Catch you later.
[tags]personal strengths, sdi, myers-briggs, mmpi, coaching, talent management, conflict management, influence skills, motivational values, envisia, envisia learning, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.