Services

Owning and leading businesses is a tough and at times lonely undertaking, and I have a real passion for getting alongside executives and business owners to help them along the journey.  The coaching process I use has been developed by myself from both Evercoach and Global Team Coaching Institute training, years of experience, and reading of business books from authors such as Patrick Lencioni, Simon Sinek, and Jim Collins. 

The coaching journey starts with an understanding of the coachee’s longer term personal aims and aspirations, their current challenges, and we celebrate the amazing things that they should be grateful for along the way.

During each session we build a strategic plan along with documenting their personal goals and aspirations from both a short term and longer term perspective.

Sessions generally follow this format:

We develop a coaching agreement and start each session with an update on what has been going on in their lives outside of work - after all, this is why most of us are in business.

We identify key focus areas, and come up with specific actions within each focus area, some of which are worked on before the next session.

Sessions are ended with a review of the key actions to focus on for the next few weeks, and a review of how the session went and what we could both do better.

A key focus of our coaching sessions is a forward focus - where are we going and how do we get there?

I prefer to meet with clients in my office for individual coaching, as this gets them away from their normal work environments and allows them to focus on the bigger picture direction and strategy, rather than daily operational issues.

If you are interested in finding out more about the value that Lovegrove executive and business coaching could have for you, please give me a call now …… I would love to have a no obligation chat with you.

After coaching many business owners and leaders over the past few years I have been conscious that to be really successful an owner/leader needs a high performing team around them.  In many businesses this is not the case, so I recently upskilled myself in Leadership Team Coaching - having completed both the Gateway and Practitioner level programmes delivered by the Global Team Coaching Institute.  Their programmes are based on over 30 years of research into developing high performing teams, using team coaching models developed by Professor Peter Hawkins and Professor David Clutterbuck.

5 Disciplines of Highly Effective Teams and Boards

The Systemic Team Coaching 5 Disciplines model helps teams identify their key stakeholders, and investigates how well they:

• Understand their stakeholders’ expectations and requirements - Commissioning

• Understand their individual and team roles and responsibilities, including their collective vision and purpose - Clarifying

• Work together as a team to deliver the team vision and purpose - Co-creating

• Are engaged with their stakeholders - Connecting, and

• Are continually learning and sharing ideas as a team - Core Learning

The team coaching process involves Scoping, Inquiry, Development, Execution, and Review phases, including talking to and surveying each of their stakeholder groups to see how well the team performs in each of the areas above from that particular stakeholder’s perspective.

The team then meets with me to review this information and agree on a coaching and development plan for the next 6 to 9 months to improve their performance in the agreed areas.  I would then work with the team both collectively and individually on making the desired improvements sustainably so they continue after the coaching programme is complete.

If you have a team that is not performing to their potential, give me a call to discuss how I could help create them into a high valued adding team that will take your business to the next level. 

An integral part of leading or owning a successful business is having a current and relevant Strategic Business Plan with specific strategic actions under key focus areas.  I work with clients and their teams on developing or updating their Strategic Business Plan so that it is reviewed regularly and becomes part of their everyday decision making.

This includes the development of an inspirational vision and purpose, along with the business owner's personal long term goals and aspirations.

During coaching and planning sessions we monitor the progress of their strategic direction, ensuring objectives are achieved and operational changes are made early where targets are not being met.

Over the years of working on this with clients, I am still amazed at how often most of the objectives are far exceeded once these are documented, and plans put in place to make them happen.

Ever since my third professional year engineering project, I have had a passion for always improving.  I believe that no matter how good we are, there is always a better way - a trait that frustrates those I live with!

I first started being directly exposed to lean manufacturing concepts back in 2002 when I attended my first “lean” workshop. Since then I have read numerous books, visited many sites, and attended several training courses on lean manufacturing - much of which is based on the “Toyota Way”.

I have led change initiatives involving the application of lean manufacturing tools into a number of industries including engineering jobbing and manufacturing, joinery, boat building, industrial maintenance, sawmilling, truck and trailer manufacture, and forestry equipment design and manufacture.

The identification of waste including product flow is where I start, with coaching and training the teams to identify waste in their daily operations and work on small projects to eliminate this waste. I set up Continuous Improvement (CI) teams with a representation across the business, to lead a continuous improvement culture, so that every person is looking for those few seconds they could save each hour and day. Workshops where we use Lego to demonstrate how much faster you can go by removing waste, having product ready when needed, minimising movement and transport, planning the workflow, and having clear instructions. Most teams are blown away by how much faster they can go when they get all these things right.

Lego Workshop

I encourage the use of an electronic project planning board like Trello or MS Planner, so team members from across the business can see where improvement ideas are at, and track their progress.

Visual ideas boards for capturing ideas, and displaying results are used to get the team’s buy-in and increase their awareness of the results of the small improvements made every day.

If you would like help in getting your entire team to be looking for waste and how to make their jobs more productive, then give me a call now for a no obligation discussion.

Throughout my career, both as an engineer, then later in management roles, I have loved managing projects.  A project is something that has a beginning, some resources, an expected outcome, and a timeframe.  It usually has several interlinked or dependent tasks, which require collaboration from a number of people in different organisations.

For larger projects, this takes excellent communication, organisation, and the ability to get alongside people.

Over the years I have managed a large variety of projects with successful outcomes, including maintenance shutdowns of large industrial facilities, and the design and construction of a large manufacturing facility which included a large blasting booth, multiple paint booths, and heavy lifting gantries for equipment assembly.

If you have a project that needs project management expertise to initiate, scope, plan, estimate cost and time, create a project schedule, manage costs and budget, manage risk, contracts and communications, close out, and review the learnings, then give me a call to see how I could assist you to deliver a successful project.