I'm pretty excited about this upcoming webinar from Nonprofit Quarterly- Beyond Executive Coaching: How Coaching Can Develop the Next Generation of Leadership and Accelerate Organization Change. Coaching isn't just for executives! It's a really effective tool for leaders at all levels of your organization. In fact, it can be especially effective for people in new positions within your organization, or with teams who need support in working towards a common goal.

One of my current coaching clients is new to his position. He has more managerial responsibility than he's had in the past and he wants to make sure he moves his new team forward strategically and with confidence. He is incredibly competent and a great fit for the role, so he's just really looking for guidance, someone to ask him the right questions and encourage him to take the next steps. This is a great use of coaching that has benefits that will ripple throughout the organization.

I'm also coaching with a group of female employees who are working in a predominantly male industry. They are experiencing both overt and implicit forms of sexism, and when it all adds up, it's frustrating, exhausting, and defeating. I am coaching them as a team to draw on the confidence that they already have and claim their power. They have a vision of having their confidence vibrate through the walls of their organization so that no one is confused about who runs the place. Team coaching can really have huge impacts for the whole organization.

If you have been thinking about coaching for yourself, an employee, or a team within your organization, contact me! I'd love to talk about the opportunities with you. If you still aren't sure, sign up for this July 18th webinar from Nonprofit Quarterly to learn more.

At the 2018 Nonprofit Essentials Conference, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite topics. It's my experience that when most people think of leading from the middle, they think about how to manage up and down: providing direction and guidance to people who report to them and influencing the people they report to. There are certainly challenges of leading from that position and I totally get the desire to want to know what to do if you find yourself there. But, I actually think there is a completely different way to think about leading from the middle that can help you not just with the people that you work with directly, but about your role within the organization and with your organization's partners. If you think of your role in a networked way, and think of yourself less like a funnel between two parts of the organization and more like a hub in interconnected system, you open your perspective and perception of what is required of you from your position. So, if you are going to think of yourself in this way, what do you need to know? What skills do you need to have? How do you make change from this position? I'll be talking about all of this and more at the Nonprofit Essentials Conference! Register for the conference and stop by my session to learn more.