he Wunderlin Company provides executive coaching to heads of organizations and their senior- level managers. We help individuals identify particular areas that need improvement, challenge them to improve in measurable ways, and provide support along the way. We believe that a good coaching relationship has the power to increase your range of motion, broaden your repertoire of responses, and help you gain perspective on your own experiences. Our coaching model is based upon three foundational concepts:

Diagnose: A foundation of rich and objective data is critical to a successful coaching experience. We believe our clients must know where they are now in order to know where they want to be in the future. They need to know where they excel and where they struggle. We collect data from a number of different sources including MBTI, 360-degree assessments, and interviews.

Plan: We help the individuals we coach s-t-r-e-t-c-h beyond their self-perceived restraints. We work with them to create a personal development plan with specific action steps and goals for improving. This plan comes directly from the feedback executives receive during the diagnosis phase.

Coach: We know that an effective coach both supports and challenges clients. This combination is key to maintaining motivation to learn and grow. As a coach, we provide encouragement, accountability, direct and indirect feedback, and a secure place to strategize about how to handle issues and opportunities. Here's how one of our clients describes how he benefits from executive coaching...

“Everyone has room for improvement and having Karen as my coach has allowed me to more clearly understand what I need to improve and how to go about it. I look forward to our weekly calls and find them invaluable for reporting progress, discussing issues, and strategizing about future efforts.”

The Always Room for Improvement and Get Better Results from Difficult Conversations issues of our newsletters feature a number of articles on Coaching. Click on the article title to read it:

There's Always Room for Improvement
Look to a Coach to Provide a Foundation for Change
Coaches Are in Demand; The Trick Though, Is Knowing How to Use Them
360-Degree Feedback: A Powerful Enhancement to the Coaching Process
Might You Want to Be a Coach Yourself?
There's Nothing Easy About Difficult Conversations
Get Better Results From Difficult Conversations

Click below to find out more about our favorite books on coaching:

Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart by Mary Beth O’Neill
The Heart of Coaching: Using Transformational Coaching to Create a High-Performance Culture-Revised Edition by Thomas G. Crane
Masterful Coaching: Extraordinary Results by Impacting People and the Way They Think and Work Together by Robert Hargrove
The Handbook of Coaching: A Comprehensive Resource Guide for Managers, Executives, Consultants, and HR>, and HR by Frederic M. Hudson
The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development edited by McCauley, Moxley, and Van Velsor
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Stone, Patton, Heen, and Fisher
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Fisher, Ury, and Patton
How the Way WE Talk Can Change the Way We Work by Kegan and Lahey
The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Goleman, McKee, and Boyatzis
The Art of Speed Reading People by Barron-Tieger and Tieger

Click below to access the coaching tools we mentioned in our newsletters:

Have a successful conversation about what happened:
www.actiondesign.com/resources/case_writing.htm

Increase your feelings vocabulary

Other relevant links include:
Vantage Partners, the consulting arm of Difficult Conversation's authors: www.vantagepartners.com/new/feature/index.html
Foundations for Change - download a copy of the Executive Coaching Handbook:
http://www.theexecutivecoachingforum.com/