Specialist coaches for STEM leaders
Leadership coaching provides senior leaders and researchers, new managers and supervisors with the outside perspective, sounding board and experienced guidance that is vital to effective leadership, but is often difficult to access from within their own organisation.
Coaching provides the opportunity to step back and assess what’s working and what needs to change. It can provide frameworks to structure and manage difficult workloads, support to help improve relationships and impact, and tools to help build resilience in the face of challenges.
Working on a one-to-one basis, we build strong and trusting partnerships underpinned by sound coaching principles and informed by our understanding of the specific challenges of leadership in a STEM context.
Internationally accredited coach
The process
1. "Chemistry" session
For coaching to be effective, the coachee (the person being coached) must feel at ease with their coach. During an initial "chemistry" session, our coach will spend time with the coachee, exploring the work they’d like to do and explaining how the partnership and process can help them achieve their goals. This is an important opportunity for the coachee to get to know their coach and to decide if they are the right person to help them in their professional development.
2. Contracting
If coachee and coach decide that they are a good fit and can work well together, they'll move seamlessly on to what is often called "contracting". Much simpler and less formal than the word suggests, contracting includes discussing and agreeing coaching goals, outcomes and measure of success, i.e. how they’ll know the goals have been achieved. It also covers other practicalities, including confidentiality.
3. Schedule coaching sessions
Next it's time to build a coaching plan. Usually this will consist of a block of coaching sessions spaced over several weeks or months. Sessions vary in duration, but as a guideline, online sessions (using Teams, Zoom etc.) usually last one hour; face-to-face sessions may be scheduled for 1 -3 hours. The frequency and duration of sessions may alter as coaching progresses.
Additional three-way meetings
If you are engaging a coach for a colleague, or your organisation is sponsoring your coaching, you might be wondering how the organisation remains involved whilst respecting confidentiality between the coach and coachee. To address this, we recommend that three-way meetings including the coachee, the organisational sponsor (which might be HR, L&D or the coachee’s line manager/director) and the coach are organised to ensure alignment of goals and to review progress. Often, three-way meetings are arranged at the start and/or end of a coaching package.
Outside of these three-way meetings, the content of the coaching sessions is confidential and not shared.
Clients include:
Experience and qualifications
STEM Leadership Academy is part of Cambridge Executive Development, a leadership development consultancy that provides training and coaching support to scientific and research-focused organisations across the UK and beyond. For twenty years we’ve been helping to build leadership capacities and performance, to enhance wellbeing and productivity and to boost engagement at work.
Our small team of coaches has extensive experience working with STEM organisations, and thousands of hours of coaching experience with companies across the UK, Europe and North America. All of our coaches are also highly qualified, holding the level 7 diploma in Executive Coaching and Leadership Mentoring (accredited by the Institute of Leadership & Management) – the highest coaching qualification in the UK. Our Lead Coaches also hold prestigious international ICF accredited coach status, as well as being qualified to use a range of psychometric tools such as DISC, StrengthsFinder® and PPA.
We will match you with the right coach for your specific circumstances, goals and personality, helping to ensure the best possible results from our coaching partnership.
For more information: please just click the button below and email us a few details about your requirements.