Capabilities

It's with this relatively rare set of competencies that Dr. Herdman comes equipped to tackle the daunting task of providing 17 types of Coaching services in three distinct areas:

• Development and Self-Actualization Projects
  • Executive Coaching
  • Leadership Development
  • Executive Development
  • Management Development
  • Development of High Potentials
  • Development of Technical Professionals into Consultants, Partners, and/or Leaders
  • Development of Advanced-Degree Professionals into Managers and Executives
  • Goodness-of-Fit Studies
• Pre-Promotion Evaluations and Development
  • Succession Planning Evaluations and Development
  • In-Placement Evaluations and Counseling
  • Career Development Evaluations and Counseling
• Troubleshooting and Fix-It Projects
  • Derailment Prevention
  • Prematurely Plateaued Contributors
  • Unwanted-Exit Prevention
  • Relationship Breakdown Fix-Its
  • Creative Outplacement
  • Mental Health Matters

Compentencies


John W. Herdman, Ph.D., PC is uniquely qualified to work side by side with the business world's most talented contributors, coaching them to greater levels of performance and personal satisfaction.

Why?

Because at its very essence, Coaching involves working with individuals to assist them in shaping and changing key behavioral routines in a self-selected direction, targeted at personal objectives that are meaningful to the coaching candidate and important, even critical, to the future success of their careers and their lives overall.

Coaching work, therefore, demands that individuals be highly trained in helping human beings modify their perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. Only clinically trained therapists and counselors have the full complement of competencies necessary to participate in this most demanding work.

What are the core competencies necessary to be qualified to work with an individual in a Coaching capacity?

1. Advanced rapport-building skills and techniques that can quickly establish trust and confidence in the coach
2. Diagnostic acumen
3. A keen eye for non-rational behavior and the intervention methodologies required to neutralize it
4. The ability to neutralize, harness, and channel the coaching candidate's resistance to the personal change process
5. Systems thinking and causal analysis
6. Psychological maturity and a humanistic orientation
7. The ability to harness conflicts for constructive, and even creative, ends
8. High-impact and accelerated behavior-change methodologies
9. A deep understanding of motivational dynamics
10. Patience and the genuine desire to help others in a selfless way

Dr. Herdman has an advanced degree from Penn State University that developed precisely this set of competencies, not to mention his internship, other advanced training and his 28+ years of experience.

The Approach

1. In a typical Coaching assignment - say Derailment Prevention – I’ll ordinarily spend 25-35 hours over a period of 4-12 months with the candidate, as we move through our four-stage process:

2. Ideally, each assignment is a highly collaborative effort among the three constituents - Candidate, Coach, and Management. While my Coaching process is confidential, I place the control of the information flow in the hands of the candidate and proactively encourage candidates to involve management, as much as possible, in the ongoing change process. In my Coaching Methodology, gains made by the candidate will sustain only if they have created "Change Partners" in their workaday environment.

3. Partnership is an apt description of the nature of my relationship with my Coaching candidates. I am their Change Partner and am extremely active, participatory, and collegial in my involvement with my candidates. When it comes to their strengths, I am an energetic and vocal cheerleader. When it comes to their development needs and counter-productive tendencies, I am quick and candid in my effort to demonstrate how such tendencies are self-defeating and, consequently, non-rational. In this sense I am proactively confrontational, but with all the finesse and sensitivity one would expect from a highly trained and experienced behavior change expert.

4. In judging the value of my contribution to a client organization, I see performance - enhanced performance and increased satisfaction - as the bottom-line metric. Consequently, I am continually in contact with the organization (management and/or HR) to gauge the nature and extent of the candidate's change efforts. This is an essential feedback loop with which I progressively refine my Coaching intervention. Again, this reflects my underlying collaborative and partnering philosophy.

5. My specific approach to Leadership Development is grounded in the research on leadership. (There are in the neighborhood of 7,500 books and articles examining the phenomenon). For example, I know that there are four valid and effective predictors of leadership potential, so I know what data to collect and what metrics to use when doing the front-end assessment of a leader or potential leader.


Similarly, there is a finite set of leadership skills and styles that a candidate must focus on and develop. I see four different spheres within which a future leader must concentrate:

Within these spheres there are 17 component competencies that drive performance.

The abridged version? I like the view of one of Silicon Valley's CEOs and Chairmen: "The most important trait of a good leader is knowing who you are."

Or, Leadership Development occurs from the inside-out.

If you need any of the 17 types of Coaching Services that I offer, please contact me in whatever manner you find most convenient.