Refering back to our Approach model of ‘Diagnose, Motivate, Educate, Support’, we use coaching as a methodology to embed learning and change in the workplace. This phase is where our client’s greatest return on investment is provided, and where sustainable cultural change is enabled.

"If we treat people as they are,
we make them worse.
If we treat them as they ought to be,
we help them to become what they are
capable of becoming."
Goethe

This quote by Goethe, the famous philosopher, hits the nail on the head. If we are seeking change in individual’s behaviours, then we have to treat them as if they are already capable of that change. We work with the values of an organisation and introduce care through the role modelling of our coaches.

Optimus Seventh Generation operates to our principles and philosophy that if you create a culture where people can care, where they think about the long term impact of every decision or action they take, then people willingly go on a journey towards personal and organisational change.

Our coaches support the personal transformation of every individual they work with – from leadership, site or offshore managers, supervisors to deck crew, engineers, commercial and logistic support. This is the level where ideas, theories and aspirations of campaigns like Incident Free Operations or Target Zero, get personal. In order to get organisational change, every single person needs to make some small or large adjustment to reach the target. It might be a matter of doing a task a different way or it might be a significant shift in a manager’s beliefs about what is possible. Our coaches find barriers to change, and work with or alongside individuals to remove them. They also find excellence and role models, and develop strategies to transfer that excellence to other situations, people or projects. Coaches hold up an objective mirror so that individuals and teams can reflect on an external perception of a situation.

The following explores the Optimus approach to coaching as a support to embed change.

• What is coaching?
• What is the difference between an advisor, a coach and a consultant?
• Optimus Coaching Services
  • Safety coaching
  • Carbon Footprint Coaching
  • Coaching Plans
  • Approach
  • On-site Coaching Programmes
    • Workforce Coaching
    • Supervisory Coaching
    • Leadership/Executive Coaching
    • Behavioural Change Master Coach
    • Optimus Facilitator
  • Managing and training coaches
    • How do our coaches become as good as they are?
    • How do our coaches improve?
    • How do our coaches know they make a difference?
    • Can you train our staff to be coaches?
    • How do we support our coaches?

What is coaching?

In the modern context of organisations, coaching is becoming more and more important as a means of bringing about change at the level of the individual (or cellular level) – providing insights, directed learning, and shifts and growth in personal awareness that lead to changes in behaviour within the organisation (and indeed, in a person’s life as a whole). In fact, individual change is likely to lead to cultural change as the ripples spread out around them.

So what? Well, at Optimus we believe that if we target coaching at the level of a person’s attitude, beliefs, values, identity or purpose, we are more likely to get greater and greater levels of change and transformation. Some people and some organisations aren’t ready for transformation. But if your organisation is, then we have the tools and the people to take you on that journey.

• Coaching takes the client in the direction of their vision of what they want, and help them manage the change at both an individual or organisational level
• Our clients have concerns or problems around their HSE or operational performance but may not be clear exactly what the cause is or how to address it. Coaching helps our clients become really clear about their issues and how they would like to resolve them
• Coaches work in partnership with individuals to achieve the desired change. This partnership has to be based on mutual trust and respect for it to work well.
• Coaching helps clients learn and develop in the context of their work environment – this learning might be about themselves, the bigger picture of their work environment, new strategies for achieving results, better communication. More importantly coaching helps individuals learn how to learn and to look at their own thinking in relation to solving problems

Optimus Coaching Programmes are transparent, measureable and time-bound, allowing us to withdraw coaching influence as the required behaviours are embedded within your teams.

What is the difference between an advisor, a coach and a consultant?

An Advisor	Looks at legislation, rules, regulations and procedures and ensures adherence or compliance Has expertise in legislation and holds qualifications relating to their field of work Is trained in specific organisational procedures as well as generic application of legislation to the work situation
A Coach	Looks at the person with the issue and helps bring about change in the human/emotional/ skill/ performance, approach or attitude of that person Has experience and expertise in working 1:1 with people to bring about change Has received training or holds qualifications in coaching, change or counselling type approaches to working with people to solve problems
A consultant	Looks at an organisation’s culture and develops a strategy to deal with the people, business performance or cultural issues at the root of the perceived problem Has experience and expertise in change methodologies, application of psychological and business models to areas of work Holds qualifications or has received training in organisational development, change processes, human factors, people development

Optimus Coaching Services

Safety coaching

At its simplest, safety coaching is a one-to-one supportive relationship that focuses on developing skills, improving safety performance and resolving problems that could lead to incidents. Safety coaching is often focused on work, not emotional problems. However, work is influenced by our emotional state. Good safety coaches therefore tap into this undercurrent and use it to lever major improvements in performance. Safety coaching is about working with individuals to help them unlock their own potential and maximise their safety performance and the performance of their inter-dependent team members – it’s about keeping people aware and keeping them safe.

Safety coaching is a personal approach to learning about safety – and this means that a coach helps each individual to become self-aware and identify how they can change their behaviours and thinking in order to improve safety performance.

The advantage of safety coaching is that the learning takes place on the job – where and when it is most impactful. It’s about catching behaviours in action and working with immediacy. It’s about having the kind of trusting relationship that enables people to work with well-conceived and thoughtful feedback. And it’s about the ability to bring about mind-shifts so that people naturally want to change and take their own personal development on board. Our coaches work 1:1 or in small groups - the work they do is more about development from within, rather than training or instruction. In a working environment where hazards abound and safety is high priority, the relationship of the coach to the workforce is crucial in order to cut through the everyday peer pressure that colludes and resists change. The coach can take on a roving role, carry out observational audits and use the information to feed into one-to-one sessions.

A coach is not an advisor or a consultant – a coach helps people work out for themselves what is required, they do not give advice on the work itself. They can be an informal and detached sounding board, or a formal member of the organisation’s management team.

The kinds of behaviours and thinking that safety coaching can easily address are:

• Taking short-cuts
• Failure to follow procedures
• Unsafe habits
• Poor self awareness or understanding of how the mind impacts upon personal safety
• Lack of awareness of the environment – physical, emotional and psychological

Personal and Corporate Carbon Footprint Coaching

We have a team of carbon coaches/environmentalists who are trained in behavioural change. They work with individuals and organisations to bring about change in beliefs and behaviours relating to climate change and global carbon emissions. We also develop carbon emissions reduction/energy savings enhancement programmes for corporate clients in all industries. These programmes include:

• The Greenbelt Assessment Process – a Life Cycle Assessment , cradle to grave carbon footprint analysis for production processes
• Help in reducing energy usage and carbon emissions and meeting the high requirements of ISO 14044 and the UK government target of 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
• Assessing the business carbon footprint, identifying energy efficiency methods to gain cost savings and process improvements
• Working with employees on a personal level to assess their carbon footprint and identify opportunities for significant improvements or changes in lifestyle that would also lead to cost savings
• Development of corporate and personal plans with strategies for changes, including enhanced energy efficiency, investigation of new technologies, use of renewable resources, reviewing transportation and logistics options, and adoption of best practices
• Advice on offset potential for emissions and recommendations for carbon credit schemes
• Development and implementation of a sustainable change programme, supported by on-site and leadership coaching to work with beliefs, habits and levering personal change at every level
• Awareness sessions to start the behavioural change process
• Assistance in setting up in-house Green Teams
• Measurement processes to ensure compliance and beyond

What is a coaching plan and what does it do?

As part of our Implementation Solution, we describe how we will carry out a client’s project. A coaching plan in its most simple form is a description of how Optimus will deliver significant organisational or personal behavioural change, using coaching and training as a methodology. (We call our training ‘changework’, as the participants actively engage in the process of internal change, and embed those changes through coaching support in the workplace). The coaching plan serves both the client and Optimus.

Based on observation of behaviours on a client’s site, we take an overview of what we think the key behavioural and human issues are. This is what we describe as ‘current behaviour’. We look for examples of excellence and also where behaviours are causing problems. Problems are very rarely created at the level in an organisation where they manifest, so from our analysis, we identify where sustainable change needs to take place to have the maximum impact.

In order to bring about change, we need to be clear what the desired outcomes (or set of new behaviours) are. This tells us the direction the client wants to move in – we call this ‘desired behaviours’. We obtain this information through visioning sessions, use of company stated HSE policies and values, focus groups and climate surveys. And conversations with everyone we meet.

Based on the identified gap between what our client wants, and where they are currently, we develop creative and innovative strategies (which may involve organisational change, coaching solutions, changework, performance improvement techniques and sometimes systems) which bring about a gradual alignment. We show our clients how to live the change they want.

Coaches work to a goal – in this case, the desired behaviours. Without this outcome focus, coaches may observe well, give all kinds of feedback, but will be unable to take the client on the right journey because the desired direction is not known. Feedback might be useful to a client, but it is not coaching.

The coaching plan helps our coaches by giving them a specific plan, coaching outcomes, techniques for achieving those outcomes (to ensure consistency of approach), and a guide as to where to focus their efforts to bring about the biggest change.

The plan is approved by our clients to ensure:

• They agree with our diagnosis of what the current behaviours are
• We have understood where the client wants to go
• That they are prepared to invest the time – 1:1 or in small groups – to make the coaching programme hold
• That there is enough trust for us to have challenging conversations

By having a plan for organizational and behavioural change, it is possible to regularly check to see whether the strategies are working. We can use a number of measurement tools at the beginning and end of projects to see just how much change has taken place, and what there is left to do. It is important that measurement strategies are agreed with the client and form part of the coaching plan.

We always recommend a timescale for a coaching/changework programme, but this will depend on:

• The willingness of our client to undergo the real journey – this isn’t a tick box exercise
• How embedded current behaviours are
• What support there is at a board level to make the change happen
• The client’s readiness for change
• The client’s ability and commitment to continue the change long-term

Sometimes our clients present a defined timescale, eg on projects. We recommend what level of change can be expected within that timescale, and what would be ‘quick wins’ to generate enough of a change to be self generating.

Approach

Our coaching programmes combine 1:1 coaching sessions and small group coaching sessions around specific topics. Coaching happens in the context of:

• Intervention coaching
• Team coaching
• Supervisory coaching
• Leadership coaching

Despite the fact that an organisation may have developed a vision to cover the overall activity or sphere of service, each of the organisation’s departments or teams will be at different points in their journey (e.g. production, maintenance, finance, services) and may well have cultural issues that will be specific to themselves. From a ‘sports psychology ‘ perspective it is always helpful if each department or team have their own missions and short-term goals that are aligned to the overall organisational vision.

Our coaches and facilitators help teams to develop their own mission, focused short-term goals and ensure that all of the team are clear as to their roles in delivery. Plans are developed to deliver these goals and the method for goal achievement celebration is also defined and agreed.

Goals may focus on specific detrimental or dysfunctional behaviours or habits that have developed and the plan would then involve a campaign to address these over a period of several weeks (see coaching).

The participation of departmental or function management is key in development, together with ‘supervision’ from the teams and any union officials.

On-site Coaching Programmes

Optimus like to provide safety, environmental or operational excellence coaches as part of an overall change programme. Having an on-site coach means there is a dedicated person whose sole aim is to embed change and get the best out of people, without the distractions of production, operations, administration and advising activities.

Our coaches carry out different kinds of coaching, dependant on the needs of the project:

Workforce Safety Coaching (Intervention Coaching)

At the workforce level, coaching takes the form of Hazard or Intervention Coaching. To some extent the coach at this level is a guardian angel by another name – he or she coaches by exception and intervenes when there is a problem. The workforce coach:

• Creates a safe and supportive environment as a pre-requisite to garnering a safe performance from the workforce
• Ensures practical resources are in effect eg lifting gear, barriers, use of PPE, working at height equipment etc, and carries out coaching to ensure these resources are a natural part of daily life
• Establishes a need for and tests the design and effectiveness of safe procedures, safety drills, etc – coaching takes the form of looking for greater effectiveness, picking up on short-cuts, failure to follow procedures, unsafe habits etc
• Gives input or presentations in Tool box talks on topics such as task risk assessments
• Carries out observations and interventions around permits to work
• Teaches intervention skills
• Coaches reluctant individuals to intervene and risk takers and social leaders to accept interventions
• Works to get alignment between individuals and the stated safety values of the organisation

The Workforce Coach often has specific technical experience of working in a particular industry, eg offshore oil and gas, construction, petrochemical plant, etc and therefore has a robust experience of specific operations and the kinds of risks/issues that are likely to arise. Typical expertise of a Safety Coach might encompass Working at Height, Lifting Regulations, Permit to Work systems, Isolations, Confined Space, Deck operations, etc

Supervisory Safety Coaching (Performance or Business Coach)

The main aim of the coach when working at a supervisory level is to get the supervisors to behave in a way which supports safety and works towards the organisation’s stated safety vision – some organisations are aiming to have zero incidents or incident-free operations. The experienced Safety Coach works with supervisors’ beliefs and values in order to produce sustainable change. At this level there is a strong element of performance coaching, which is targeted on a specific and measurable goal(s). Usually the Supervisory Safety Coach establishes goals with supervisors and teams and helps identify and improve behavioural competencies for safety within the job. The Coach will have specific experience of working with groups and in one to one situations and therefore has experience of personal issues or group dynamics that may contribute to unsafe working or risk-taking.

Leadership Coaching

When we work with organisations to establish a safe and caring culture, we invariably uncover the root causes of endemic poor HSE performance. What often needs to change is the way leaders lead. Leadership is one of the key areas where safe behaviours are required, but where there is a lack of understanding about what needs to be done differently.

The Optimus Leadership/Executive Safety Coaches works on a 1:1 basis with organisation leaders to challenge them to influence the whole workforce through their own attitudes, beliefs and demonstrable behaviours. Coaches help leaders, through observation, coaching, feedback and mentoring.

Our Leadership/Executive Safety Coaches aim to develop a leader’s personal charisma and therefore the leader’s ability to influence, guide and shape the way people think and behave. A period of work shadowing, attending meetings and observing personal communication styles and decision-making is the basis for the 1:1 coaching programme, which extends over the life of the safety project or campaign.

Optimus Coaches are highly skilled individuals and often combine differing coaching roles within a project. At a higher level, the Coach may also be a Consultant, Trainer or a Mentor.

Behavioural Change Master Coach

These are our most experienced consultants, with expertise in behavioural change programmes. These consultants will:

• Listen to the problems experienced by our clients
• Collect data at a behavioural level throughout the organisation using climate surveys, 360° tools, focus groups, 1:1 meetings
• Establish current behavioural patterns that impact on HSE performance
• Establish with the leadership team and a cross-section of individuals from the organisation what the vision for HSE is – what are we aiming for?
• Develop a behavioural based solution to meet the clients needs – this may include leadership sessions, training or awareness sessions, 1:1 or group coaching
• Make recommendations for systems solutions to enhance compliance
• Set into place measurements of change, to ensure success is celebrated, and the change is getting the result needed

Our most senior consultants may work 1:1 with senior executives or facilitate leadership sessions.

Optimus Facilitator

An Optimus Facilitator will facilitate the change process within a group context. Our facilitators are extremely experienced in managing sessions where emotions and conflict are likely to arise. They provide a safe space to discuss controversial topics and ensure that everyone participates and feels engaged with the process. They provide structure and boundaries and ensure that the right process gets the right result. Our facilitators are equally competent at facilitating events such as senior leadership think-tanks, conferences or very large away-days.

Managing and training coaches

How do our coaches become as good as they are?

We have a talent for sniffing out the right kind of people. We look for some obvious competencies around the specific field of work, whether it is people, safety, health or environmental skills and experience. We want our coaches to have very specific qualities for dealing with people. We look for:

• Openness and acceptance
• Personal charisma
• The ability to build trusting relationships
• Personal insight, perception and wisdom
• An ability and desire to ask questions to get into their client’s world
• An ability to simultaneously see the bigger picture, yet see how the detail contributes to the whole
• The desire to teach, develop or bring about improvement
• An ability to think on their feet
• A sense of humour – it always comes in useful!

We train our coaches in Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques, so they can bring about change in their daily work. They are taught to use their own unique talents to gain leverage. The hardest and most rewarding work is to bring about change in the gap between two individuals. Our coaches are sensitive to their own ability to influence.

How do our coaches improve?

Working 1:1 is demanding. There is no down-time. Every second on the job is focused on what is going on around the coach, within the coach and between the coach and others. Sometimes our coaches might feel as if they haven’t quite hit the mark with an individual. Or there might be resistance or kick-back. The coach may have to deal with the whole range of emotional states within a single working day. They may need to mediate, deal with conflict or give challenging feedback in a way that can be heard.

Each coach has a mentor or coaching support who provides a practical and emotional safety net – the mentor ensures that the coach always has someone to talk to, to offload onto, to challenge them, to support them.

Our mentors help the coach reflect, and find their own solutions to difficulties. This then helps the coach to help their client. We believe that everyone is resourceful. And that with the right support, everyone can be compassionate, understanding and creative problem solvers.

Mentors ask our coaches the following kinds of questions:

• What did you enjoy about that piece of work?
• What did you do that went well?
• What stretched you?
• What did you learn about yourself from working with that client/workgroup/team?
• What would you like to do differently next time?
• Do you need any extra resources, support or learning?

How do our coaches know they make a difference?

Feedback is essential food in nurturing our coaches. We appreciate personal feedback, as it helps our coaches to grow, develop and improve the service we offer. We are great proponents of giving feedback and appreciation, as everyone benefits. Our coaches know they make a difference through the extraordinary feedback they get from clients

Can you train our staff to be coaches?

Because of the extensive experience we have in recruiting and training coaches, we can do the same for your organisation. We can find the right people from amongst your existing staff, and give them the training, processes and support to coach within your environment. It is harder for internal staff to switch over to coaching, issues of acceptance and credibility can sometimes get in the way even if they are excellent at coaching. However, the advantages are that your own coaches know your business and the people who work there. Putting their prejudices and expectations aside is all part of the job for a coach, no matter who they work for.

How do you support the coaches you train?

It seems a bit of a cliché to say that our strength lies in the quality and skills of our people – but we know it’s true. We want every one of our consultants, trainers and coaches to feel fully confident in the work we are doing for our clients, and to know we are doing groundbreaking work to make the right change happen. Therefore we introduced the Delivering Excellence Programme.

The programme has been designed to increase skill level for all our client-facing activities, and to enable depth of development for those roles where the ability to go deeper is essential for the success of client programmes. Ensuring consistency of approach and ability on every project we undertake is clearly the only way forward. The training gives direction on approach, procedures, techniques, concepts, as well as building skill-sets and providing a safe space for personal development. As we have always said, the inner work our people do is as important as the outer/client work. This Programme gives everyone the opportunity to do both.

It is important from a quality perspective that we record and maintain up-to-date records on the competency, skill level and experience of all our client-facing people in order to meet our clients’ own ISO standards. We expect to be audited on a frequent basis, and to be able to show that the right people are being placed into the right projects.

Executive Coaching/ Mentoring for Senior Management

To deliver the positive changes an organisation is looking for will take strong and consistent leadership from the senior executive. Congruence between what you say (including the context that tonality and body language can place the message in) with what you do is critical to making the change work. A leader’s true beliefs and values will come to the surface from time to time (often when under pressure), sometimes to the surprise of the leader themselves.

We firmly believe that to understand and bring about change in others, you have to first understand and change yourself. Optimus employs a team of highly experienced coaches, counsellors and mentors who provide challenging one-to-one sessions for senior managers if they need or want support.

More details on the type of expected outcomes can be provided if required.

Strategic Coaching For Executive Leaders and Senior Catalysts Of Change

- Coaching programmes for senior staff involved in visioning and implementing major change

This is a professional development programme for Executives, Directors and Senior Catalysts of Change who want to bring about changes in people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours at the point where it makes a difference – face to face with the people in their care. Strategic coaching gives you the HOW of engaging hearts and minds and being able to make a real difference. It addresses personal impact and influence, and develops a sense of the extraordinary within you in order to inspire and lead others. This coaching programme is deeply challenging - to understand and bring about change in others, you as a leader have to understand and change yourself.

As a leader, you get the opportunity to focus on:

• The health and longevity of your organisation
• Integrating personal and organisational objectives
• Setting an empowering vision that gets everyone on board
• Developing a charismatic leadership style
• How you personally affect or limit their organisation’s growth and direction
• How your language creates and influences the beliefs of the organisation
• Creating an organisation that can live with and move through change
• Personal accountability to yourself, your employees and the stakeholders within a challenging political environment
• Understanding the your issues around power, honesty and integrity within the framework of the organisation – you’ll learn to take the politics out and put the people back in