Newsroom - Horizons Unlimited

Network Central Mentoring Program 2013 is about to commence

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -1000

LAST CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Network Central Mentor Program will commence in May 2013 and run for 6 months. The program caters for up to 25 pairs of mentors and mentees. A number of high calibre executives volunteer their time to support and develop less-experienced women. Mentors and mentees are matched based on written applications and then trained by Melissa Richardson of Horizons Unlimited before embarking on their six-month relationship. Participation requires availability for three two-hour group workshops and around 10 mentor-mentee pair meetings.

Click here for a Program Overview, and email Kim McGuinness: kim@networkcentral.com.au for application forms. Applications close at the end of March, so be quick - there are just a few places left.

Horizons Unlimited joins forces with Executive Central

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -1000

We are delighted to announce that we are joining forces with Executive Central Group (ECG), giving us a greater breadth of services to offer to our clients, as well as access to a national team of very senior, experienced consultants to help us deliver larger and more complex projects. ECG has a depth of offering across Leadership, Sales & Marketing and Strategy as well as a specialist practice supporting female executives. This fits well with and is complementary to our own focus on executive coaching, team coaching and our coaching & mentoring consultancy. We are excited about the growth and expansion opportunities this will provide for us and our clients.

From a practical perspective, our executive coaching work will be delivered under the Executive Central banner, whilst the coaching and mentoring consultancy work will continue to be delivered under the Horizons Unlimited brand, in conjunction with ECG. So, business as usual, just some changes in the way proposals, invoices and documents will look. You will continue to be looked after by Graham and Melissa & the team in the same way as always, but we are looking forward to sharing with you the wider range of services we can now offer.

ECG has four practice streams: Leadership, Sales, Strategy and Women. For more about services offered under these streams, click here.

Observations and Learning from the European Mentoring and Coaching Conference

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -1000

We recently attended the European Mentoring and Coaching Conference in Bilbao, Spain, and came away with a sense that Australia is keeping pace with global best practice. But we also discovered there were things to be learned from the European experience and the keynote speakers.

Australian Academia Needs to Embrace Mentoring

Whilst Australian practice has kept pace with the Europeans, the conference highlighted to us that the UK in particular are taking a leadership role in academic work. British Universities have embraced mentoring as well as coaching and are actively researching to create new best practice, and providing accredited training to expand the base of skilled mentors and mentoring trainers. Australian Universities must follow this lead if we are to keep pace and find solutions for workplace issues unique to this continent.

Should Australian Mentoring Shift to a Sponsorship Model?

Paul Stokes, acting director of the coaching and mentoring research unit at Sheffield business school in the UK, led a session on “Reframing Mentoring”. In Britain mentoring has historically followed a developmental model, focused on developing an individual’s skills as opposed to the American sponsorship model, which concentrates on driving career progression through introductions and opportunity creation. During a lively discussion, it was concluded that after 20 years of developmental style mentoring for women, gender imbalances remain rife in the UK. Many believe that Britain needs to adopt a sponsorship style - pulling women up by the bootstraps and getting them into the boardrooms and golf clubs where power resides. We note with interest that Women on Boards has launched in the UK, and wish them well.

Australia also leans toward a developmental mentoring model and we tend to agree with the assessment that this needs to change to make mentoring more effective in building diversity. Our next blog will focus on this subject and provide an Australian perspective on how mentoring can and should evolve.

Too Many Questions. Not Enough Time to Think.

Nancy Kline, President of Time To Think, a UK based international coaching and leadership-development company, gave a mesmerizing keynote speech. Kline believes strongly that coaches tend to focus too much on questions and too little on listening. Questions, she says, are always leading and burdened by the coach’s own agenda. A good coach has the skill to allow individuals to think independently, and reach their own conclusions without the "guidance" of questions. We agree wholeheartedly.

Who is Looking After Your HR People?

Keynote speaker Dr. Roberto Luna-Arocas Roberto, President of AECOP-EMCC Spain and Professor in the Department of Business Management, Faculty of Economy at the University of Valencia, Spain, had some interesting observations on the impact of the weak European economy in the workplace. One reflection that struck a chord for us was the effect of ongoing staff cuts on the HR team so often called upon to do the dirty work. More needs to be done, he says, to support HR: training them to manage redundancies and especially providing support and counseling post-redundancies. Worth considering!

Online Mentoring Program For Women To Stem Mining Industry Skills Shortages

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -1000

An alliance of mining industry leaders and the federal government has announced that an online mentoring program will soon be made available for women working in remote mining, oil and gas projects. Horizons Unlimited are excited to be developing the program design and online training materials for mentors and mentorees.

With the mining industry plagued by skills shortages, the Australian Women in Resources Alliance [AWRA*] has been established to advance the attraction and retention of women in the sector. Mentoring has been acknowledged as an important intervention to address the barriers women face in resource and mining roles.

Traditional mentoring programs are difficult to implement in an industry noted for remote locations and non-traditional work hours. By establishing an e-mentoring program the Alliance can broaden the project to embrace all women working in the sector.

E-mentoring may be worth considering if your company or industry faces geographic or time barriers that make traditional mentoring programs difficult to implement. If you are interested in finding out more about e-mentoring please contact us.

* The AWRA is driven by the industry employer group Australian Mines and Metals Association [AMMA], led by a committee of representatives from various industry bodies and employers. This project/event/product/publication is sponsored/funded/supported by the Australian Government through the National Resources Sector Workforce Strategy

This month's articles & books

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -1000

Does coaching transform coaches?
This paper, in the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring (Vol. 10, Number 2, August 2012), presents the results of a case-study of an internal coaching intervention aimed at building leadership capacity in a large production company in India. In the study, managers acting as internal coaches reported improvement in their interpersonal skills, listening ability, confidence level, work-life balance and visioning.

The study supports our view that teaching managers coaching and mentoring skills and supporting them to practise and develop mastery with people other than their own direct reports, helps them to build leadership capacity. The Coaching Leader is one of Daniel Goleman's six leadership styles, and arguably, one of the most important from the perspective of the needs and wellbeing of the direct report.

To read the original article, click here.

On Being a Supervisee
Written for coaches to optimise the outcomes of their supervision relationship, this book is an interesting read for external coaches or internal coaches who wish to develop their coaching mastery. It is now commonly accepted that coaches should have regular "supervision" to offer an account of their work, reflect on it, receive feedback and guidance if appropriate. Supervision not only supports the professional development of coaches, it also helps to safeguard the welfare and qulaity of work for clients.

The book emphasises the importance of reflection. It presents a six-level model of reflection that is particularly useful, as well as a host of helpful appendices.

Carroll, M. and Gilbert, M.C. (2011) On Being a Supervisee (3rd Ed.) Kew: PsychOz Publications.

For other book references on coaching and mentoring, click here.

Mentoring put squarely on the development agenda at HRIZON 2012

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -1000

We have long been of the view that mentoring is treated as a poor cousin of coaching in Australia. It was great to see mentoring receiving the focus it deserves at HRIZON World Congress in Melbourne last week. David Clutterbuck and I had a full workshop on Friday - we spent a whole day exploring strategies for how to make a coaching and mentoring culture stick in organisations. AHRI Chairman, Peter Wilson, launched his new book, Make Mentoring Work, and ran a workshop on this topic.

David Clutterbuck named amongst UK's most infuential in HR

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -1000

Our partner David Clutterbuck was recently ranked 15th in this year's list of top 25 Most Influential UK Thinkers in HR.

Clutterbuck is lauded for his influence in the field of mentoring and coaching, with voters mentioning his simple and easy-to-understand delivery. “He is fascinating on ‘dialogue’,” says one, while another loves his “humour and his down-to-earth approach on HR-related matters”.

New Wellbeing Program

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -1000

Are your people tired and stressed? Are they trying, unsuccessfully, to do more with less?

We have developed a new program to help people sustain their energy for peak performance and work satisfaction. Based on the work of Loehr & Schwartz (The Energy Project) and others, this training workshop is presented by Karen Reilly & Melissa Richardson (Horizons Unlimited) and Susie Burrell (dietitian/ nutritionist) of Channel 7's Sunrise.

The workshop covers physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy and spitirual energy, and consists of lectures and exercises, interspersed with light exercise and one-on-one coaching. A truly unique experience. To find out more about running this program in your organisation, contact us and we will send you an overview of the course.