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Professional Coaching

"Receiving coaching from Sharon was one of the best investments I've ever made in my career. Now, as a manager, I can provide effective supervision when I need to, model good conflict resolution skills, give genuine support to my staff, and empower them to be self-starters and effective team members. What more could I ask for?" — Executive Coaching Client

Sharon Ellison offers individual coaching for any person who wants to use Powerful, Non-Defensive Communication to strengthen their professional skills, including managers, employees, entrepreneurs, other coaches, consultants, therapists, and speakers. She provides coaching for employees who are mandated because of interpersonal problems that are affecting their job performance and/or the office atmosphere. She also provides hands-on group coaching during meetings, to facilitate productive group interactions.

While professional coaches are fairly common now, Sharon has been a pioneer in the field, and provided hands-on coaching for people in education, social service, government, politics, and business for over 30 years. She is direct, honest, gentle, informal, and down-to-earth in her approach. She uses humor well and helps people to examine their own behavior without getting defensive.

Group members can also profit immensely from having coaching during meetings. Sharon can show the group how to change ongoing destructive patterns, for example, when certain people dominate the process while others remain passive, or a few individuals engage in personal power struggle. She can help groups enhance their creative problem solving and productivity.

Sharon's approach to coaching is to blend "systems analysis" with hands-on behavioral feedback. She helps individuals and groups understand the habitual patterns of interactions they are engaging in which are non-productive or conflict producing. Second, Sharon coaches the person or group by modeling and teaching how to use non-defensive communication to "interrupt" key patterns that are inefficient or causing breakdowns in work relationships. Then she demonstrated how to create new patterns that enhance individual and group performance. Interrupting habitual patterns of interacting is a powerful method of creating behavioral changes.

The coaching may consist of one session or a series of sessions. For individuals, it may focus on a single situation, a particular issue, a specific professional relationship, or a certain habit or style of interaction. For groups it may focus on a meeting regarding a particularly important or difficult issue, or on strengthening on-going group process.