Mentoring the Mentors: SJU Program Hones Executive Coaching Skills

Active listening, providing useful feedback, and empowering others are skills that all leaders and managers should develop. The Coaching Leader Program (CLP) at Saint Joseph’s University strives to teach just that.

Saint Joseph’s has collaborated with GroupWorks Consulting, LLC to create a program that is structured to develop and curate research-based practices and teaching executives and students. The program is designed for three groups: leaders and managers who want to hone their coaching skills in the workplace, practicing coaches who want to deepen their skills and gain certifications, and those new looking to begin to practice executive coaching

Kim Gaber, a consultant with Development Dimensions International near Pittsburgh, joined the program to sharpen her executive coaching and mentorship skills.

“The faculty were knowledgeable, patient, and supportive,” Gaber says. “The cohort not only became my peer coaches, but we all found meaningful friendships in each other as well.”

The program, which is held on SJU’s campus over the course of five three-day sessions, teaches diverse models and techniques, rather than focusing on a single method of coaching, to prepare participants to thrive in a wide variety of situations and with different clients. Gaber says that the approach shifted her mindset.

“I see my role as a consultant differently now,” she says. “When I am coaching, the pressure to have the ‘right’ answers is off; the CLP provided theories and models that filled up my toolkit.”