Coach Spotlight: Coach Jeff

We are excited to welcome Jeff to the BOLDLY Coach Spotlight! As the Managing Director of a Shanghai-based consulting firm, Jeff has spent over 20 years helping clients enhance team effectiveness and performance through improved collaboration. With extensive experience as a Chinese-speaking executive coach, coaching supervisor, and dialogue facilitator, Jeff has a deep commitment to developing the potential of senior leaders, especially female leaders, across diverse industries. Let’s begin!

1) After growing up in America, you've lived in Asia for over 30 years.  What is your favourite aspect of Asian culture?

Chinese food!, especially Sichuanese food. ☺  After that, practicing taichi.

2) Favorite getaway close to home?

Tong Lu, a small, quiet village about a 2-hour train ride from Shanghai.

3) You are involved with several coaching organisations, such as the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the Asia/Pacific Coaching Alliance (APAC), and New Ventures West.  How do these certifications and affiliations enhance your coaching practice and benefit those you are coaching? 

Having the “stamp of approval” of internationally or regionally-recognized coaching organizations, and coach training organizations, assures client organizations that the individuals “approved” bring a solid level of professionalism to the work.  Coachees benefit from the valuable support and challenge such coaches bring to the work.

4) You're also co-editor of the book Leadership Coaching in China.  Could you highlight any key insights or trends in leadership coaching specific to the Chinese context that you have observed?

While many more people, in recent years, are receiving quality coach training and are beginning to coach in China, it is also true that the majority of organizational clients are foreign multinational firms rather than local firms.  This suggests that the value of coaching is seen differently in “western” cultures than it is in Chinese culture. 

5) Could you share with us how your multicultural background, having lived in Asia for over 30 years and worked with both Chinese and European firms, informs your coaching style within diverse leadership teams?

Having interacted with a variety of individuals and teams in Asia over time, I realize that differences in national and organizational culture, personality, and gender all affect how a diverse team interacts.  Given this, I always seek to interview team members individually before any engagement, to build rapport and acquire a sense of which issues are important, even sensitive.  I then try to design the team coaching program with these issues in mind, and to interact with appropriate sensitivity to the issues, personalities and cultures “in the room” during the program.

6) One of your sub-specialties is coaching female senior leaders.  What are some of the unique challenges they face, and can you share some strategies or approaches you employ to help them face these challenges effectively?

Generally speaking, the women leaders I coach face not only work performance pressures, but also, often, pressures from managing family responsibilities.  In short, they are “juggling a lot of balls” at any one time.  These leaders also tend to have very high standards and put a lot of pressure on themselves to meet those standards. 

My approach normally involves asking questions to help the leader clarify both the variety and priority of the challenges at hand, plus the options available to ease the pressure of such challenges. 

7) You also work with teams, supporting them to collaborate more effectively, leading to better performance. What is your key takeaway for a company considering engaging with a coach for one or more of their teams?

Given that individual team members have different responsibilities, backgrounds, personalities, and strengths, it is impossible for conflicts not to happen!  A coach can support the team to recognize why conflicts are happening and what they might do to mitigate these and realize the fruits of more effective collaboration.

8) Which assessment certifications are you accredited in, and which do you find the most useful when aligning with coaching goals?  

I’m accredited in a number of quality assessment tools, to include the Leadership Circle Profile, the Hogan Assessment, and the Harrison Assessment.  Each has its own way of looking at leadership competencies.  Whichever of these tools the client chooses, I use the results as a springboard to deeper discussion. 

9) In your experience, what are some of the most significant benefits that executives derive from coaching, both personally and professionally?

One of the pieces of feedback I get most often is that the leader has gained great value from having a trusted partner with whom she or he can discuss sensitive personal or organizational information.  Another benefit, for those executives who’ve worked to improve their interpersonal skills in particular, tends to be that family members, as well as work colleagues, find the client more enjoyable to interact with.

10) Lastly, can you please share (without any identifying information) a coaching engagement that has made a big impact on you as a coach, and either changed or cemented parts of your practice?

Sure.  I used to think that, as a coach, I should not share with clients any area of development that I myself was working on.  In short, I didn’t want to be perceived as “weak”, or insufficiently experienced, or turning the coaching “spotlight” on myself.

In one engagement, however, I decided to experiment with a different approach.  When the client mentioned a challenging issue that I was also wrestling with, I admitted my own frustration with the issue.  The client couldn’t have been more surprised, then relieved!  We both laughed, and subsequently “worked” the issue to the client’s satisfaction.  Since then, while I never begin an engagement by sharing a personal development challenge, I don’t refrain from sharing one if I think that it might “normalize” a client’s concern or strengthen the coaching relationship.

Thank you so much for joining us Coach Jeff and for all the insights you shared! To book a coaching chemistry session with Coach Jeff, or to learn more about the full range of services BOLDLY has to offer, contact connect@boldly.app

About the Author:

Lisa Singh is an Australian, living with her family in the beautiful South Pacific. As Coach Business Partner Lead for BOLDLY, Lisa's team screen and onboard coaches onto our global marketplace, then enable the matching and engagement process so that coaches can do what they do best: deliver exceptional coaching journeys to our coachees. In her role with BOLDLY she loves meeting top coaches and promoting their work for a win:win. Connect with Lisa here.