Open possibilities for your future with an executive coach
Feeling stuck? Overwhelmed with learning a new role? Wanting to improve your performance and effectiveness as a leader? Executive coaching from Fosgail can help. Our executive coaching packages are designed to provide you with the guidance and support you need to reach your full potential as a leader.
At Fosgail, we believe that investing in yourself is one of the most important things you can do for your career. Our executive coaching packages are an investment in your future, providing you with a safe space to reflect along with tools to help you succeed in your current role and advance your career.
Coaching, Mentoring, and Counseling - understanding the difference
An executive coach has many of the same qualities as a mentor or a counselor, but your relationship with your coach is distinctly different.
Mentors are those sage advisors we encounter across the many dimensions of our professional and personal lives. Some we find on our own and some we are paired with through mentoring programs or other formal channels. They have a lot of experience and we turn to them for advice. We trust that they can guide us in the right direction when we have questions or are struggling to make decisions.
Counselors have special training and licenses to assist with emotional and mental health. They listen closely to you and help you to confront and explore difficult and painful situations. While counselors may also provide guidance in handling professional relationships and situations, the emphasis of counseling is often on the diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions.
Coaches keep the focus on you. A foundational belief in coaching is that a person is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. Coaches help you tap into your natural creativity and resourcefulness to spark discovery and evoke transformation. At Fosgail, we believe that everyone has the ability to be an effective leader, and our coaching packages are designed to help you tap into your innate talents and strengths to become the best version of yourself. Whether you are looking to improve your communication skills, enhance your leadership style, or overcome specific obstacles in your professional life, we can help you get there.
Meet our accredited coach
My name is Myka Kennedy Stephens and I am an AoEC Accredited Associate Executive Coach. I have spent the past 20+ years working in and with libraries and information services. My most recent experience is as a library director and faculty member, but I also have leadership experience as editor-in-chief of an open access books press and from various roles in professional associations. I have witnessed and experienced tremendous change over my career: from the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media, to virtual reality and artificial intelligence. I have also experienced major disruptions and shifts in privacy, the economy, and public health.
My personality type balances empathy and reflectiveness with vision and imagination. This shows up in my coaching as engaged presence, active listening, genuine curiosity, deep intuition, and creative exploration. My primary goal is to create a space for your discovery that is safe, free of judgement, and affirming of you as a whole and unique person. We create this space together by agreeing on its parameters up front and revisiting them regularly. You always choose what to bring into our coaching space. I am there to help you identify the solutions you seek and discover your path toward them. I provide you with support, accountability, and affirmation every step along the way.
A metaphor I use for the coaching journey is walking a labyrinth. This ancient spiritual practice involves walking along a circular path that orbits a center, alternating moving closer and further away from that center before arriving, then returning by the same path to the place where you started. My coaching practice follows a similar rhythmic pattern: circle high above a situation to take in its size, shape, and scale, then move in closer to examine the details and discover meaning, and finally move back out again to reflect on this new learning and insight to see how it fits or changes what is known about the whole.
Along with creative techniques and metaphor, the tools I bring into my coaching practice include the Co-Active Coaching Model, the Gestalt Cycle of Experience, and the Solutions Focus approach.
What to expect from your Fosgail coaching engagement
To get started with coaching, schedule a Coaching Chemistry Session. This is an opportunity for you to get to know Myka, learn more about coaching, and establish whether or not this coaching relationship is a good fit for you. If it is, then we move forward with formalizing a contract for the coaching engagement. We offer a variety of coaching packages as well as a build-your-own custom package option. A typical coaching engagement is an average of six one-hour sessions spanning over two or three months. After every three sessions, we’ll set up a Reflection Meeting to provide an opportunity to reflect on the coaching engagement and discuss what is working well and what could be better. Coaching packages can be renewed or extended if desired, or we draw the engagement to a natural close and celebrate your accomplishments.