University of Tasmania, Australia

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Coaching and Consultancy

UTAS Home › Human Resources › Performance and Career Development  › Coaching and Consultancy

Coaching provides the opportunity for you as a senior staff member to enhance your skills, knowledge and insight in specific areas where you have limited experience or when you are faced with a particularly challenging issue or situation.

Coaching is done in real time, in a one-to-one situation with a coach that has been individually chosen for your personal and learning styles as well as your specific needs at that time.

There are two types of coaching:

Traditional Coaching - a one-to-one interaction to help the leader develop a new functional competence. Traditional coaching can be seen as a personalised form of training. It is appropriate for the development of new skills such as:

  • making a presentation to a challenging audience
  • writing a business plan
  • learning to read financial reports

Transformational Coaching - where the coach helps the individual to find workable outcomes to new or challenging situations. Examples of situations where transformational coaching might be employed include supporting a leader to:

  • create a vision for a school
  • work better with challenging peers
  • pull away from operational work
  • work with greater emotional intelligence

Who is Involved?

As part of your Performance and Career Development, please seek approval from your manager prior to engaging a coach. The strategic HR team, in conjunction with yourself and your manager, can help identify whether coaching is the most effective way to meet your development needs. If so, a coach will be identified from our pool of consultant coaches in consultation with yourself and your manager.

Your coach will work with you to help develop a personalised coaching plan. This will involve a series of one-to-one meetings, and may also include use of other techniques such as personality profiling, 360-degree feedback, and self-reflection.

You can expect:

  • Short intensive periods of one-to-one contact with your coach - usually away from the workplace;
  • An entirely personalised development activity, designed specifically around you and your needs;
  • A totally confidential environment where issues can be explored in greater depth, providing the opportunity for a deeper level of personal awareness;
  • No artificial work to do. Coaching will use real work issues as the learning material;
  • We have developed a pool of consultant coaches to ensure that we can meet the needs of our leaders. This lists some of the coaches we use regularly, and gives brief information about them and their expertise. The list is not exhaustive, and many factors will influence the choice of coach that will be made for you.

Our Coaches

We have developed a pool of consultant coaches to ensure that we can meet the needs of our leaders. This lists some of the coaches we use regularly, and gives brief information about them and their expertise. The list is not exhaustive, and many factors will influence the choice of coach that will be made for you.

Humphrey Armstrong

Humphrey is an Organisational Psychologist who has extensive experience working with academics and professional service providers (accountants, lawyers, and engineers) to enhance their personal effectiveness and ability to enjoy what they do. He has worked with senior academics staff at UNSW, USQ, University of Sydney and the University of Wollongong.
He is an adjunct Faculty Member with the Australian School of Business at UNSW and is a co-author of Developing Management Skills (3rd edition) published by Pearson Education Australia in 2005

Jane Lowther

Jane has a background in organisational development in organisational development and executive development at CSIRO. Currently she is a facilitator and coach for senior management development programs including at  IMD, Lausanne. She is currently coaching senior academic leaders across a range of Universities and research organisations.
Her coaching strengths are to assist clients to lead effectively in complex organisational systems especially in times of major change and transition. She works to link personal insight and development with skills for effectively leading teams and larger organisational groups. Jane specialises in working with academic and research leaders.

Pamela Lovell

Based in Hobart, Pamela is an Organisational Development consultant with 17 years’ experience. She coaches executives and senior teams. With a background in counselling, Pamela specialises in communication and relationships as they relate to leadership, working with difficult situations and teams. Pamela has experience in both the public and private sector. She holds Masters Degrees from Western Michigan University and the University of Tasmania.

Barbara Hingston

Barbara mentors senior executives and leaders in government, non-government and community and educational organisations.  This work is informed by her significant non-executive portfolio career as Board Director of health, mental health and social and community services, her former experience as a senior executive in commonwealth government and in the non-government sector and as an allied health manager and counselling practitioner in complex trauma service settings including family violence and sexual assault.

As an 'external', independent trusted advisor, Barbara applies mentoring, coaching and advisory strategies that support a person to build capability and resilience in meeting work based challenges and opportunities.  These may be professional, inter and intra-personal.  It includes building self-knowledge as well as knowledge of self in relation to others; and to the organisational culteral context. 

Barbara also consults to Boards, and organisational teams in leadership, strategy and governance, stakeholder engagement and performance management.  She holds tertiary level qualifications in Administration and Social Work, as well as qualifications in Company Directorship, Executive and Positive Psychology Coaching and is a dual resident of Hobart and Melbourne.

Karen Van Druten

Karen has an established track record as a successful business coach for executives and managers across many industry sectors. This has included three inaugural coaching programs designed & facilitated by Karen. Her portfolio of clients includes several universities where she has provided advice and support to over 100 academic and general staff. Using a solution-based, goal setting approach participants achieve outcomes in a broad spectrum of work pursuits from academic writing, leadership development, change projects, performance, communications, career direction to administration.

John Wood

John is a registered Psychologist, with a background in the corporate sector as an organisational development and HR specialist, works extensively as an executive coach, specialising in leadership development. He is experienced in the academic environment. He has an ability to both look at the challenge and work through strategies, and also to assist the leader consider the personal developmental challenge the difficult situation presents and to support learning and new thinking.

Consultancy

Consultancy is available to enable senior leaders to achieve school-based projects or plans which may include strategic planning, teambuilding, committee and management structures and processes with the school or conflict resolution.

Contact

As part of your Performance and Career Development, please seek funding approval from your manager and Head of Budget Centre prior to engaging a coach. Advice on which coach may be appropriate for your circumstances is available through the HR team. Please contact your HR Business Partner in the first instance.