After 20 years of leading change in organizations, I went back to school. I studied how individuals and teams pursue goals at work, and how to improve coaching in the workplace. What I learned blew me away, and made me realize how much more successful I could have been earlier in my career, had I known how to connect coaching and 'goal pursuit' at work.
The good news is that you don't have to go through seven years of grad school to learn these insights. I have built the models and tested them in the workplace for you. I created WORKING THEORY so that Leaders like you would have access to research, tools, training, and support that will allow you to build your people, build your teams, and build your business.
My programs will push you to become a better leader AND a better coach. When you work with us, my team and I will support you on your journey, keep you accountable, and be your loudest (and proudest) cheerleader along the way.
But the real question is: Are you ready for this? Are you ready to do the work? Because there are no shortcuts to becoming a great coach, only smarter ways of coaching.
So what are you waiting for? It’s your time. Join us on this journey.
Dr. Paul Snowdon
Why do this? Why focus a company on improving workplace coaching and team effectiveness? Because so many people go to work hating their job. Work could (and should) allow each person the opportunity to be creative, solve problems, and have meaningful relationships. Yet for too many people it is the exact opposite. According to a 2019 Gallup Poll only 35% of the US workforce was actively engaged at work, 13% were actively disengaged, and the remaining 52% were 'not engaged'. Think about that. Over half of the US workforce is operating at a sub-optimal level of engagement. What do you think that means in terms of productivity, quality of life, quality of relationships, or any other measure that you want to put against it? From our point of view, it's a tragedy that so many people aren't given the means, or opportunity, to be fully engaged at work. The person suffers, the business suffers, and society suffers.
As leaders, we can do better. We must do better. And we will.
In case you haven't clicked on the About Us tab, Working Theory is a firm focused on workplace coaching and team effectiveness. But we approach this from a process engineering point of view. We use research to understand workplace coaching at a level much deeper, and then use these insights to design practical solutions to real workplace problems. By uncovering how coaching works, and designing intelligent solutions to help managers create high performing teams, we believe that we can help make our workplaces more engaging, more creative, with more effective personal relationships, and higher performance. All of which creates incredible business results for our clients.
So what makes us tick? Seeing our clients be successful, and knowing that we had a small hand in it.
Thanks! We do too...and to let you in on a bit of insider knowledge, our company name, WORKING THEORY, wasn't chosen by chance. It speaks to how we see the world, how we approach our work, and how we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace.
Working Theory can be thought of on multiple levels.
A 'working theory' is a hypothesis, or a mental model that we have about how the system we are interested in actually works. To make something better, we need to take the various pictures we have in our head, and be able to describe them with words, arrows, graphics etc... We need to be able to actually show the structures and patterns we see in our mind. By drawing a mental model of the system we are operating in, and understanding the various interactions that influence the system's behaviour, we are in a much stronger position to introduce interventions that CHANGE the behaviour of the system. However, if you can't see the system you are operating in, you can't systematically make it better. You can only guess, and hope that your changes will work. But with a good model, you can take the guess work out of the changes you make. This is central to everything we do.
Working Theory is also a play on words. It suggests that 'Theory' is to be out there 'Working'. And this has a profound implication for how we approach our work. We focus on connecting two worlds - the academic world, and the business world. The academic world brings a scientific rigor to the table, and a holistic way of sense making, a desire that is often lost in the business world. The business world however brings a desire for practical solutions that solve important problems for the world, which can be lacking in academia. On their own, both of these worlds survive just fine, however, we believe there is incredible power when they are combined. And by bringing the best of academia and the business world together, we believe that we can create solutions that are more relevant, more pragmatic, and more robust.
We strongly believe in connecting theory and practice. Theory cannot survive without it being tested in the rigours of 'the world', and the world needs theory to generate the next wave of innovations that will propel us forward. This is what drives us, bringing 'best science' and 'best practice' together to build solutions that work.
Every day, we think about how to improve workplace coaching and team effectiveness.
We are driven to understand the conditions that create great coaching outcomes, the practices that effective coaches do, and the organizational systems needed to create a high performance coaching culture. We want to use these insights to help managers, and organizations, develop their people so that they can be fully engaged at work.
Teams are the building blocks of organizations, and we are also focused on what makes teams effective. Understanding the conditions for team success, the practices that great leaders engage in, and which organizational systems create high performing teams.
By understanding best science and best practice on how to develop the individual, and how to develop the team, we are able to design and deliver powerful educational programs. Our objective in these programs is to help managers get the best out of their people, and get the best out of themselves.
We will need leaders and organizations to join us on this journey. Are you ready to create a high performing organization? A high performing team? Or high performing individuals?
Join our programs and learn how to create your own amazing team. The programs work, and we've got your back. That is our promise.
Be amazing, and do great things!
- Dr. Paul
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