A Coaching Model Created by Aurora Aritao
(Executive Leadership Coach, HONG KONG)
The CREATIVE2 coaching model is designed for remarkable individuals:
- executives
- leaders
- entrepreneurs who are driving positive transformation in their professional and personal lives.
CREATIVE2 takes inspiration from principles on wellbeing, creativity and leadership:
- from positive psychology and mindfulness,
- to neuro-‐ leadership and design (right-‐brain) thinking.
It is driven from a desire to balance out leadership skills development by focusing on:
right-brain, empathic, soft skills in order to develop into a more holistic, mindful and impactful leader.
The model comprises of two parts:
- A Process and a set of leadership Aptitudes. How many steps in the Process are actually taken depends on the context and preference of the coachee. The conversations may take a linear path or loop back and forth or simply focus on one or two of the steps most relevant to the coaching topic.
- The set of Aptitudes were chosen from my own research on what ‘right-‐brain,’ soft empathic skills are coming up time and time again as aptitudes needed by leaders today.
More details on the Aptitudes are available in my research paper “Developing CREATIVE Leadership.”
The CREATIVE2 Process Each loop starts from:
clarifying the Context
i.e.
what is the current reality? Effective leadership is situational context is important because there are many factors at play both internally,
externally
i.e.
just because a leader did not do well in one situation or environment does not mean she will not thrive in another situation. The model then moves (arrow 1) to an investigation on the coachees’ awareness of their values, strengths, personality traits or leadership aptitudes as (aptitudes are covered in the next section). After Reconnecting with what they value most, there is an invitation to Expand: project, look far and wide to what is possible, in terms of goals and what changes they wish to make i.e. after discussing “What is?” we move to “What if?”.
These clarifying and expanding steps are in blue in the diagram below:
In the next stage (green), we work on putting ideas to Action (arrow 2). Here is where we take ideas from the expansion stage: where next steps are explored, aligned with goals, tabled, prioritized, diarized, and tracked. As each agreed action or set of actions is completed there should be a sense that the coachee is Transitioning to either a better or worse state. As we discern which actions have positive and sustainable impact e.g. ending bad habits and starting new good habits, we explore how Integration (arrow 3) of these changes happens in the most effective way.
From here, the coachee might loop back to a new set of actions (arrow 4.1) or move on to a totally new angle or context (arrow 4.2). It may not be necessary to repeat the step on reconnecting to values and strengths, but it may be helpful to go back to expanding on possibilities and options in the new context (arrow 5).
Once integration of positive changes are underway, it is time to celebrate, make acknowledgments and make accomplishments known to parties outside the coaching relationship (arrow 4.3) in the Visibility step. It is important to take a moment to celebrate success. A pause of celebration can also be a way to go back to center, to close one chapter and pave the way for a new one to open up.
The final step is to Evaluate. This is done at a later stage, weeks, months or even years later, after the integrated changes have had some time to be validated to show sustaining impact. Here there are a few courses of actions depending on the outcome:
- loop back to Context or Reconnection,
- go directly to Expansion or Action,
- go directly to Visibility and celebrate!
Reflection questions on each step of the CREATIVE2 Process are available at the end of the document.