Are you a business executive who enjoys success, but could use some support on how to develop the next step of your career, learn how to deal with “problem” staff, build a team, improve productivity or morale, or solve another kind of business or workplace problem?
Do you have personal issues that impeded your effectiveness, but you feel isolated in trusting someone enough to talk about them candidly?
I offer executive coaching for gay men who are managers or executives who face these issues.
Unlike traditional therapy, we focus on the development of your “Professional Self” by making short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term goals, and giving you the support you need to take your confidence, title, and salary to the next level.
We also identify the items that are holding you back the most from your optimum effectiveness, or that of your team (or individual team members).
What is the VALUE of hiring Ken Howard, LCSW as your executive coach?
I help you to…
- Feel more motivated, confident, and viable again after experiencing challenges, losses, or setbacks
- Feel more relaxed and comfortable in situations that used to provoke anxiety
- Cultivate a role as a leader and visionary in your company, organization, or field
- Balance your work life with your personal life
- Make a long-range plan for your career, with steady progressions in title, salary, influence, and impact
- Cope with alcohol, cocaine, crystal meth, other addictions, and feel stronger, healthier, and liberated from the tyranny of addiction
- Learn to manage social anxiety to be less isolated, and put yourself confidently “out there” to promote your professional and personal self to maximum effectiveness in all interpersonal relationships
- Develop strategies for planning the arc of your career, from your present position to retirement and beyond, learning new skills, preparing for advanced education, or professional networking
- Defuse and de-escalate anger and relax, where maybe you used to blow up and pay a high price for anger (such as domestic violence, legal trouble, or embarrassment about “losing your cool” in front of others)
- Come to terms with the personal issues that distract you in the workplace and impede your effectiveness
As an executive coach specializing in gay men, I help you:
– Learn to have better communication skills with staff, superiors, or other constituents, forge compromises, and achieve high-integrity relationships.
– Evaluate, coach, mentor, and supervise your staff, and enhance your leadership skills.
– Troubleshoot situations that need a private and objective consultation, free of bias and outside of organizational dynamics, politics, or conflicts of interest.
– Have a private, safe, confidential space to come each week, at a time set aside just for you, with my undivided attention, where you can work toward goals that are important to you and that would relieve you of burdens or improve your quality of life. Everything we talk about is strictly confidential, except for the most extreme legal situations of threats of harm to yourself or others. There is no topic that is “taboo” for us; there is no judgement. We take things at your pace.
Many people think they have to really “need” coaching for solving some kind of urgent issue or “failing” to work with me; that’s not true. Our work can begin whenever you WANT it to. There is really no such thing as people who “need” coaching or therapy versus people who don’t. Everyone could benefit from knowing themselves better and setting goals to improve their life. The only prerequisite for receiving coaching is simply wanting to make a change in their life, or wanting to reach an important goal, and you could use some qualified support to do it.
How can I help you? I specialize in helping gay men close the gap between how life is, and how you would like it to be, in important areas of your life, such as your:
- Emotions – Depression, Anxiety, Obsessions/Compulsions, Fears, Anger
- Behavior – Habits, Interactions
- Health – Coping with Physical Challenges, Embracing Optimum Health
- Career – Choosing, Changing, Building, Maximizing
- Finances – Salary, Spending, Stress Management
- Relationships – Dating, Sex, Love, Domestic Partnerships
I draw on over 23 years of professional experience in providing counseling, psychotherapy, and coaching to gay men just like you, and from my own lifetime experience as a gay man. Of course, I also work with lesbians, and with non-gay men and women. Working with gay men has been a specialty of my practice, research, writing, and expertise, throughout my career.
My own leadership skills include a history of organizational and community roles, in the private/corporate, non-profit, and academic sectors. I was Clinical Director for two non-profit organizations before opening my private practice 17 years ago, learning the ropes of self-employment then only after management roles in organizations first. I have led an intern/associate program in my private practice, coaching new clinicians to licensure and success in their own practices. I am an adjunct Associate Professor on the faculty of the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California (USC), teaching courses in advanced clinical practice to graduate students in the MSW (Master of Social Work) program, of which I am an alumnus. I chaired the Los Angeles County HIV Mental Health Task Force for 9 years, co-chairing its annual national conference, among other local and national gay and HIV community leadership roles, in addition to my own writing (see my book, here) and speaking (more on that, here). I have found that gay male managers and executives have unique needs, especially when we consider gay men’s cultural issues in the workplace, including any discrimination issues, and the issue of being “out” to a group of staff. When working with me, we combine the unique needs of the gay and male executive, with the traditional challenges for all executives, especially in work/life balance.
I hope we can talk about the possibilities of how I might help you, as I have with so many guys I have helped successfully over my 20+ years in practice.
