Thank you for joining us for our two-part MasterClass series, MasterClass: Coaching Toward the Positive with Richard Boyatzis featuring his groundbreaking work. You may know Richard Boyatzis from his best-selling books and Harvard Business Review articles but what you don't know will galvanize your practice and support your ability to market coaching with evidence-based research.

Why are we featuring Richard Boyatzis? 

While his work is well-known in leadership development we want to introduce his work to the coaching community. In his video interviews Richard spells out what coaches need to know about the science of the brain as well as explains the neural mechanisms of change. By doing this, he describes how the coaching relationship is unique and why it is empowering. Drawing from his experience working with physicians and banks as well as his research studies, he pulls together a story we too can tell some of the science behind coaching practice.

Included in the Related Resources section is Richard’s paper, Developing Sustainable Leaders through Coaching for Compassion, co-authored with Melvin Smith and Nancy Blaize. Below is an abstract of the paper. It’s highly dense, but gives a quick overview of how leaders should coach their people to renew their energy and become more effective:

By integrating recent findings in affective neuroscience and biology with well-documented research on leadership and stress we offer a more holistic approach to leadership development. We argue here that leader sustainability is adversely affected by the psychological and physiological effects of chronic power stress associated with the performance of the leadership role. We further contend however that when leaders experience compassion through coaching the development of others they experience psychophysiological effects that restore the body’s natural healing and growth processes thus enhancing their sustainability. We thus suggest that to sustain their effectiveness leaders should emphasize coaching as a key part of their role and behavioral habits. Implications for future research on leadership and leadership development are discussed as well as implications for the practice of leadership development and education.

In Part I of this MasterClass, you will find:

• An overview of the MasterClass 
• A video about Richard and how coaching lights up human thoughts
• An article on Coaching for Change
• 4 video clips
• Book Tour

Please to sure to check out MasterClass: Coaching Toward the Positive with Richard Boyatzis - Part II for more information and also the MasterClass: Case Study - Coaching for Intentional Change at a US Bank.

Watch as Richard Boyatzis, Ph.D. discusses what makes a good coach: