Coaching & Leadership Virtual Symposium 2023

Theme: Coaching Culture = Leadership Growth

CARILEC has added another business development support tool to its suite of services. The Coaching Programme is a performance enhancement tool that will support utilities and other organizations in improving productivity and performance. The Coaching programme will focus on performance, leadership, and life coaching.

Coaching as an intervention is steeped in scientific research of positive psychology and neuroscience. Globally, the coaching practice is monitored and supported by many international organizations like the International Coaching Federation (ICF). The ICF has provided ethical codes of conduct and professional standards to guide the application of coaching principles and practices at the personal and professional levels.

Integrating the Coaching approach to its menu of services gives CARILEC another opportunity to support employees in optimizing their talents and strengths to improve personal, professional, and organizational performance.

Contact coaching@carilec.org for more information on this new service offering.

Wednesday 31 May

Brief Opening
Presentations Start
Presentations Con't
Presentations Con't 2

Welcome Remarks: Mrs. Alana Raymond , Marketing and Member Services Manager, CARILEC

Opening Remarks: Dr. Cletus Bertin, Executive Director, CARILEC

Announcements: Nicole Jean Baptiste, Learning and Development Officer, CARILEC

9:10am – 10:00am

Panel Discussion: Coaching Culture = Leadership Growth (All presenters)

Moderator: Dr. Cletus Bertin, Executive Director, CARILEC

10:00am – 10:30am

The Science of Coaching Success

Presenter: Lisa Dublin

10:30am – 11:00am

The Coaching Approach to Leaderdership: A Different Paradigm

Presenter: Asya Grigoryan

We live in an increasingly fast paced and unpredictable VUCA world, where VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. It’s an age of constant and quick change, increasing digitalization and abundance of information. It’s also an age of shifting power between corporations and states, social network platforms and real life. This changing context calls for new ways of navigating through it. The entering of generation Z into the workforce is adding to the challenge by shaping the workplace in a certain direction and in line with the abovementioned tendencies and demands of the time. Within that changing context of last 20 years, the concept of leadership has changed itself, from more controlling and patriarchal to more partnering, supporting, serving and compassionate, bringing upfront such skills as emotional intelligence, coaching and developing others, listening and communication. (J.Morgan, 2020) Asya Grigoryan has started her work on Leadership Development in early 2000s, when she was in charge of developing and implementing Leadership Development Program at the Central Bank of Armenia. Later she worked on identifying Leadership development needs at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, as well as worked as a consultant to small and medium companies helping them to identify their leadership potential and develop it in full. The presentation will cover the main trends of the changing global context and how that context drives change in the essence of leadership by posing new challenges and bringing forward new expectations when it comes to skills and mindset of present and future leaders. Asya will touch on what is coaching and how from being merely a developmental tool it became an essential skill of a successful leader.

11:00am – 11:30am

Positive Psychology and Coaching

Presenter: Lisa Sansom, LVS Consulting

Using coaching skills is a powerful way to support organizational leaders and managers in their growth and development, but not all coaching is created equal. The most impactful coaching draws on the science of positive psychology so that it is evidence-based and rooted in research. Lisa has over 15 years of experience as a leadership coach and has been integrating positive psychology into her practice since graduating from the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. In this session, Lisa will provide an overview of the most important positive psychology research and thinking that informs coaching and how this can be skillfully leveraged to build capacity in future leaders. Participants can expect to learn both theory and applied practice, and leave this session with specific coaching skills that can be used in workplace settings to help grow future and current leaders.

Moderator: Mrs. Alana Raymond , Marketing and Member Services Manager, CARILEC

11:30am – 12:00pm

Social and Emotional Intelligence (SEI) and Coaching

Presenter: Laurena Primus, CARILEC Learning and Development Manager:

Our emotions tend to drive our thoughts which drive behaviours; Getting our emotions under control is what SEI is about but to control anything we need to know it . Our emotions are our honest friends they tell us what is going on ; we are alerted to what we are feeling but should we always do what it says? The most powerful actions we can take towards improving SEI are awareness and management; the biggest ROI is a better response or improved behaviours. Since SEI is about behaviours and behaviours can be changed, in this presentation, we will also pay attention to the power of awareness in managing our behaviours and how this can be achieved through coaching. Behaviours are the result of what we feel, how we interpret it and how we behave based on that interpretation. This presentation will bring to light the application of SEI in our daily lives at work, at home and at play. We cannot control our circumstances, but we can choose how we react to them. The power of choice is realized during SEI coaching but it takes awareness, will and practice to make “small changes that can accumulate over time leading to large changes in who we become” Todd Kaashdan As an emotional intelligence coach and I practice what I preach and I can attest to the impact of both coaching and the practice of behaviour awareness. Emotional intelligence did not promise perfection, but it can deliver excellence over time.

12:00pm – 12:30pm

Human Performance and Coaching

Presenter: John Minyard

During this short presentation, my goal will be to inform leaders and members of a team Human Performance and Human Error are most often overlooked or not understood. The impact on human performance and performance results do not just happen. The science that guides every one of us in daily life whether at work or during personal time must be understood to gain clarity and for us to become our absolute best. Why do we make mistakes at home or at work, what drives this behavior and how does it affect our team and organizations? When we are on a job location what is Situational Awareness and how we as humans can achieve it as well as threats to achieving and maintaining it. I will define what is Human Fatigue, what the effects of fatigue are and how they affect both individuals and organizations from a safety. We must address the cause and effects of fatigue management and as leaders ensure our people are at peak performance when on the job. The neuroscience behind human performance is vast, but the more we study and understand it affects the better our team and us as leaders will perform.

Moderator: Sonji Baptiste; CARILEC Financial Controller

LISA SANSOM, MBA, MAPP, PCC

Lisa Sansom is the owner of LVS Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that helps to build positive and effective organizations. In these roles, Lisa shares positive psychology tools and techniques with her clients through speaking, corporate training, consulting, and coaching. Her clients come from a variety of industries including finance, education, technology, government, law, not-for-profit and health care.
Lisa has been working in Organizational Development, Leadership Development and Change Management since 2000. She is a certified coach at the PCC level (with the International Coaching Federation), working with leaders and aspiring leaders as well as high-performing teams. Lisa has also written several articles for magazines and other online publications and has contributed chapters in published books and e-books.
Educationally, Lisa obtained her MBA from the Rotman School of Management, and earned her coaching accreditation from Adler International Learning / OISE-UT. In addition, she holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Waterloo and a Bachelor of Education from Brock University. She completed her MAPP (Master of Applied Positive Psychology) from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010, one of the first five Canadians to do so.

Additional certifications include Prosci Change Management, ShiftPositive 360, Designing Your Life (Stanford), Gallup Strengths Certified Coach, Process Management (Excellence Canada) and Change Cycle™. Lisa also has experience leading strategic design workshops, Appreciative Inquiry summits and visioning workshops for leadership teams. She recently (2022) won an award with CASE as part of her ground-breaking inclusive facilitation cocreating new remote working environments for a previously traditional work unit.
She is a founding Board member of the Canadian Positive Psychology Association, has presented at the International Positive Psychology Association’s World Congress four times and was the co-Chair of the practice review committee for the 2017, 2019 and 2021 World Congresses on Positive Psychology. Lisa is currently enrolled in the DBA (Doctor of Business Administration) program at Royal Roads University researching the workplace impacts of positive feedback.
Lisa’s LinkedIn profile is available at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisasansom/
You can learn more about Lisa from her website at https://www.lvsconsulting.com/about-lisa/

Laurena Primus

Sophia L Primus is currently the Learning and Development Manager at CARILEC where she is charged with the responsibility of charting new directions in the learning and development agenda for Caribbean utility employees.
In executing her role, she has led the way in instituting the CARILEC Resilient Energy Community of Practice, provided leadership in establishing the CARILEC Line Workers Training Programme as the premiere training programme for Caribbean Utilities and ushered that programme to NVQ status in St. Lucia. Laurena has successfully spearheaded the CARILEC signature Line Workers rodeo event for five years and established the Occupational Health and Safety Committee at the CARILEC Secretariat.

Ms. Primus obtained her coaching credential from the Coaching and Positive Psychology Institute in the USA and is working towards attaining an International Coaching Federation Credential this year. As a Social and Emotional Intelligence Coach, Laurena partners with professionals in mid-level leadership positions, so they can boldly navigate the vagaries of the leadership landscape to attain leadership excellence.
Ms. Primus has a career background in education serving as a teacher and school principal for several years in St. Lucia. She holds an Honours Bachelors of Education Degree from the University of Technology in Jamaica, M. ED from Sheffield University in the UK, MSc. In Leadership and Management from Springfield College USA.
Laurena is a mother to one son, she enjoys the outdoors, yoga, reading and theatre.

Lisa Dublin

Lisa Dublin is in the business of helping people win in both their professional and personal lives. As a certified health and life coach, she helps professional and executive women get unstuck in both their personal and professional lives so that they can enjoy all round success. She coaches mainly black, professional immigrant women who want to be fulfilled at work, and fulfilled in their private lives, in their new culture. Lisa also runs an online speaking program called Speak With Confidence that helps professionals, immigrants and business people to overcome fear and present their best selves while speaking.

Through a combination of inspiration, insight and strategy, she offers seminars, video and written blogs, performance poetry, speeches and presentations to youth, executives and professionals. Lisa holds an MA in Literatures in English from the University of Alberta, an MBA from the Australian Institute of Business, and a BA (First Class) in English Literature & Spanish from the University of the West Indies, Trinidad. She is certified with the Health Coach Institute and is working towards a bigger certification goal this year. She lives in Edmonton with her husband and three sons and loves running and reading.

Asya Grigoryan

Asya Grigoryan (Mrs.) is an ICF certified Leadership and Career coach and results oriented Business professional with 4 years of experience in Leadership and Career Coaching and 15 years of experience in talent management, organizational development, change management and business consulting. Recognized for adding value to clients' business, performance and well-being by bringing to the table a unique background mix in Psychology, Comparative Legal Studies and Business Administration and work experience in three different sectors: public, private and intergovernmental.
Asya is experienced in working in diverse international teams with a work attitude of bringing in different perspectives and hearing everyone's unique voice and offering a holistic approach in coaching with the main focus on the well-being of individuals and organizations. She is an executive contributor to Brainz Magazine, Stockholm, Sweden, a speaker at TEDx and HR conferences and events.
As a Leadership Coach, Asya has Partnered with more than 30 young leaders on enhancing their leadership skills as well as with CEOs of small and medium companies.
Mrs. Grigoyan is a business partner and co-founder of profiles international in Armenia where she specialized in offering business solutions that impacted quality of management, leadership, teamwork, employee engagement, customer service and sales.

Asya was Head of Human Resources with Inecobank, Yerevan, Amenia where she managed the learning and development agenda of more than six hundred employees. She has also served the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, there her work involved benchmarking of management practices of private, public and intergovernmental organizations and leadership development of the fund.
Educationally, Asya attained a certificate in Leadership Coaching for Organizational Well-Being from the George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA; she holds an MBA from the University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, a Master of Comparative Legal Studies from the American University of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia, a Master of Science in Psychology from Yerevan State University, Armenia and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Yerevan State University, Armenia.
``Some fun facts about Asya: she has lived in four different countries and is versed in four languages: English, French, Russian and Armenian; in her spare time, she writes poetry and artistically transforms glass with paint. ``

John Minyard

John Minyard has over four decades of developing executive leadership and team building experience. Over his career he has solved the issues of that teams commonly such as setting goals and attaining them, clear and concise objectives, and developing a strategic plan in setting up accountability from the top to the bottom. John’s unwavering commitment is to provide you and your teams with the tools necessary to complete your purpose and direction that leads to ultimate success.

John served over 29 years in the United States Navy, as the 15th Fleet Master Chief. He was the Senior Enlisted Advisor for the Commander US Pacific Fleet, the largest fleet command in the world. He led over 140,000 Sailors, Marines and Civilians before retiring with honorable and faithful service in 2013. Over the last nine years, John has worked as a Project Manager, Executive Coach and Teambuilding Coach, leading projects throughout North America for world-wide oil and gas operations. He was recognized as “Coach of the year” among his peers due to his leadership and coaching skills. He is known for his guidance to get inside organizations and improve their leadership development. He incorporates how to fine-tune operational methods. This saves millions of dollars in valuable equipment, property but most importantly saving lives. He is a graduate and four-year veteran Instructor at the US Navy Fighter Weapons School “TOPGUN,” Chairman of the Board for Love Hope Ranch a non-profit dedicated to rehabilitating Veterans, First Responders and their families dealing with trauma and addictions. He currently lives in San Marcos TX with his wife of 37 years Mechele and their 7 dogs.