Charles Feltman
Charles Feltman is an executive coach and organizational development consultant with over 18 years of experience helping leaders and their organizations excel. For the past ten years his focus has been primarily on coaching individual leaders and management teams in the areas of authentic leadership, and interpersonal and organization effectiveness. He brings to his clients a solid understanding of the issues and concerns of leadership in the business context, years of experience helping leaders discover their own best selves, and a fierce dedication to their success. Much of his coaching, as well as his personal leadership experience, has been in scientific and engineering companies, so he is familiar with the unique issues of leadership in such environments. In addition, he brings to his coaching a good working knowledge of recent neuroscience research and how it can be applied to leading and learning in organizations.
He works with experienced executives and top level managers to leverage their strengths and continue to develop their capacity for mature, authentic leadership. He has coached leaders in areas such as defining vision and strategy, setting and achieving goals, motivating and engaging others, developing emerging leaders, building strong trust across their organizations, expanding emotional intelligence, leading effective teams, hiring and retention, and overall career success.
He also coaches teams in the areas of building trust, engaging positive conflict, team accountability, and collaboration. The end result of team coaching is some combination of greater collaboration and innovation, and consistent delivery on goals.
As a coach Charles is focused on what is relevant for his clients’ success. His coaching style has been described by clients as direct, powerful, results oriented, engaging, and a bit irreverent. His approach includes careful listening, inquiry, observation and feedback to help gain an awareness of unconscious, habitual ways of thinking and acting that often prevent people from achieving what they really want as leaders. He supports clients in translating awareness and insight into practical, effective action. He coaches his clients toward an integral perspective on their work and life that incorporates the physical, emotional, mental, and spirit domains. His intended outcome is that they come to know themselves more deeply, have more good choices for action, and become as successful as possible in achieving their goals.
Charles’ basic process includes: 1) assessing the current situation; 2) defining clear, realistic, measurable outcomes for the coaching engagement; 3) determining what is already working well; 4) surfacing barriers to achieving those outcomes, including any hidden barriers such as a client’s own unexamined views of him/herself and the world, beliefs about “what can and can’t be done”, and habitual moods/emotions that predispose certain actions over others; 5) identifying and practicing the most effective approaches to achieving desired outcomes; 6) tracking progress.
Based on his client’s goals and needs Charles can offer several different assessments, including MBTI, Kolbe, 360 feedback instruments, direct conversations with senior colleagues, peers and direct reports, and “shadow coaching” (observing clients at work).
Charles spent about ten years in management in engineering-driven companies. His coaching and consulting business has also focused heavily on working with leaders technical and scientific companies, including people with advanced degrees in science and engineering fields, and people who have come “up through the ranks” from technician to manager to leader. This experience has given him a good understanding of the unique capabilities scientists, engineers and technical experts bring to leadership roles, as well as the blind spots that at best can cause frustration, and at worst prevent success.
Charles has a BA in psychology from U.C. Santa Cruz and a Master’s degree in organizational development from the University of Southern California. He has coached or consulted for leaders in a number of major technology companies including Intel, Cognizant, Siemens, Cisco Systems, and National Semiconductor. Have also coached executives in service industry companies such as J. Walter Thompson, Milward Brown, and Burson-Marstellar, US government agencies (NASA and USDA), and non-profit organizations (Nature Conservancy, Heifer International). Prior to starting his coaching and consulting business in 1992, Charles spent ten years in management in tech sector companies.
Charles holds an International Coach Federation designation of Professional Certified Coach (PCC). Serve as a faculty member at the Newfield Network, a well respected international coach training school, and am a Newfield Certified Ontological Coach™. He is certified to administer and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and has assessment experience using a number of other work style, management development, and multi-rater (360) instruments. Contact him at cfeltman@insightcoaching.com.
