Ginny O'Brien

Ginny O'Brien is an executive and corporate coach, specializing in leadership development and women’s advancement. In 1998, she founded The Columbia Consultancy, a leadership development coaching firm. Ginny’s coaching model encompasses five core areas of development: authenticity, vision and strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, assertive communication, and the ability to build and nurture strategic relationships. She has worked with managers, directors and senior executives — both men and women — from small, medium and large companies, including corporations such as Avery Dennison, Thomson Financial, Texas Instruments, and Time.

A skilled facilitator and workshop leader, Ginny has led leadership and career development workshops for over 100 organizations, including Chubb, Eastman Kodak, EMC, McKinsey & Company, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, SalomonSmithBarney, Shell Oil, Texas Instruments, Verizon, Viacom, and Xerox.

Ginny is the author of three books: Coaching Yourself to Leadership: Five Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader, (HRD Press, 2005); Success on Our Own Terms: Tales of Extraordinary, Ordinary Business Women (John Wiley, 1998; and, The Fast Forward MBA in Business (John  Wiley, 1996). In addition, she was a contributing author to Winning in the New Europe: Taking Advantage of the Single Market (Prentice Hall, 1992) and her articles on business intelligence and career strategies have been published in magazines, such as Associations Now, Business Woman, Business Woman Canada, Insights, London Commerce, Planning Review, Self, The Journal of European Business, Women’s Business Boston, Working Woman, Women in Business. She has been featured in major newspapers and magazines, including O, The Oprah Magazine, and has appeared on regional and national radio and TV shows.

During her career she has held management positions in communications and public relations, and has worked for small businesses, nonprofit organizations and major corporations. Ginny was a member of MIT’s organizational learning pioneer group that developed learning histories and she edited two of the first corporate learning histories written. She also taught organizational communication, writing, and leadership courses on both undergraduate and graduate levels. She holds a summa cum laude BA in psychology and an MS from Boston University's College of Communication. She is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation and a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) who is qualified to use DISC, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and Benchmarks assessment instruments. Ginny has also received training relevant to coaching in the following areas: Dialogue; Inquiry as Intervention; Negotiation; Relational Intelligence; Integrating Neurobiology and Relational-Cultural Theory; Organizational Development; Spiritual Psychology; and  Emotional Intelligence.

MOST REQUESTED TOPICS:

Coaching Yourself to Leadership

Five Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader

At this interactive workshop, you’ll be introduced to the five key strategies for becoming an integrated leader. You'll learn how to…

    * be an authentic leader who works according to her core values

    * develop vision and strategic thinking for yourself and your team build emotional intelligence and understand and control your own emotions while understanding and managing the emotions of others

    * communicate assertively and stay emotionally grounded

    * develop strategic alliances and build mutually beneficial relationships with the right people

You'll complete a self-assessment to discover your strengths and developmental areas in each of the three domains of leadership (self, others and work). You'll find out how integrated and balanced you are and what skills you need to develop. You'll leave this workshop with a personalized action plan to develop your leadership and succeed in your career.

Authenticity

Knowing How to Be True to Yourself in the Game of Office Politics

Office Politics is an old game in the business world. Every company has its own brand. But many people, especially women, seem to find the game hard to play, and many don't even want to join the game feeling it will compromise their integrity.

In this interactive workshop, you’ll gain insight into how to play office politics, and learn how to determine which moves are good and foster your values, and which moves risk your authenticity and should be avoided. You'll leave this workshop with a deeper understanding of yourself and your values, and you’ll learn strategies for being a winner without feeling like you’ve trampled someone else in the process.

Creating a Vision and Strategy for Your Career

In order to have a successful career, you must understand what you want and you must set goals and create strategies that will help you fulfill your goals. In this interactive workshop, you'll learn techniques for creating big visions for yourself and you'll receive tools to help you take small steps that will make your big dreams come true. Using a variety of exercises you'll also learn how to overcome typical barriers that can get in your way. You'll discover how to ...

    * assess risk and opportunities

    * unearth the fear that disables you

    * take calculated risks

    * use your intuition more effectively

Using a skills self-assessment, you'll also examine your strengths and weaknesses and leave this workshop with the ability to create a career plan that you can immediately begin to implement.

The Reality of Gender Differences in Leadership

Science is finally providing the evidence we’ve known intuitively, but haven’t been able to prove with data — there really are brain differences in the way that men and women think. These differences influence how we deal with the world around us, how we interact with others, and how we communicate our feelings. They influence our style and the way we work and lead.

Using self-assessments and case studies, you’ll learn …

    * what these differences are

    * how they help or hinder leadership

    * how we can become integrated leaders

This evidence also helps us shift our focus and gives us the language to use in defining a new kind of leadership. It also helps us to understand why women have more difficulty leading in organizations that systemically still operate based on a model created by the male mind. This information opens up further discussion. We need to think about ways in which we can change systems to be supportive of "integrated leadership" — leadership that draws from both the masculine and the feminine.

Emotional Intelligence

Building Your EQ Muscles

Emotions are a part of who we are as people, but, oftentimes, we are unaware of the ways in which our behaviors at work are driven by our inability to recognize and control our emotions.

To be successful and to be an effective leader, it is essential for you to develop your emotional intelligence. In this interactive workshop, you’ll complete an Emotional Intelligence Self-Assessment and using a variety of case studies and exercises, you’ll discover your own emotional triggers and how to control them, and you’ll learn how to recognize, understand, and handle the emotional triggers and behaviors of others.

You’ll leave this workshop with techniques and tips for …

    * having more self-awareness and self-control

    * acting with empathy and understanding

    * setting boundaries and saying "no"

Power Talk

How to Communicate Assertively and Manage Difficult Conversations

Success at work and success as a leader demands being an effective, assertive communicator. In this interactive workshop, you’ll learn how to hold "skillful conversations" with all kinds of people, in all kinds of situations.

Using interactive exercises, you’ll find out what keeps you from being assertive and you’ll discover how to …

    * be a better listener

    * ask powerful questions to generate better understanding

    * advocate for your own position

    * set boundaries and say "no"

You’ll leave this workshop with powerful communication tools that will enable you to be heard, to be assertive, to build respect, and to solve problems based on mutual understanding.

Understanding Style Differences Using DISC

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Do you prefer high risks or low risks? Do you like to focus on tasks or on people. At this highly interactive workshop, based on the DISC behavioral assessment instrument, you learn what makes you tick and what ticks you off. This workshop provides you with the opportunity to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your own style as well as the ability to understand the style of people you encounter everyday at work.

You’ll learn how to influence and successfully interact with all kinds of people, particularly those who can drive you crazy. You’ll discover how to keep your strengths from becoming your weaknesses, how language reveals your style, and which styles are more compatible with yours and which can clash. People always leave this workshop laughing, amazed at what they discover. This workshop is particularly helpful for intact teams.

Building Strategic Relationships

Making the Connections that Count

Strategic alliances are critical keys to success. You can succeed on your own terms but you can’t succeed alone. At this interactive workshop, you’ll learn how to…

    * position yourself

    * gain visibility

    * build relationships with key people

In this interactive workshop, you’ll discover how to build your strategic network by identifying "power bases" inside and outside your organization, and you’ll learn how to approach people who can support you in the development of your career. You’ll leave this workshop with your own elevator speech and a personalized plan of action for expanding your strategic network and finding mentors, ensuring you greater chances of reaching your career and leadership goals.

Building High Performance Teams

How to Motivate, Coach, and Develop Your Team

This workshop is designed to help you learn how to uncover and constructively deal with team dynamics. Using case studies and interactive exercises, you’ll learn how to use a variety of tools, techniques, and interventions that will enable you to become a more effective team leader.

You’ll discover how to …

    * build trust

    * set expectations

    * listen to your team's issues

    * provide constructive feedback

    * coach individuals

    * motivate the team to perform at higher levels

This workshop can also be customized and adapted for the entire team, enabling team members to learn how to overcome team issues and barriers and to collaborate more effectively with each other.

Vision and Strategic Planning

Creating Your Team's Future

This custom-designed workshop will help you and your organization or team define its vision, mission and strategic goals. Using a variety of creative tools, your team will work together to build shared meaning and understanding not only about what the team is striving to achieve but also how they are going to work together to accomplish their goals. You and your team will leave this workshop with greater clarity, a renewed sense of purpose, and a plan to implement your goals.