David Giber
dgiber@linkageinc.com

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Career/Life Coaching

David Giber, PhD, has served as a coach to leaders and executives for over 20 years, and has designed and implemented leadership programs worldwide. He is Senior Vice President of Leadership Development at Linkage, Inc., an organizational development company whose specialty is leadership development. He is the editor of two top-selling books in the field, Best Practices in Leadership Development Handbook and Best Practices in Organizational Development and Change.

Coaching Approach

David Giber believes that coaching is the interweaving of two stories—the coach’s and the person being coached. The coach must understand the experiences or stories of his or her clients, but also help them connect the drivers and lessons from their lives to the future stories they need to write.

David uses the idea of life stories and themes to guide his work and approach. Clients are asked to write a two page autobiography, and think about the people and incidents that have had a big impact on them. Drawing out the high and low points of their lives, and the lessons and values learned from them, is a tremendously useful exercise in helping them connect better with others.

David Giber uses 360-degree feedback in his practice, but also finds that providing verbatim comments is sometimes the most useful part of the data provided. Connecting this feedback to validated personality inventories makes the results much more powerful.

Most important is the follow-up feedback provided to leaders, helping them learn how to react to this feedback without defensiveness, and how to signal their sincerity to follow through on the changes they need to make.