Aspiral has three broad categories of Products and Services.
Please see the Company Profile on the About page for our philosophy and approach to each category.
At Aspiral development is in our DNA. So while we provide assessment for recruitment through expert associates, our core focus is assessment for development.
Our broad view of assessment is effectively to provide a snapshot of current reality, in whatever form is most appropriate, as per our brief.
In September 2003, Aspiral started as a Career Coaching practice. With a foundation in Psychometry, our coaching focused on using vocational and related assessments as a precursor to a Career Coaching process. Guiding young people with career choices and pathways is Aspiral’s foundation and legacy. We’ve assisted more than 400 individuals in this area and still offer this service with pride and enthusiasm. As our clients matured and moved through the stages of life, so did our business focus, and we’ve gradually moved towards more Executive and Leadership coaching. The core challenges and career questions often linger, and this way of working has remained central to Aspiral’s offering. Working closely with people this way is still a labour of love, with many clients from all ages and stages exploring personal questions of purpose, identity, transition and self-determination.
Aspiral’s experience with Career, Executive and Leadership Coaching, has shown that purpose, identity, transition and self-determination consistently emerge as challenges for people of all stages, ages and organisational levels. We are intrigued by and drawn to working closely with individuals inquiring into these areas. These fundamental human concerns are also significant for organisations. We believe that identity and purpose go a long way to influencing the way we manage ourselves and others, and what strategy we choose. An understanding of identity informs both management and strategy. In other words, if you know who you are, you understand what you are doing, and you know where you are going. Our most successful clients are people who are committed to figuring out who they are, how they can be more rounded and what their next step is. Some are in transition – from one organisation, industry or career to another – and many are those who have reached a plateau of sorts in their career, questioning their ‘fit’ or their happiness and are wondering what the next decade or two will look like. So, if you’re feeling the need to recalibrateyourself and fine-tune the impact you’re making or the legacy you’re leaving, we should talk. If you’re longing to operate more from free will than iron will, let us help you bring about more ease and effortless success.
Aspiral works 1:1 with many leaders, focusing on their capacity to lead within organisational contexts and parameters. While leadership is a colossal construct and a subject that’s widely debated and studied, we at Aspiral believe we’ve found a unique, powerful and integrated way of working practically with leaders at every level. No matter who you are or what your leadership status is, our Leadership Coaching supports you in cutting through the leadership swamp and homing in on that which is personally meaningful and universally true. In other words, as leaders evolve they not only become more authentically ‘themselves’ but also are able to gain access to more and more universal wisdom. What is evident in conscious and authentic individuals is essential to great leadership.
Aspiral’s Executive Coaching approach follows on from our view of leadership and Leadership Coaching. This approach has proved consistently successful on many levels. As a result, over time, our organisational coaching work has tended more towards the executive level. The reason for our success with executives stems from the practice relating to executives first and foremost as humans and leaders developing in their own right, regardless of their executive or organisational context. We coach people first and executives second. This ability to initially ‘decontextualise’ executives and work with them transformatively, has proven fruitful for both individuals and organisations. Of course, we realise that context is king. Executives and their organisations are ‘nested realities’, and when one empowers an executive, an empowered team follows and gives the organisation an optimal probability of success. Not only do individuals find this approach deeply satisfying, but we can also see the unique and transformative benefits for leaders, teams, organisations and wider society.
Unsurprisingly, once a CEO or team leader experiences the benefits of effective individual coaching, questions arise about their team and the possibility of team coaching. This natural progression serves CEOs well as the team members experience parallel insights and the team’s ways of understanding, articulating and being start shifting and interconnecting. That is, they develop a common understanding of how to engage, have powerful conversations, solve problems, make decisions and act. Essentiality, they develop team cohesion.
The format for Team Coaching is usually a minimum of a 2-hour monthly or fortnightly session in a small group of +/- 8 people. This is especially effective when each member of the executive or team has also engaged in their own individual coaching.
On occasion, Aspiral conducts Group Coaching– coaching a collection of people who are not part of the same team. The process often covers emergent themes or classic leadership topics such as productivity, assertiveness, communication, delegation, transition, EQ, work-life balance, listening and self-awareness.
Coaching Clusters are a unique and cost-effective way for teams to be coached while learning how to coach. Aspiral uniquely combines ‘pure’ peer-to-peer coaching, using skillful questioning, with occasional instructive components that cover basic coaching theory. Coaching Clusters are usually run by a senior coach from Aspiral as 2 or 3-hour monthly sessions and is perfect for executives or managers with some experience of coaching. It works well for leaders who want to learn peer coaching, enhance a Leader as Coach programme, or when aiming to instill a coaching culture throughout the organisation.
Influences on our Coaching Cluster methodology include experiential learning, The Learning Organization, coaching and counselling.
Two important principles of Coaching Clusters are (1) reflection is a necessity in contemporary learning – it provides personal meaning and subjective insights and (2) learning happens best when people bring immediate, personally relevant, real-life experience and challenges to coaching forums.
Over the past ten years Aspiral has worked with many clients online, using Skype or FaceTime, or through more purpose-built tech platforms such as Zoom. Several leaders from across the globe have engaged our services, either privately or from within multinational organisations. We’ve coached senior leaders in Australia, Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong, London, Ireland, USA and South America, including those from a major UK telecom company and a Japanese car manufacturer, among others.
It’s an increasingly popular and extremely cost-effective way to support leaders in virtual or geographically dispersed teams.
This offering is Aspiral’s equivalent of the standard Leader as Coach in the marketplace. We believe ours is a unique, condensed exploration of coaching that aims to capture the heart of the art. Developed by Roland Cox and inspired by Bruce Lee’s contribution to the world of martial arts, it combines 15 years of coaching experience across multiple methodologies and settings and aims to capture the quintessential technical strokes required to bring about transformation.
Advice is not what it used to be. And the world of financial planning has grown to include lifestyle planning approaches. This course gives wealth managers, lifestyle planners and financial advisors the understanding of how coaching really works on a fundamental level, and the skills and techniques to coach simply but powerfully. This modular course is another of those that grew organically out of a long-term client’s need for coaching techniques to enhance the way they engaged their clients. This offering is also currently being expanded to a more general Coaching for Technical experts that could include doctors, lawyers and others in professional private practices.
This offering is essentially the old classic, Stress Management, with an Integral twist. We look at Stress Management through the four lenses of Wilber’s Integral theory to make sure we’re covering all the bases. This comprehensive look at stress is then tapered into practical, essential techniques and tools to manage stress. A winner workshop in under a day, or punchy talk in 60 – 90 minutes.
The impact of neuroscience on the world of personal transformation and coaching is rapidly increasing and becoming conclusive. For anyone serious about their own transformation and the resultant influence on others, a basic understanding of the workings of the brain and the nervous system are imperative. We’ve compiled this illuminating, interactive offering based on the work of David Rock and other thought leaders within the field, to ensure leaders are optimally informed and prepared for personal growth. This is ideal as baseline preparation for a coaching process.
Improving one’s productivity is a perennial theme in coaching and leadership. After many years of requests for assistance with enhancing productivity, and delivering courses, talks and 1:1 sessions, Aspiral has fined tuned this course to capture the essence of productivity in any setting. Our work is mostly based on Getting Things Done (Allen) and First Things First (Covey) as well as some outstanding, pragmatic formulas for productivity
Understanding and regulating ones emotional and physiological states is another key skill for learning and growing. While considered a complex process and an advanced skill, we believe we’ve been able to cut through to the essentials and are able to direct attention to the core elements through the influence of mindfulness, ontological coaching and our own study of somatics. This offering is also ideal as preparation for one’s own coaching.
One approach that resonates with Aspiral’s views is that of Values-Based Leadership. We offer an introduction to Values-Based Leadership and guidance on how to implement this successfully throughout an organisation.
At a business level, Values-Based Leadership is about creating a connection: a connection with the purpose of the organisation, a connection with the vision for the organisation and a connection with the values that will underpin the purpose and vision.
Values-Based Leadership is important because it provides employees with a set of ‘rules for engagement’, and a framework for making decisions. When these values and behaviours are applied consistently and fairly they can shape the culture of the company, the employee and the customer experience, and thus transform performance. This approach ensures that you strategically build your culture in alignment with your business goals.
When all dimensions work well, this leads to:
Sustainability – a sustainable and dynamic organisational culture that has the agility to change and create long term repeatable success
Emotional connection and engagement of both employees and customers within the business.
Organisation – the ability of the whole team to be responsive and adapt to the changing environment within which it operates
Leadership – values-based leadership wins the trust, respect, and confidence of the people in the organisation.
Alignment – creates focus and ensures alignment to the purpose and the goals of the organisation
Leadership Development Programme
The Aspiral Leadership Development Programme is a bespoke, modular program for small groups of leaders on any organisational level, and well suited to executives. In its standard format it runs over three to six months with fortnightly or monthly Leadership Coaching sessions, in groups of up to eight. The programme includes an instructive component covering essential leadership wisdom, and a coaching element that coaches leaders as they learn coaching skills.
Personal outcomes of the Aspiral Leadership Development Programme include higher levels of self-awareness, self-regulation and self-determination, while the more collective outcomes include the development of a common language amongst leaders, more effective ways of engaging and enhanced team cohesion. Leaders develop both an understanding of how leadership works universally and how their own personal, authentic and empowering leadership ways emerge.
Wellness Counselling
In response to the global rise in mental wellbeing concerns, our coaches identified the need for counselling skills in their own work, and the need for the services of dedicated wellness counsellors.
Aspiral now offers a free counselling service to all of its clients. If you are an existing Aspiral client, and you’ve subscribed to our wellness package, you are welcome to reach out to one of our wellness counsellors.
Melissa is a registered wellness counsellor specialising in relational counselling – including marriage therapy, family therapy, and employee wellness. Her practice specialises in trauma counselling for clients working through childhood trauma. She regularly counsels clients recovering from adverse childhood experiences (ACES).
Her approach aims to help clients get to the roots of their wounding so healing can begin. Once the client learns how to integrate their trauma, they can begin working on changing habits and improving their thought patterns and relationships.
Melissa is a registered member of the Southern African Sexual Health Association and the Association for Supportive Counsellors and Holistic Practitioners.
Sinethemba is a registered wellness counsellor and life coach specialising in social anxiety and personal and family therapy. Her coaching practice focuses on helping clients shift their limiting beliefs, reframe past experiences, and reach their goals.
Sinethemba’s approach is humanistic – a non-judgmental and supportive approach that helps clients regulate their emotions, work confidently towards their goals, build self-esteem, and find meaning and joy in their lives.
Sinethemba holds an honours degree in Psychology, a higher certificate in Counselling and Communication and is a certified life coach.
You can send Sinethemba a WhatsApp (no calls) message at 071 552 9702 or email her at ahopefulground@outlook.com
Johan is a registered counsellor with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) and holds a B.Psych degree in Psychology.
His experience in counselling includes placements at NICRO, counselling on
substance-abuse cases, and at Elim Night Shelter where he worked with people struggling with anxiety, stress, and addiction. He also spent time counselling school pupils with learning challenges and those dealing with trauma at Highlands Primary School, in Mitchell’s Plain Cape Town.
Johan applies a people-centred approach (PCT) to counselling, which applies three core principles during the counselling process: empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard towards the client.
PCT focuses on helping clients overcome adversities and providing them with the tools to overcome future adversities by focusing on their unique experiences.
He also subscribes to the principles of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). He helps clients to understand the link between their behaviour, emotions and thought process. Understanding how one’s emotions, thoughts and behaviour interact with each other can have a major contribution towards the sustained development of the client’s overall well-being.
Johan is currently a volunteer counsellor at Hope House Counselling Centre where he regularly counsels clients grappling with anxiety, stress, depression, addiction, substance abuse, trauma and relationships.
Stephani Johannes is a social worker, registered with the South African Council for Professional Services. She has worked in the field for five years with experience in crisis intervention, counselling, facilitating substance abuse programs, and mentoring and supervising students from all walks of life.
Stephani takes a person-centred approach in her practice. She believes the ‘person’ is bigger than the problem and that the client already possesses the skills and tools they need to overcome life’s challenges. She works with clients to awaken these dormant problem-solving skills, walking alongside them as they discover new meaning and purpose for their lives.
Working collaboratively with her clients, Stephani curates a measurable treatment plan for her clients that includes sharing practical skills and tools, and ‘homework’ to support and enhance a client’s well-being.
Stephani is also a certified parenting effectiveness trainer (PET). She works with parents to create healthier families and well-rounded children.
Tamryn is a registered wellness counsellor, specialising in general counselling.
She is registered with the Council for Counsellors in South Africa. She holds a BA (Hons) Social Science and Psychology and has over five years and over 1000 hours of experience.
Tamryn is a general counsellor. She counsels clients with depression and anxiety, trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, grief, addiction and eating disorders, gender-based violence, and stress and burnout. She also offers individual, couples and family therapy.
Tamryn’s approach is a client-centred approach. She assesses her clients to understand their needs and goals, and then applies the approach that will best suits you, the client. She provides practical advice and skills, which the client can then apply to their lives. By doing this she builds self-worth and confidence in her clients.
Her specialty is creating a non-judgmental space for her clients to explore themselves and their problems.
She looks forward to working alongside you on your journey of self-discovery and healing.
