Alicia Santamaria is Founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Adelante Coaching + Consulting, a company that collaborates with executive leaders, team managers and People Operations/HR to create high-performing and positive workplaces that meet the changing needs of today’s workforce.
Alicia started her career as a conflict resolution trainer and team facilitator over 25 years ago. She currently focuses her workplace coaching and consulting on positive organizational culture-building through leadership development, increasing manager effectiveness, strengths-based employee engagement and helping teams develop high performing and high trust cultures. She is particularly passionate about helping individuals learn new skills to better engage in authentic and trust-building conversations while cultivating self-awareness and perspective-taking. She believes with the changing workplace of today, these skills are needed now more than ever.
Alicia regards coaching, grounded in strengths, as a powerful development, learning, communication and relationship building practice. She says, “When leaders and managers commit to strengths-focused coaching practices, they have unlimited opportunities for creating high performing and positive teams and organizational cultures.” We couldn’t agree more!
Alicia’s Top 5 Strengths are Communication, Individualization, Woo, Learner and Input. She took the CliftonStrengths assessment around the same time she launched Adelante Coaching + Consulting. Ten years later, she is 100% certain that her success was accelerated because of the intentional development and application of her strengths. Alicia’s Learner and Input help her gather and curate resources and tools in service of her clients' learning while her Individualization focuses resource sharing and facilitation of learning in ways that serve the unique needs of each client. The delivery is influenced by her Communication and Woo, which enable Alicia to create dynamic, engaging, and relevant learning and coaching experiences.
The strengths-based approach not only transformed her development, but also provided a new set of lenses through which Alicia’s clients look at themselves and their teams. As a conflict resolution practitioner, she believes the CliftonStrengths assessment is a great tool to help people understand each other in new and constructive ways. Alicia knows that asking and answering the question, “help me see what you see" becomes a whole lot easier when you have a common language.
Alicia’s StrengthsMug was sent to her by a happy client so it is extra special. Her mug not only helps her remember her Top 5 Strengths on a daily basis, but it also reminds her of a particularly meaningful client relationship and the way CliftonStrengths supported her team.
Thanks for sharing your awesome story with us, Alicia!
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