Accelerating the Personal Development of Key Individuals
There are times when providing a new or key executive or high-potential up-and-comer with specialized, focused attention can pay dividends, not just for the individual, but for the company as well. Personalized Business Executive Coaching can help shorten “learning curves,” illuminate “blind spots,” and enhance the performance of an important contributor by considerably accelerating the acquisition of new insights, skills and behaviors.
Executive Coaching Process
Fact-Finding
Our approach to business executive coaching begins with selective, “360-degree,” confidential interviews of the executive coaching subject’s peers, subordinates and superiors. We observe or “shadow” the subject in the workplace, solo and in meetings. Working one-on-one with the subject, we review past and present career situations as well as longer-term goals. We then create a “Constituency Map,” which, at a glance, depicts in graphic form, the subject’s relative position vis-a-vis “suppliers,” “customers,” superiors and subordinates.
The “Constituency Map” provides an opportunity to critically assess time and deliverables currently devoted to each constituency against the level of priority appropriate to each. In addition, the “Map” serves as a prompt for assessing skills required to “deliver” and “gaps” in those skills.
Where appropriate, the administration of style-assessment instruments can be integrated into this phase, providing the executive coaching subject with greater insight into the realm of work style — the subject’s own and that of colleagues as well.
Findings Reporting
Once fact-finding is complete, we develop a comprehensive Findings Report which we carefully and thoroughly review, in person and in private, with the executive coaching subject. This is always an illuminating personal development experience, and for some it can be a transformational career event.
Once an executive coaching client has received and understood the findings, our personal development consulting helps the individual clarify the implications of the Report and complete the additional skills needs/”gap” assessment analysis implied by the “Constituency Map.” Together, these form the basis of a concrete and actionable Personal Development – or Improvement – Plan for the individual.
Follow-Up Executive Coaching
Since behavior change and learning are not single events but processes that require time and ongoing reinforcement, Follow-Up Executive Coaching can be key to lasting change and improvement. It can vary considerably, as do individuals and their situations, and can be modified, both in terms of content and duration, depending upon the needs of the executive coaching subject and the resources available to support the executive coaching program.
Options range from defined, face-to-face meetings at regular intervals over periods of months or even years, to ad hoc, as needed, remote telephone executive coaching sessions.
Executive Coaching Testimonial: Executive Coaching Subject’s Manager:
“I’m writing this because, as a very satisfied client, I want you to have some tangible proof of how strongly I feel your recent coaching engagement with [Coaching Subject*] has contributed to his performance. I can’t tell you how noticeable the changes in him have been to me, to David [Lauren], to his peers, and to Lewis since he has been working with you. It is everything from attitude to approach to behavior, and it is so encouraging. We have also seen a tremendous change in his general level of self awareness.
“He has a clearer sense of his role, of the expectations for his position, and of his responsibility to his peers and his team. He has dug into his role with an entirely new energy and approach in a way that has been both surprising and delightful.”
*Name withheld to preserve client privacy. ... Read the full Testimonial »
Executive Coaching Testimonial: Executive Coaching Subject:
“Ray pushed me continually out of my comfort zone (I had never really been pushed by anyone like this before) and forced me to think more strategically. Building my goals, many of which have defined measurements attached to them, is ensuring accountability for future concrete results from me as well as from my entire team.
“. . . Ray’s coaching . . . has allowed me to have a stronger personal focus, and, as a result, I feel, to be a stronger, more direct leader. . . . All in all it was clearly an amazing experience, and I would strongly recommend him to anyone considering the need for coaching or leadership training.” ... Read the full Testimonial »