| |
Executive
Coaching
is designed to enhance executive effectiveness as well as
company growth and success. Successful companies engage in a
strategy of continual executive development, which results in continuous
improvement for the organization. Click title of these categories to
learn more about leadership coaching:
Executive
Coaching Quiz
Are you up for
the executive coaching challenge?
Here’s a quick check to find out if you are a good prospect
for executive coaching:
-
I have deep expertise in a functional area
(e.g. science, engineering, finance).
-
I have had a successful career track record.
-
I am well regarded by management.
-
I would like to be more effective and more
recognized for my contributions.
-
I am curious and continually learning.
If you answered
yes to all 5 questions you may qualify.
Call
617-244-5757 to discuss your answers and your eligibility.
Executive and
Management Coaching
Summary
From Executive
level to middle managers, coaching is provided on a customized basis
for:
-
high potential senior managers being developed
for a promotion
-
recently promoted executives in a stretch
assignment
-
recently hired seasoned managers
-
skilled executives in a rapidly growing
company whose responsibilities have expanded.
-
experienced executives developing a new team
of direct reports
Typically a
coaching assignment is six months in duration, with meetings every other
week for about an hour and a half, with concrete goals and outcomes
specified in advance. The coaching may include use of Myers-Briggs,
Thomas-Kilmann conflict model, and 360 feedback from key colleagues in
the organization.
Coaching
Style
All my clients
are bright, capable, educated and successful, and they want to create a
change. Therefore our work builds on existing strengths to broaden and
provide greater access to personal resources and capabilities to achieve
improved results.
My approach to coaching is to align with the
client’s own goals, reflect what I hear is meaningful or puzzling. This
may include having you to clarify areas you choose to change, and
challenging your existing paradigms. I provide reality testing,
anticipate the impact of behaviors, and give you a place to practice or
role play alternative approaches. I may suggest resources or approaches,
and I generally recommend thought experiments, ways of raising awareness
of your own invisible patterns so you have the powerful option of
creating change. Overall I am a resource for you to create even more
effective ways of engaging with others. The goal is for you to have
increased skills, and an expanded view of your competence and
possibilities.
Executive
Coaching Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I need a
Coach?
A good executive coach helps
you recognize your own strengths with detached appreciation, build on
those strengths to create even better results, and leverage those
strengths by adding awareness and therefore choice.
One way to
think about the coach’s role is to draw a comparison with a star athlete
who works with a coach. An athlete, for example a gymnast or a runner,
is already talented, capable, and disciplined. A coach can help make
adjustments to the way an athlete approaches a task, or holds their
spine, or breathes, that will create better results with less effort.
Similarly, an executive coach works with your talents,
capabilities.
As an outside observer, a coach is able to notice aspects of your
behavior, and your internal motivation, to help you create better
results with less effort. Which is not to say that it’s easy. Working
with a coach is difficult, because it involves paying attention to
behaviors and thinking patterns that are currently unconscious habits,
and bringing them to your full attention so that you have the
opportunity to choose to change. If you have ever moved, you know how
many unconscious habits you had in your previous home, navigating around
the space, reaching for things in their regular places, driving home
without having to think about the route. And you know how much
concentration it takes to create more beneficial habits. Coaching is
like that.
What does a coach do?
The most
important role of coach is to figuratively hold up a mirror. Probing,
open ended questions are designed to raise awareness of your own
motivations, your own goals, and your contradictions. A coach is both an
advocate and a realist, working to help you reach your own agenda, and
noting inconsistencies or contradictions, so that you can make more
deliberate choices.
If you are seeking to add skills, a coach
may be a resource, creating with you, a structure where you learn best.
This may include experimenting with approaches, and noticing the
results, using your reaction as a source of information enabling
advancement to the next level.
A coach may use questionnaires to
determine how you see yourself. Some ask you to complete a brief
autobiography, or have you take assessments such as Myers-Briggs
personality style. A 360 feedback instrument collects information about
how you are perceived in the organization from peers, staff and
managers.
How does a coach learn about me?
A coach
collects information about how you show up in the environment. That is,
a coach interviews other members of the organization to see how you
appear to others. That picture is compared with how you see yourself,
and becomes an important resource for you to make choices about how you
would like to be seen in the future. Over the course of time, a good
coach is paying attention in a deeply compassionate and curious way,
noticing and confirming what is important to you.
How does a
coach know what’s right for me?
Good question. You guide the
process. The goals are established at the beginning, by meeting with you
and your manager to define the desired results. A coach doesn’t know
what’s best for you, until you and the managers in the organization
define what will help make you more powerful and effective in that
culture.
A good coach guides by inquiry, suggestion and
reflection, not with instructions. You set your own commitments and
milestones, because they are commitments to yourself.
But
it’s private!
Your conversations should always be
confidential. Clarify that with your coach. When I am engaged by a
client, I notify the company in advance that are that all conversations
are confidential. Check on your coach’s policy. The only feedback I give
management is keeping appointments, dates of meetings, and level of
engagement. The only information management receives is what you choose
to share when we meet together to discuss the changes you have made.
How do I pick a coach?
The first step is to have an
idea of what change you want to create. That will help you get the right
category of coach. The next is to have an interview with the coach.
During your initial session with a potential coach, you should already
have received an insight. Establish credentials which would be
important to you. And check references.
How do I ask my
boss for a coach?
A management or executive coach is an
investment by the company in your professional success. It’s also an
investment of energy and commitment on your part. The best way to get
support for this is to identify what you want to change, and how you,
your department, and the organization will benefit if you enhance your
effectiveness and impact.
|
