The Truth About Executive Coaching
Read actionable strategies on executive coaching, its benefits, and how an executive coach can help your leaders become better at what they do.
Stakeholder Centered Coaching: A Formula For Measurable Change
Neither the person being coached nor the coach determines improvement.
Rather the degree of improvement is determined by the stakeholders/raters of the Leader over the course of the engagement.
At the end of the day, a true definitive leader and the organization that has hired them wants to see continued improvement in both their leadership and results within the organization.
When you can tie direct business results and objectives to focused, stakeholder driven changes in behavior, a virtuous loop is created whereby the organization and the individual all drive towards the same goal – and get there faster.
While you may never have heard of Stakeholder Centered Executive Coaching, the methodologies and processes behind this style of behavioral modification elicit lasting change because of its tight focus.
By highlighting singular aspects of a leader’s behavior that will garner the most significant impact on the organization – while at the same time directly involving stakeholders – a cohesive and feedback-driven criteria ensures change is outlined, measured and actuated.
Are Your Individual Performers Prepared To Work As A Team?
It used to be that most organizations functioned just fine with a traditional pyramid structure.
A CEO at the top devised overall strategy.
A COO reporting to him/her oversaw the internal operations of the firm.
A group of VP’s or SVP’s each ran a functional area and reported up the line to the COO and CEO.
Today, however, even in small and mid-size firms, business has become too complex and the information and skills needed to manage companies too diverse for this type of vertical structure.
Organizations are being managed more and more by Leadership Teams, a cross-functional group of people charged not just with maximizing the effectiveness of their own functional areas but also of the company as a whole.
But companies are often finding it difficult to make these Leadership Teams as effective as they need to be.
According to the Center for Creative Leadership, “The increase in the utilization of teams at senior levels has not been matched by an increase in the ability of CEO’s and other leaders to make good use of them.”[1]
Leadership teams, no matter how skilled the members are as individual performers, are often unprepared to act effectively as a team.
Why is this? …Continue Reading »
Executive Coaching Introduction Video
We understand the real world business leaders live in and employ proven coaching principles that ensure that necessary changes in behavior will occur. Watch the video below to find out more about how rd&partners’ approach to executive coaching has consistently delivered a ROI of over 300%!
The Right Executive Coach Matters
Part 7 of The Six Truths of Executive Coaching
The right executive coach is critical to the success of the executive coaching process, so you must choose wisely.
Choosing wisely requires being clear about your salient criteria for selecting the right coach.
Establishing clear and salient criteria will eliminate any guesswork and give you the confidence to make the right choice. So let me help you get the clarity you need so you can move forward!
Cutting through the Chaff
An estimated 40,000 people call themselves executive coaches. Their education may range from online self-study courses to doctoral degrees from major research universities. Like Forrest Gump’s “box of chocolates,” you have no way of knowing which one you’re going to get. …Continue Reading »
The Cost of Executive Coaching? Paper Clips!
Part 6 of The Six Truths of Executive Coaching
Coaching is cheap! Cheap from the perspective of return on investment (ROI). In fact, in the words of the world’s preeminent executive coach, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, coaching is the “cost of paper clips!”
(I had the privilege of talking with Marshall on the cost and value of executive coaching in a recent Leadership Leverage radio program, which you can listen to here).
But before I show you how to easily calculate your ROI from executive coaching, let’s take a look at what happens in most organizations today.
Measuring the Impact of Executive Coaching
The sad truth is this: Most coaches and human resources practitioners worry more about the real impact of coaching than their own organizational leaders do! In fact, most organizations don’t even formally measure it — and get this: most leaders couldn’t care less about the ROI (or any other metrics, for that matter) of executive coaching.
Why not? …Continue Reading »
Executive Coaching Involves More than the Leader and Coach
Part 5 of The Six Truths of Executive Coaching
The truth is that to achieve the most impact from an executive coaching engagement, the leader being coached must involve his or her key stakeholders — those people who are key to their business success.
Taking this perspective, it is more than just the leader and his or her boss. It includes their peers, direct reports, and others such as key customers, vendors or suppliers. And, in many family-owned businesses, it includes family members who are often part of an ongoing family business council.
The world’s preeminent executive coach, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, calls this process Stakeholder Centered Leadership Coaching. It’s the process we use at rd&partners to successfully coach hundreds of leaders and their teams. (I had the privilege of talking with Marshall on this process in a recent Leadership Leverage radio program, which you can listen to here). In brief, here’s how the process works: …Continue Reading »
Executive Coaching Must Align to Business Outcomes
Part 4 of The Six Truths of Executive Coaching
The bottom line? Executive Coaching is about impacting business results…period! Really…it should be that simple, but unfortunately it isn’t. The vast majority of firms and coaches make little to no effort to align coaching to business outcomes.
As a matter of fact, Alec Levenson in Meeting and Maximizing the Business Impact of Executive Coaching (University of California 2009) surveyed human resource professionals and found:
- 46% of respondents indicated they conduct no tracking of coaching effectiveness whatsoever
- Only 14% conduct formal “before and after” assessments
- Of those who do track, only about a quarter measure leader satisfaction
- Only about one third actually measure the effect of coaching on behavior.
Ok…so let’s interpret what this study is really suggesting. Ready? …Continue Reading »
Executive Coaching is NOT for Everyone
Part 3 of The Six Truths of Executive Coaching
We here at rd&partners are surprised at the number of leaders unsure about who, exactly, are the best candidates in their organization for executive coaching!
Why the confusion, you ask? Well it may be because when executives research this question, they simply don’t get much in the way of guidance. For example, a Google search of “who gets executive coaching” doesn’t even show up on the first page of results.
And even such well-known and respected research studies as the 2008 and 2011 Sherpa Executive Coaching Surveys address the issue this way:
“Half the organizations who use coaching allow managers at every level to participate, while an equal number limits coaching to senior managers and executives.”
How’s that for helpful? …Continue Reading »
Executive Coaching is Not Therapy or Counseling
Part 2 of Six Truths about Executive Coaching
To address this issue fully it’s important to define what Executive Coaching is, then what Therapy or Counselling is, then compare and contrast them. Now one would think that’s fairly simple — but it’s not! Why? Because when you search for definitions of “executive coaching” you get this kind of namby pamby stuff that applies more to “Life or Personal Coaching” — not to coaching executives within an organizational context! Here are some definitions of “Life Coaching” that illustrate my point:
The Six Truths of Executive Coaching
Executive coaching has clearly come of age. Given the growth and fragmentation of the industry (meaning thousands of coaches in the marketplace), it is not surprising that many leaders looking for a coach are confused.
And since there is no official voice for the executive coaching industry, there is a need for some truth about this highly talked-about and somewhat mysterious developmental intervention called executive coaching.
rd&partners has been coaching executives in leading world-class organizations for well over a decade, and six “truths” have emerged from our professional coaching of over 1,000 executive clients, and reinforced by the perspective of our many clients who have been long-term buyers of our services. To help those of you who are seeking clarity about the subject, here are the six time-tested “truths” about executive coaching.
