There are three key ways to improve business performance:
- Recruit better staff and develop them
- Up-skill and develop existing staff
- Improve operational and people management processes
Up-skilling the leadership capability of individual managers and ensuring a cohesive leadership team is a key action that can be readily implemented to give immediate and long-term performance improvement. While most other improvement strategies have a time lag before the benefits kick in, executive coaching has been shown as a key improvement strategy to help the existing management team achieve full performance in a short timeframe.
It is quickly becoming a must-have for organisations wanting to accelerate the effectiveness of their leadership groups and achieve improved business results.
Executives are increasingly aware that the parallel to their increased improved performance is parallel in sports athletes who have learnt over many years that their skills and performance can be enormously enhanced through the intervention of a personal coach, who can lift them to achieve their personal best. So to in an organisation and business environment where personal bests and beyond are much more readily achieved with external assistance through the provision of professional coaching using a structured, and tried and proven method.
In setting out the business case for executive coaching. The primary reasons for introducing coaching are to accelerate:
- Improvement in performance
- Acquisition of skills
- Changes in behaviour
- Overcoming personal shortcomings
- Career development
- Leadership capability
While there are a range of approaches to executive coaching many of them coming from the US the practical application of this rapidly increasing intervention needs to be considered carefully and implemented with sensitivity to ensure that the desired outcomes are achieved.
In an organisation and business environment personal bests and beyond are much more readily achieved with external assistance through the provision of professional coaching using a structured, tried and proven method. Simply
we help managers keep momentum in their organisations by being more effective personally and by working better with their people.
We do this through insightful questioning and reflecting with a developmental perspective to help the person attain and exceed their personal best as fast as possible.
As such corporate coaching is a fast paced, solution based assistance through a number of disciplined discussion or coaching sessions.
Normally we expect behaviour change and improved performance results over a 3 month period.
From our experience and research in the application of executive coaching
three main options emerge.
Option 1 – Coach the Current Issues
Firstly, that coaching is commenced on a one-to-one basis through a discussion on the key issues for the individual to improve their performance, accelerate skills or their career development.
Option 2 – Coach the Development Needs
Individual feedback from a 360 degree / multi-rater process gives the executive and the coach a base of information of people’s perceptions. A high performance position/role definition document
setting out stakeholder expectations, top performance behaviours and required results provides a standard on which to conduct the coaching. Gaps between the expected and the actual actions and performance of the person can then be coached.
Option 3 – Coach on Personal Temperament, Development Needs and Key Issues
The coaching is optimised through the consideration of the person’s basic temperament and preferences. This introduces the personal element to the coaching intervention giving greater insight and enables us to provide the client with a ‘how to manage guide’ for each person. It is based on the output of appropriate tried and proven instruments to meet clients’ specific needs.
Pre-Coaching Communication
Owing to the sensitivity of personal coaching to some individuals it is important to ensure clarity of the objectives, the coaching process and the obligations of each party before commencement. Confidentiality of discussion content should also be agreed upon.
These group sessions establish a solid foundation on which the one-on-one coaching can proceed.
Supporting Programs
To ensure that the required results are attained in practical terms it is best to back-up the coaching with a small number of development programs and workshops.
We often find that such sessions as leadership techniques, personal organisational skills, emotional intelligence and priority management models can help executives. Providing such practical tools can make the difference between limited success and quick demonstrable improvement in executive’s behaviour and performance.
Case Study
An Australian organisation with huge but consistently under achieving set out to assess what was causing this adverse situation. A fairly quick diagnostic using a culture survey uncovered that the single most important issue in the eyes of all the key stakeholders was the quality of the leadership group. To assist them achieve fast track change we undertook a 360 degree feedback survey. This compiled a range of people’s perceptions of the capability and quality of each individual senior executive. All those in the organisation were asked to rate each senior executive on a range of key leadership capabilities including a focus on customers and quality.
Feedback session with the Chief Executive, individual Senior Executives and the consultant were then conducted to provide feedback and discussion on the key development needs to improve performance. Executive Coaching then was introduced at the next step to accelerate each person’s skill level. This resulted in noticeable immediate changes through the changed behaviour of most of the directors. Staff perception became more positive, the workplace climate turned around to being much more positive as a result, staff were becoming more productive, more motivated and working longer hours to contribute to the team.
This was seen in distinct contrast to the prior experience where staff had become clock-watchers and the workplace environment was both negative and de-motivational.
As the coaching continued over a three month period, the short term gains were consolidated and the business results reflected a much more positive climate. Reports from customers indicated a turnaround in the attitude of the company in delivering a customer focused quality service which previously had been missing.
Bottom line results showed this improvement in terms of both revenue and profit and this continued to improve throughout the remainder of the year.
Timing
Experience indicates that the coaching is best conducted over a three-month period with typically two-hour sessions held fortnightly. There needs to be this follow-up and re-enforcement to achieve the desired change in behaviour and increase in skills and performance. This will lead to the desired outcome of more effective leadership practices and a more cohesive leadership team.
Such a model is quite straightforward and well developed and practicable in the business environment although that coaching will be an additional and perceived time consuming aspect added to an executives already extremely demanding schedule. It however is normally perceived as a rewarding and necessary activity and an increasingly demanding environment where it is becoming recognised that acceleration of skills, behaviour and performance through external assistance are both necessary and invaluable both at an individual and a leadership group level in order to achieve improved effectiveness, outcomes and final results.
Key Steps
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Leadership style, profile and/or perceptions of others |
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Personal disposition |
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Key Outcomes Resulting in changed behaviour, improved skills and increased performance |