Coaching for Senior Executives

If you are an executive ready to take your profession and your company to the next level, our executive coaching consultants in Boston are ready to work with you.  Our coaching  involves helping you connect more deeply with your own core values, and expanding your comfort zone to develop deeper and broader options and approaches.

Executive coaching is designed to enhance executive effectiveness as well as company growth and success.

 

What is executive coaching?

An opportunity for leaders to grow by identifying strengths that may generally be ignored. Or discounted. Instead, executive coaching highlights those strengths and uses them to build new strengths, for increasingly challenging roles. Executive coaching uses goals defined by the client and manager, in support of company, department and individual growth goals. The client’s recent experiences become the case study to explore or strengthen leadership skills in support of those customized goals. It is also a forum to practice or rehearse conversations or approaches, applying the benefits of scenario planning with no risk.

Read more information about what executive coaching is, including the process, structure and assessments.

Benefits of executive coaching

When leaders are promoted, expectations and increased but sometimes without needed mentoring or practice forums. Airline pilots get to practice on simulations, physicians get to practice on medical manikins, and athletes get to practice on the field. But where do leaders go to practice, where they are not actually faced with the risks of implementing untested ideas? Executive coaching provides just this forum. The benefits are that leaders have had an opportunity to think through alternative courses of action and become clear about which is the most likely to succeed in his or her situation, and which is the most aligned with goals and values. Learn more about the benefits of executive coaching.

When is executive coaching needed?

Executive coaching is needed when responsibilities increase due to promotion, company growth, reorganization or a promotion. Each level of promotion involves new challenges, some of them hidden. Also see Hidden Challenges of promotion.

Even leaders who have not explicitly been promoted may have found over time that their role has increased in responsibility. The number of employees being managed may have grown, or the number of departments being managed. Managers may find that due to their excellent performance, additional responsibilities have been added to their role. This is a cause for celebration, and for some leaders, cause for pause. Executive coaching consultants can be very helpful when being promoted, or when the role has expanded greatly.  Read more about when executive coaching is needed.

Getting the Most out of Executive Coaching

Leaders who are committed to their own growth are ideal candidates for coaching. To get the most out of it, leaders are motivated to identify situations in which their strengths were valued, and to evaluate upcoming situations which may demand new perspectives and increasingly risky decisions. Leaders who are willing to expand their normal range outside of their comfort zone are good candidates for coaching. We all have areas we are most comfortable in, and sometimes unnecessarily limit ourselves to situations or problem solving that are tried and true.  Leaders who are willing to stretch, and reflect on what worked and what they want to improve, benefit the most from executive coaching.

Managers of those being promoted also benefit from coaching. Very often they do not have the free time to mentor managers who work for them, but are invested in their success. In those cases, both the newly promoted managers and their own managers benefit from executive coaching. Also see Hidden Challenge of Promotion

See more on Getting the Most out of Executive Coaching, including Fearless Inventory, Assessments, Power of Noticing, and Motivation.

Types of Coaches

My area of expertise is leadership executive coaching. In that category there are some who use inquiry as the main approach, helping clients reflect and become clear. There are some who are more directive.  My style of coaching is a hybrid between the inquiry style which fosters self-awareness, and suggestions when clients want a new approach, point of view or model to explore an issue.

Coaches are different from mentors and consultants. Mentors offer functional expertise. Consultants are more instructional, analyzing and directing work. Some will even take on an interim executive role while a new hire is being recruited or during other transitions. Read more about Types of Coaches.

Coaching for High Potentials

Some companies have identified particularly motivated individuals with consistent performance and a good cultural fit as High Potentials. Of course, everyone has potential, and with the right circumstances, can be a high potential.

For those companies who have identified individuals as High Potentials, coaching is often augmented with company sponsored opportunities such as special projects, cross functional task forces or client visits. Read more about Executive Coaching for High Potentials.

Coaching for Senior Executives

It certainly is true that it is lonely at the top. The more senior the role, the more information is confidential, and the less opportunity to discuss confidential information with department members. Furthermore, interpersonal conflicts need to be worked out confidentially as there is a cost of airing this kind of difficulty with peers, and a high personal cost of not having an outlet to consider options for improving cross-department conflicts and delaying action. Competing commitments are another area Senior Executives can benefit from executive coaching: working out priorities and tradeoffs.

Coaching for New Hire Senior Executives

Senior executives come to the role with deep expertise in their functional area such as finance, law or operations, as well as experience being a leader. So why would they need coaching?

One reason is the need to balance the confidence of past successes with appreciation for the new company’s success up until the moment they joined it. There is nothing more alienating than new executives saying, “we did that better,” or “why aren’t you doing X,” or the most popular turn-off “at my old company we….”

The second reason executive coaching consultants are helpful for new hire executives is that culture is invisible. You are bringing cultural conditioning of what success looks like at your old company, and these assumptions may very well be invisible. If you’ve ever traveled abroad and read the headline news about what is happening in the US, you know how surprising cultural perspective can be. If you’ve ever rented a car in a country which drives on the other side of the road, you know how deeply embedded cultural habits are.

Executive coaching can help smooth that transition, bolster confidence not arrogance, and support curiosity while offering expertise. Find out more about executive coaching for Newly Hired Senior Executives.

Succession

When executives know of their departure due to promotion or retirement, it’s an opportunity to prepare for replacement, and help someone in the organization grow into the new role. At first this process is a bit like inviting a house guest into your home because you’re planning to move out in six months. It’s exciting and hospitable but can become too crowded. Discussions about plans at the beginning can change as time goes on. To continue the house metaphor, it’s a bit like remodeling. You might have a blue print but once you see the work commence, you realize you want a sliding glass door, or an extra alcove. Despite careful selection, planning and even announcement, the person leaving may change the time table. The person moving in may want an accelerated time table, or even may change his/her mind. Given all this humanity and uncertainty, what the coaching process offers is a chance to develop agility, resilience, and an open mind.

Also see Executive Coaching for Succession