Coaching for Senior Executives
Goals
While most executive coaching engagements are focused on the development of leadership skills, senior leaders are often seasoned and experienced and seeking a different kind of executive coaching engagement beyond skill development. What they need instead of another leadership tool is a forum to explore their own dilemmas, insights and wisdom. An opportunity for self-reflection and assessing options, with guidance, support and challenge.
Confidentiality
Senior executive leaders are often faced with confidential issues that need to be considered from many angles. A layoff, a company move, or a reorganization all have wide spread emotional impact on others. The executive knows the intricacies, his/her values, expertise, and is faced with evaluating anticipated outcomes of alternative scenarios. Executive coaching provides an opportunity to identify those predictions, reflect on their likelihood, the beneficial or costly unintended impact, and wrap that in the context of personal values. Tough complex decisions particularly require an opportunity for reflection, and an intuitive check of the options. Studies in the neurology of leadership demonstrate that decisions are often made at the gut or unconscious level, and afterwards substantiated by the logical or analytical part of our brain.
Another kind of confidential dilemma is when two talented Vice Presidents are at odds, wasting time and competitive energy in situations which call for collaboration and joint goal setting. Most of the options are unattractive: criticizing a star performer, having to choose one over the other, or getting them in the same room to work it out. Instead, in a reflective time where all options can be considered even the outlandish creative ones, executive leaders can ultimately sort through the options in the context of present and future tensions and goals, and reach a well thought-out decision and action plan.
When a leader and other staff have become friends and the performance is not meeting standards is another challenging situation. Good leaders develop strong relationships and these can develop beyond professional to include personal. The pull towards loyalty and friendship can be in conflict with the obligation and commitment to quality results. Discerning the desired outcome, communication and tone of the conversation, takes rehearsal.
Ethical Dilemmas
I work with leaders who are clear on ethical issues. Clear violations of ethics are unacceptable, and, not worth the risk. There may be some gray areas. Those are challenging. For example, whether to retain a poor performer who has an unexpected personal crisis. Whether to fire an employee who has violated policy but not the law. More often, however leaders are deciding between two alternatives which are both ethical, but perhaps uncomfortable. Joseph Badarraco explores this issue in his excellent book Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right. These dilemmas are not clear-cut cases of ethical or not ethical, thus they are more challenging to evaluate. One of the elements of his advice is to consider the long-term impacts of the decision. He recommends using a combination of creativity, persistence, courage, restraint and fairness when evaluating right vs. right decisions.
These kinds of defining moments occur when a decision might be ethical technically, but are not consistent with the leaders’ own personal values. Or when stakeholders form a complex web of interconnection with mutually exclusive desired outcomes.
Ambivalence
A CEO or senior executive may already have the needed expertise, but none the less need to do a deeper dive with an executive coach to consider their own ambivalence about dilemmas. Very often these are in the form of competing options: if one course of action is followed, it precludes the other one from happening. If resources are invested in product A, there aren’t enough development dollars left for option B. If a partnership or alliance is developed with Company A, then a non-compete may prevent another company becoming a partner or affiliate. If a good-enough vice president is not able to handle the next level of challenge, and the replacement is a complete unknown, what might be the risks, and costs. Leaders in that case are facing issues of fairness and impact.
In most cases these are not ethical dilemmas, but a combination of mutually exclusive options with a complex interaction of networked parties. Then executive coaching provides a buffer to consider alternatives, in order to avoid overwhelm or indecision.
