Executive Coaching
How to effectively coach executives for results.
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Read Whitepapers“Redwood Trust looked to LSA Global as a executive coaching partner to help us explore innovative and scholarly approaches to promote employee engagement and sustain the unique culture we’ve built over the last decade. LSA helped us perpetuate coaching as a discipline across the organization by integrating our core values, goal setting and performance measurement metrics under an interactive coaching program. We appreciate LSA’s commitment to cutting-edge practices and keeping us in step with the progressive front of our rapidly changing workplace environment.”
Rosalyn Chan | VP HR | Redwood Trust, Inc.
“We engaged LSA for executive coaching to design and deliver a 6-month custom executive coaching program for a group of our key leaders. The focus of the coaching program was to help a core group of senior leaders to leverage previous investments in management training, to ensure the engagement and retention of key employees, and to push critical strategic initiatives forward. Even with the high expectations of our senior people, LSA has completely exceeded our expectations. I would recommend them to anyone looking to create and implement a custom coaching methodology using proven tools to drive true change.”
Ivan Fukumoto | Senior HR Manager – Staffing, Training, & Development | Xoma Ltd.
“LSA’s executive coach based his approach on understanding our business circumstances and strategy, as well as our leadership aspirations. The customized coaching covered all aspects of leadership, it was not simply a touchy-feely endeavor. In fact, the focus on clear business outcomes and real life circumstances challenged me to develop my thinking and actions related to leading the business. The sessions were a great way to focus my thinking, gain insight and reinvigorate my leadership and impact.”
Janet Pagano | Managing Director | Ovid Winery
Unlike most abstract business processes, effective executive coaching engages with leaders in personal, practical and customized ways to get measurable results. LSA Global takes on coaching assignments selectively, where we believe the fit is right.
What Effective Executive Coaching Looks Like
Three basic tenets underpin our approach to executive coaching.
- First, people lead organizations and drive business results.
- Second, people can change. Every leader can improve their performance and the performance of others. While no one can excel at everything, we do believe that anyone can improve in almost any field.
- Finally, people have more success changing when they have a good coach. In business as in sports, people can accelerate their development when they receive encouragement, guidance, new ideas and concrete best practices from an experienced advisor.
These three long-held beliefs lead to our definition of executive coaching: a skilled professional using a disciplined process to provide observations, recommendations and tools to a business leader in order to improve that leader’s skills, capabilities and performance. While our coaching engagements often deal with personal development, they are always structured to have a direct impact on business performance.
We believe that executive coaching, when done well, is like holding up a mirror to the client. The coach reflects back to the client how they are carrying out their responsibilities. The coach helps the client to see how they act—and how those actions impact their performance and their relationships with others. The coach highlights observable behaviors, habits and patterns.
Framing is important, too: the coach needs to be skilled at putting issues into terms that make them understandable and addressable for the client. And coaching should be done in the right place at the right time and with the right style. Coaches must look for teachable moments, and must provide the feedback with the right balance of directness and empathy.
An effective coach also gives the client an opportunity to receive feedback from others in the organization. This is the primary aim of any 360-degree feedback tool—enabling the client to see how they are perceived by peers, subordinates and supervisors. Those additional perspectives enable coach and client to identify specific strengths and gaps.
Finally, for executive coaching to be effective, it’s not enough to hold up a mirror: above all, the client must be willing to look in the mirror and accept what they see at face value, with eyes wide open. The person being coached must want to be coached—and must commit to making changes based on the coaching. This openness to receive coaching is the litmus test for any engagement an executive coach undertakes.
Successful executive coaching engagements create leaders who:
- Increase short- and long term performance
- Build and lead high performing teams
- Have the ability to self-diagnose and self-improve
We typically think about three primary types of executive coaching engagements unique to each client situation.
#1 Coaching for Performance
All executives, even the most successful and seasoned, either run into rough patches or want to raise the performance bar. Regardless of who seeks out the coaching support, the coach’s job is clear—help the individual identify the performance barriers, set measurable goals and develop strategies to address them. The work then is centered on trying new leadership behaviors while developing better processes and tools to drive results.
- Typical Client Profile: An executive who is delivering sub-optimal results or who must create performance lift for themselves and their team
- Coaching Objective: Improve performance
- Critical First Step: Agree with the client and client’s supervisor on the area(s) for improvement and specific desired outcomes
#2 Coaching for Promotion
A promotion is typically a reward for a job well done. Excellence in the current position attests to a leader’s readiness to take on a new role with expanded responsibilities and bigger challenges. What may get overlooked in these career transitions, however, is the fact that new jobs often require leaders to develop new skills and behaviors—and to abandon old skills and behaviors that are counter-productive. The star sales executive promoted to business operator must learn to develop and work through others. The Regional VP promoted to COO must learn to be more politically savvy when moving from the regional office, where they are the highest-ranking executive, to corporate headquarters, where they are part of an executive team that they do not control. Sometimes leaders are able to anticipate these needs among their up-and-comers and provide targeted coaching in advance of a promotion.
- Typical Client Profile: An executive who will soon take on, or has recently accepted, a new role in the organization
- Coaching Objective: Prepare the client for the new role, with a focus on skills/behaviors to emphasize, skills/behaviors to leave behind and new skills/behaviors to acquire
- Critical First Step: Inventory the client’s current skills and leadership behaviors and compare with those that will drive performance in the new role
#3 Coaching for Perspective
Executive leadership can be isolating. It is, in fact, “lonely at the top.” As executives reach the upper echelons of organizations, they tend to find it more and more difficult to obtain direct, unfiltered feedback from inside their organizations. Power truly does refract—and the mirrors held up by insiders usually present distorted images, like the mirrors in a circus funhouse. Faced with this situation, great leaders actively seek out additional advisors to provide unvarnished perspectives and a clearer sense of reality.
- Typical Client Profile: A senior-level executive (often a CEO or other C-suite leader) who wants an additional perspective on the internal and external realities they are facing
- Coaching Objective: Provide a sounding board for the client when they want to check new ideas and/or share an alternative set of viewpoints on what’s occurring inside and outside the organization
- Critical First Step: Determine how insulated the client is from market and organizational realities
While the goals, roles and process associated with the three types of executive coaching are fairly distinct, they do not preclude “hybrid” approaches. Each client has unique needs and aspirations, so each executive coaching engagement must be adapted to the situation. Many Coaching for Performance engagements include elements of Coaching for Promotion; a Coaching for Promotion relationship may transition to Coaching for Perspective after the leader has “settled into” a new job.
Further, the coaching relationship may evolve as the leader progresses: a Coaching for Performance client may thrive in response to that engagement, undertake Coaching for Promotion the following year, and eventually seek help with Coaching for Perspective. No matter the particulars of the approach, we have found that all successful executive coaching engagements have a few common characteristics:
- a clear set of objectives
- a disciplined process that pushes the client to do the hard work that leads to meaningful changes
- a coach who understands the client’s situation, observes carefully, asks tough questions and gives direct recommendations
- a client who is open to being coached and committed to making change.
When these elements are present, it has been our experience that leaders can change and develop—and the progress can be seen in both their personal effectiveness and the bottom-line.
If you would like to learn how our executive coaching and consulting expertise has helped leaders and individuals across multiple industries succeed, please contact us.
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