1x1 Executive Coaching Services that Work

“Thanks for your incredible patience and passion working with our leadership team. Your leadership and 1×1 executive coaching services have been one of the most effective I’ve ever known.”

Debbie Von Raesfeld | HR Business Partner Director | AMD

“LSA Global helped us perpetuate coaching as a discipline across the organization by integrating our core values, goal setting, and performance metrics under an interactive executive coaching program.

We appreciate LSA’s commitment to cutting-edge practices.”

Rosalyn Chan | VP HR | Redwood Trust, Inc.

“We engaged LSA to design and deliver a 6-month custom executive coaching services program for key senior leaders to better leverage our investments in management development and to push critical strategic initiatives forward.

Even with the high expectations of our senior people, the executive coaching completely exceeded our expectations.”

Ivan Fukumoto | Senior HR Manager | Xoma Ltd.

“LSA’s executive 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.”
Janet Pagano | Managing Director | Ovid Winery

Unlike most abstract business processes, effective executive coaching services engage with leaders in personal, practical, and customized ways to get measurable results. LSA Global takes on coaching assignments selectively, where the fit is right.

What Effective 1×1 Executive Coaching Services Look Like
Three basic tenets underpin our approach to executive coaching.

People Lead
First, people lead organizations and drive business results.
People Can Change
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.
Coaches Help
Finally, people have more success changing when they have a good coach with a growth mindset. 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.

The Definition of Executive Coaching
These 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.

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
Framing is important. A coach needs to be skilled at putting issues into terms that make them understandable and addressable. Coaches must look for teachable moments, and they must provide the feedback with the right balance of directness and empathy.

An effective coach also gives the coachee an opportunity to receive feedback to see how they are perceived by peers, subordinates, and supervisors to help identify strengths and gaps.

Willingness
Above all, the coachee 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.

Desired Outcomes
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

3 Types of 1×1 Executive Coaching Engagements
Often combined with leadership simulation assessment data, we typically think about three primary types of executive coaching engagements unique to each client situation.

Coaching for Performance
All executives, even the most successful and seasoned, either run into rough patches or want to raise performance. 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.

Typical Client Profile
An executive who is delivering sub-optimal results or who must create performance lift for themselves and their team.

Critical First Step
Agree with the coachee and their supervisor on the area(s) for improvement and specific desired outcomes..
Coaching for Promotion
A promotion is typically a reward for a job well done. Excellence in the current position often 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.

Typical Client Profile
An executive who will soon take on, or has recently accepted, a new role in the organization

Critical First Step
Inventory current skills and leadership behaviors and compare with those that will drive performance in the new role
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.

Critical First Step
Determine how insulated the client is from market and organizational realities

Four Characteristics of Success
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 specific situation. No matter the particulars of the approach, we have found that all successful executive coaching engagements have a few common characteristics:

Clarity
A clear set of objectives
Process
A disciplined process that pushes the client to do the hard work that leads to meaningful changes
Fit
A coach who understands the client’s situation, observes carefully, asks tough questions and gives direct recommendations
Willingness
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.

If you would like to learn how our 1×1 executive coaching services and consulting expertise has helped leaders and individuals across multiple industries succeed, please contact us.

Related Information

It was a challenge to find a consultant with an approach to performance improvement that fit our unique performance culture and style. We were pleasantly surprised to discover LSA’s depth of expertise in the fields of motivation, developmental coaching, performance management, and measurement.

LSA seamlessly integrated those components without our folks feeling like the intervention was forced. They understood what we were trying to accomplish, helped us clarify our objectives, and created a solid, refreshing approach that quickly got us moving and engaged at all levels across the organization.

Overall, I couldn’t be happier that we found a true strategy and implementation partner in LSA.

Doug Hansen
President and Director

Thanks for your incredible patience and passion working with our leadership team to create alignment.

Your leadership and executive coaching services have been one of the most effective I’ve ever known.

Debbie Von Raesfeld
Director and HR Business Partner

At a time of change in our marketplace, LSA Global did an exceptional job helping our executive team create strategic clarity by helping us to define, clarify, and prioritize our corporate vision, mission, values, differentiation, target clients, strategic priorities, success metrics and key roles.

They beautifully navigated a very difficult and fuzzy situation, respectfully cleared out all of the cultural elephants, and shared impactful insights and leadership development theories along the way. They have transformed our business.

Laurie Sewell
President & CEO

Having taken on a new executive leadership role, one of my first calls was to LSA Global to help my leadership team to design, implement, and cascade clear strategic plans. First, LSA helped our leadership team identify the strategy, culture, and talent areas that mattered most to create organizational alignment.

Then they helped facilitate the design of a strategic growth plan that is clear, compelling, believable, and implementable. We now have 100% commitment from an aligned leadership team and key stakeholders going forward.

I would recommend LSA to anyone who wants to create high levels of strategic alignment, growth, and performance.

Erik Arvesen
Vice President, General Manager

The customized leadership styles and coaching program was the best training that I have ever attended. The facilitators were phenomenal. They have a wealth of experience and knowledge coupled with compassionate and caring styles. I’d highly recommend this leadership training program to any manager, director, or executive looking for a life changing leadership program.

Shoaleh Ghaffari
Director, HR

Your team was amazing. Facilitative Leadership was one of the best leadership and change workshops my team has ever attended. Thank you!

Diane White
Executive Director, Head of Product Development

I continue to be impressed by the level of leadership development training and management expertise and quality of advice and facilitation that LSA has to offer.

What a smart and client-centric group of great people who really know how to help assess and develop high performing leaders.

Tracy Esposito
Director

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 as a senior leader to develop my thinking and actions related to leading the business.”

Janet Pagano
Managing Director

LSA helped us design and deliver blended leadership solutions for our key leaders to help drive our growth plans in a way that aligned with our unique culture and values.

LSA understood our business, had deep expertise in the content areas, customized the leadership development programs to fit our specific needs, and delivered great results in alignment with our strategic priorities, culture, and performance management systems.

I highly recommend them to anyone looking to take their leaders and the performance of their teams to the next level.

Beth A. Taylor
Vice President of Human Resources

LSA has a tremendous ability to distil complex, multilayered challenges into meaningful, impactful, and clear strategies and action plans.

The time we invested as a leadership team to get aligned was well spent in gaining laser focus and identifying ways to prioritize what was meaningful individually and as a team. The facilitation and leadership style was direct, firm, and compassionate.

LSA provided the high level thinking and support for our team to co-create in a rapidly scaling business.

Bindu Garapaty, PsyD
VP, Talent and Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity

Thank you for a great leadership development session today. The facilitator was brilliant. The team got a lot out of it (as did I).

I believe it will help us create an even higher performance culture by ensuring we have a common understanding of how to create higher performance and work toward clear and common strategic goals.

Simon Jefferson
Managing Director

We contacted LSA to help us design and deliver customized management development programs. LSA worked with us to meet our exact needs. We started at the top with our executive team. It was such a great success that we rolled it out company-wide. We look forward to a long-term partnership with LSA Global and their team of experts.

Barry L. Byrd, SPHR
Human Resources Manager

We partnered with LSA Global to help us invest in our people. LSA custom designed an impactful management curriculum to help upskill our key managers and leaders.

We consider LSA to be our trusted learning and development partner and a valued extension of our team as we rapidly scale. Thank you LSA!

Lisa Bruun
SVP Human Resources

LSA helped us with leadership development by designing a solution to match our unique needs and culture.

It was a huge success. I would highly recommend LSA to help take leaders and managers to the next level.

Karen King, SPHR
Manager, Human Resources

The customized leadership program was very practical and achieved our goals. LSA adapted very well to our group and the situation and helped us build trust and awareness of successful leadership styles. We look forward to the next steps.

Erik Okholm
Director of Software Development