“Thanks for your incredible patience and passion working with our leadership team. Your 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 – Staffing, Training, & Development | 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. 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 services engage 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 Services Looks Like
Three basic tenets underpin our approach to executive coaching.
The Definition of Executive Coaching
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
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 they 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 people to see how they are perceived by peers, subordinates, and supervisors. Those additional perspectives enable coach and client to identify specific strengths and gaps.
Willingness
Finally, for executive coaching to be effective, it’s not enough to hold up a mirror: 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:
We typically think about three primary types of executive coaching engagements unique to each client situation.
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.
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
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
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:
When these elements are present, it has been our experience that leaders can change and develop.
If you would like to learn how our executive coaching services and consulting expertise has helped leaders and individuals across multiple industries succeed, please contact us.
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