Even Great Leaders Need An Executive Coach

You think you’re a pretty good senior leader. Your people seem to like you (at least they say they do). Results and performance reviews are good, and you receive the occasional accolade. Maybe you’ve even had a recent promotion or two and there isn’t a lot of negative feedback. Why would you hire (or ask for) an executive coach? 

Having coached at the c-level for nearly 30 years, I can confidently share that people at this level get some of the BEST results from an executive coach. That translates to value to the organization. At this level, you’re expected to know what you’re doing and be pretty good at it. Often, these leaders are confident. They don’t spend a lot of time thinking about personal development because they don’t have to. Neither do their bosses. Leadership feedback is scarce because numbers and results speak for themselves.

But do they, really?

The Benefit Of Coaching “A” Players

I would argue that this is one of the most significant missed opportunities in business today. Even great leaders can improve. And research has repeatedly proven that moving an “A” player to an “A+” player has an exponentially greater impact than moving a “C” player to a “B” player. If you are in HR allocating development spend, you will earn far greater ROI by investing in your “A” players. Not in a classroom, but in individual executive coaching. 

Coaching Moves Leaders From Good To Great

For starters, feedback. A good executive coach… one that works with and builds champions (not the kind who only gets the call when a company is making one last effort to save a leader who’s off the rails), will start with detailed feedback. Our interview-based approach begins when we identify issues the coachee or the boss wants to know about. We design a set of questions that provide balanced information and interview a cross-section of stakeholders to narrow down development areas. This allows us to surface the “unspoken” opportunities and impressions people have that the coachee may not be aware of. Not everything is a surprise, but there are always a few nuggets we can leverage to help someone move from good to great.

If you are that great senior leader, ask. Focusing on your development is not only good for you, it will reap great rewards for your organization.

How An Executive Coach Supports Great Leaders

Once armed with the feedback and an action plan, we start working on situations that arise. Here are some of the situations we have worked through with senior executive coaching clients recently:

• Helping a senior leader integrate into a new role…assessing the team and opportunities, clarifying key messages and vision
• Determining whether to pull out of Russia during the war with Ukraine
• Helping a President figure out what to do with multiple expatriates when there were not roles for them to come home to 
• Helping a “rock star” head of sales figure out what she needed to develop to take on a larger P&L role
• Helping an established leader figure out how to get the most out of a more junior team
• Setting up a new product incubator function at a Fortune 100 company with very established ROI expectations
• Helping a new CEO implement major changes as the larger-than-life founder stepped down 
• Setting up and sustaining a revenue growth management center of excellence and shifting the company’s mindset to view it as an opportunity to add value vs. oversight
• Role-playing difficult conversations with senior leaders who needed to manage performance 
• Helping a President decide when is the right time to step OUT of an organization 
• Helping a new CFO integrate into a team with very different styles 

Complex, multi-faceted (adaptive challenge) issues are the norm today. Even great leaders need to flex their development muscles to get better, but putting them in “training” isn’t always the answer. A great senior executive coach can quickly get a handle on how to help a leader get laser-focused on what will take their performance to the next level, while at the same time making progress on real, relevant, and complex issues.

If you or someone on your team would like help thinking through if a coach is right for them OR if you would like help selecting a coach, call us.  It’s what we do.