Executive Coaching

Why Coaching / Mentoring?

A corporate executive’s role can be a lonely one. While the demands of the top job in any organisation are intense, many executives privately miss both the opportunity to discuss their role and performance and also to enhance their professional development and leadership skills.

Equally, the increasing demand for accountability and performance from shareholders, and the investment community in general, means that many executives simply do not have sufficient time to devote to developing long term strategies, which, ironically, is the major role of the senior executive in the first place.

Against this contradiction, an increasing trend among CEOs and other top-line senior managers is to engage in an ongoing programme of executive coaching or mentoring. The mentor, an experienced professional, works personally with the executive in a series of one-to-one sessions to develop leadership skills and bring new insights and strategies to solve managerial problems.

Why Essential Training?

One to one mentoring provides medium to long term support which maximises an individual executive’s potential to enhance his/her performance. Meeting at regular intervals (for example every month) the mentor supports the executive to understand the impact of his/her current behaviour and to develop concrete strategies for improving his/her skills and actions. While the agenda is primarily led by the executive, the mentor will notice patterns and blocks to learning and will challenge or enquire about these. An effective mentoring relationship complements any other ongoing development and training programs or opportunities an executive might similarly undertake.

The Essential Training Coaching/Mentoring Matrix

What Can You Expect?

Experience shows that organisations can expect to derive the most from a one-to-one coaching/mentoring programme where there is a need to:

• Provide in-depth personal support to a key executive embarking on a key role
• Bring a new executive up to speed quickly following recruitment
• Assist an executive to think through a career situation where finding the right answer matters greatly to the executive and the organisation
• Build better team coherence and performance and provide a fillip to one or more of its members
• Help an executive to develop, hone and use under-developed skills in an existing role
• Provide a challenging learning experience to a senior executive without removing them from the workplace
• Provide a totally confidential sounding board to executives engaged in major change programmes or who are otherwise working through difficult or testing times

Why Companies Are Implementing Coaching / Mentoring Programmes

A survey last year by the US based Manchester Consulting group of 300 chief executives found that 59% of organisations offered coaching or other development programmes to their senior managers and executives.

Another 20% of organisations said they plan to offer such coaching within the next year.

These companies are providing coaching to managers and executives for a number of leadership development reasons. The top reasons given for offering coaching services include:

• To sharpen the leadership skills of high-potential individuals, chosen by 86% of organisations
• To improve management behaviour skills such as communication skills, and developing subordinates- (72%)
• To ensure the success, or decrease failure rate, of newly promoted managers – (64%)
• To improve employee relations in areas such as interpersonal skills – (59%)
• To provide the required management and leadership skills to technically orientated employees – (58%)

The Profile of Coaches / Mentors

Coaches and mentors tend to be former senior executives and business leaders from a variety of backgrounds and industries who are able to bring a different perspective to a management problem facing the chief executive.

Their role is to challenge, not just the reasoning of the executive, but also the underlying assumptions upon which decisions have been made to broaden the boundaries and open up additional unexplored possibilities. Thus, coaches and mentors need to be uniquely skilled individuals with broad managerial experience.

More often than not, coaches will act as a sounding board, providing a forum where the executive may feel more comfortable bouncing ideas around, as opposed to discussing ideas with the board or top-line management.

The coach, therefore, is responsible for facilitating an environment where the executive can unlock his/her potential to bring new personal perspectives to management problems.

The very nature of the coach-executive relationship demands a strong element of trust. Therefore the executive needs to have total confidence and respect in the coach’s ability for the programme to be successful. There needs to be a right ‘fit’ between the two partners, given the long term nature of most coaching assignments. As a result, great care should be taken in finding the correct coach/mentor for each individual executive.

Check our Testimonials section for quotes from some of the clients we Coach.