Whether you are a mid-career individual contributor or an executive leading other professionals, you can benefit from our executive coaching services. In the following section, we will cover a broad range of scenarios where you can benefit from engaging an executive or career coach. (The title of the coach just depends on where you are in your career.)

Here are some scenarios in which executive coaching can have a significant impact on your career:

Setting Yourself up for a Promotion or New Job

Olympic champions hire coaches because their goals and ambitions in sports go way beyond people who just dabble in a sport. Similarly, if you are serious about your executive goals compared to other individuals at your level, you need to do what it takes to set yourself apart. Someone with a long career in executive coaching can help you assess where you are, where you want to get in your organization, and what is the best course of action to take. The executive coach will also stay with you as an accountability partner to make sure you keep your eyes on the prize.  

Long-term Career Planning

Similarly, you may be looking beyond your current position or even profession and are wondering what kind of work will get you excited. A career or executive coach can lead you through a process of determining this. Once you decide, you’ll need to know what will be required not only to make a transition but also to excel in your new profession, and a good executive coach can help with both. Or, if you are seeking a higher-level role in your existing business, you’ll want to determine how to achieve that. Again, engaging someone with a successful executive coaching career can help you stay focused on those goals and navigate around the challenges you will encounter. That is how an executive coach can help not only with your plans but also with making sure you achieve your leadership development goals in record time, while enjoying that journey of growth.

Managing Up

According to Harvard Business Review, managing up is about “being the most effective employee you can be, creating value for your executive and your company.” Engaging an executive coach can help you turn your daily work into a healthy, successful, and rewarding endeavor. In our view, this endeavor will not only benefit everyone involved but will also inspire them to become your champions who advocate for your rapid career success.

Leading People to Achieve Goals

President Eisenhower defined leadership as “the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” An executive coach can help you master this art, applying it to your self-mastery, as well as to motivating others to fully support the achievement of your goals.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts at Work

Becoming emotional about personal conflicts drains your energy, and the first casualty of that energy drain is your ability to creatively resolve conflicts to everyone’s benefit. Your executive coach can help you step back from the stress of those conflicts and discover new perspective on how you can get what you want—not at the expense of others but with their full support.

Working Effectively with People of Different Styles

One of the first benefits of executive coaching is an appreciation of your own personality style—your strengths and pitfalls. Your executive coach will help you develop a keen eye on how to observe these traits in your daily activities and how to act in a way to fully leverage those strengths. But even more importantly, executive coaching will help you become more aware of other people’s styles, by mastering talent optimization practice. The benefit of this is that instead of approaching differences emotionally, the executive can leverage those differences to build a high-performing team to work with.  

Taming a Toxic Workplace

As a team leader or an executive, there can be nothing more frustrating than inheriting a toxic work environment. Executive coaching can help you introduce the practice of talent optimization to such a workplace. Using scientific people data, the executive will not only quickly determine the roots of dysfunction but can also implement leadership coaching strategies to overcome them. If you are an individual contributor, coaches can give you ideas for presenting your leadership with talent optimization solutions. Leadership coaching will help the executive transform a toxic workplace into a harmonious one or an under-performing team into a high-performing one, and you will be the hero who inspired this.

Growing from Feedback

Becoming aware of our blind spots is a good start, but proactively leveraging that awareness is essential for growing as an executive. Coaches who are seasoned in executive coaching can introduce you to new strategies to leverage feedback in a constructive way, even if it was delivered in an unconstructive way by a manager or colleague.

Harnessing Your Strengths to Overcome Obstacles

Our leadership coaching practice is provided by professionals seasoned in executive coaching who are armed with scientific people data. Harnessing this combination leaves the executive with no guesswork in charting a path where career growth and development equates with daily happiness, as well as financial rewards. Every obstacle will become another fun opportunity for the executive to sharpen her skills and expedite your career success.

Cost-benefit Analysis on Getting More Qualifications

Should you invest tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention invaluable hours, in training, certifications, or a higher degree, or are there better strategies to accelerate your development as an executive? Your executive coaching partner will leverage years of experience working with other executives and professionals in your situation, as well as objective data to help you make this decision. Coaches will help you conduct a realistic trade-off analysis as to what path would make the most sense for your unique coaching engagement.

The previous question and answer described most scenarios in which hiring an executive coach would make sense. Career strategy coaching, on the other hand, is solely focused on helping the executive land your next position, potentially an unadvertised role in the hidden job market, while leveraging traditional as well as unconventional strategies, like executive access. 

Career advancement coaching and executive coaching in many instances are very similar. The distinction boils down to whether you are an individual contributor or an executive. In the case of an individual contributor coaching will be focused on career development and improving the individual's performance. In the case of an executive, coaching will be focused on executive's performance as a leader responsible for meeting the goals of the unit of the organization they lead.  

1. Prior to the first session, you complete three items: personality assessment, Career Strategy Assignment 1, and your career worksheet. In case of career advancement or executive coaching, you may also complete the Predictive Index assessments.
2. Using this information and our conversation, coaches identify your strengths and weaknesses, career preferences, skills, timeline, etc.
3. Using your personality information and your goals, the executive and the coach jointly agree on your branding strategy and an implementation plan that works for the executive.
4. We teach and coach the executive on leveraging tools such as Predictive Index to learn more about your team, your leadership, and other stakeholders and be able to motivate them to support your goals.
5. During the coaching session, we identify where the executive is stuck, make course corrections, and use our Inner Game technology to make sure the executive remains motivated to succeed.
6. In the coaching process, coaches continue to work with the executive on their plan to ensure your job satisfaction, exceptional performance, and rapid promotion.

Yes. We have executive clients all over the world; location makes no difference. Career advancement and executive coaching services are typically done by Zoom and we have both noon-time and evening times Eastern available to accommodate different time zones.

Yes. In addition to coaching certification, our coaches have management experience in all sizes of organizations. Their past work experience in addition to management includes entrepreneurship and business development.  

The coaching methodology our coaches use in coaching the executive and managers is a derivative of the organizational development concept of action research methodology in business. The 5 steps are 1) establishing a contract with the executive or managers, 2) collecting information through communication with the executive and other stakeholders in the business, 3) coaches facilitating the executive to arrive at an action plan that becomes the focus of the coaching, 4)  coaching the executive in the process of implementation and follow through, 5) evaluation of the outcomes and the coaching process. An important goal of the coaching in this process is to assist the executive to identify specific business outcomes and ensure that the executive and the organization are in alignment in pursuit of those goals. An important application of coaching the executive will be seeking consent to use a coach model that leverages the Predictive Index to ensure talent optimization.

Establishing a coaching contract with the executive

These are some of the basic coaching practices as coaches establish a "contract" with the executive; the coaches must start by establishing rapport with the executive before getting down to business and work on the following steps in the coaching process. Coaches must develop a clear understanding of the challenges the executive is facing. At this discovery phase of the coaching, you are identifying and prioritizing the challenges as related to work, business as a whole, or specific individuals at work. Listening skills such as concentration, empathy, and seeking clarification are important parts of coaching in this phase and throughout the relationship with the executive. Coaches seasoned in this process also recognize that to make the coaching successful the executive needs to demonstrate the ability and willingness to overcome the challenges the executive has prioritized.

Providing coaching feedback to the executive

Another important feature of this coaching framework is to provide the executive with feedback based on your observations as early as possible. The interaction that pursues can give the executive as well as the coaches a taste of the dynamics they could expect in future coaching interactions.

Coaching the executive from both system and people perspective

This coaching framework views the problems the executive is facing from both a system perspective as well as a people problem. Broken systems can make cause even highly motivated individuals to demonstrate poor performance. In such instances, development and coaching in the face of a broken system will prove ineffective. Coaches trained in the Predictive Index framework also realize that the most fine-tuned systems can lead to failure when the executive or its team members are not the right matches for the specifics of the challenges they are facing.

Coaching the executive to overcome gaps

Assuming that the executive is the right match for the mission it is critical for the success of the coaching process to establish a clear contract with the executive. If there are gaps but the executive can stretch with the help of coaching to excel in their tasks, then a talent development plan can complement the coaching process. 

Coaching the executive to set measurable outcomes

Once the coaches and the executive have established a contract that provides the coach the permission to engage the executive in a coaching conversation, it is time to establish measurable goals. The primary focus of executive coaching is the leadership challenges for the executive. But those challenges can have roots in one or more of the following three areas.

Coaching around the three key leadership factors

As we touched on earlier challenges stem from both systems as well as the people, including the executive, who are tasked to use those systems. In that sense, the coaching needs to focus on results in three key areas; a) the interpersonal skills of the executive that are needed to b) achieve business results, leveraging c) team dynamics and how coaching can help the executive to turn that team into a high performing team.

Coaching the executive to define measures in each of the three areas.

While defining business results may sound straightforward to the executive, the development of measures in the area of interpersonal skills of the executive and how they can influence team dynamics can prove to be challenging. Coaching the executive through this process and ensuring that it is the executive, not the coach who defines those measures, will ensure that the coaching and the results the executive is hoping for are realistic and objective. This will help the executive to have certified measures to share with all stakeholders.

If the executive's leadership is the sponsor of their coaching, it is essential at the contract stage of the coaching to engage the sponsors and seek clarification of their expectations in 3-way communication with the client. 

Coaching in our framework is designed to create real change as opposed to being purely a platform to share their daily experience. In order for the creation to happen coaching in the planning step should include at least the following:

Coaching the client away from circling in generalities and focusing on specifics

Coaching our client to gain clarity in terms of roles and responsibilities

Coaching clients with the help of their PI assessment to discover their personality patterns.

Coaching clients to plan for strategies to manage the resistance they will face on their journey. 

Coaching clients to identify key training they need to work on.

During our coaching programs that will be tailored for the executive, and as part of their professional development strategy, the client will be introduced to the concept of the psychology of performance. In this program, and as part of the client's training, they will become acutely aware of their own behavioral characteristics and how those patterns can contribute to the results they are seeking in working with their team members. Developing this awareness will help the executive to become aware of the behavioral patterns of their staff and use that insight in coaching and counseling their team and helping them to grow to become a high-performing team. Particularly the CEOs can then develop programs, with the help of our coaching, to ensure that C-suite continues to grow into a harmonious team that can accelerate the organization's overall performance.  Rather than relying on complicated and untested psychological programs, managers will be able to use PI's (5 min read) scientifically proven people data in coaching and the development of their teams. 

One of the best ways of implementing such a program of coaching will be to identify a small group of managers where the performance of their team has fallen short of the executive's goals and expectations. Coaching these managers we can then focus on leveraging the predictive index to identify the current team type and determine the gaps in that team for accomplishing the strategic goals that are set for the manager. By examining the profile of each employee we can then determine if, with the help of coaching a current member of the team can stretch and be utilized in a manner to meet the objectives. If it is determined that no such person exists within the team, managers can explore if a member of another team can help, fill this critical gap. And in the worst case, now that we know the exact behavioral characteristic of the person we are looking for we can put in place a requisition to fill the position externally, and then focus on training the person about their role and following up the training with additional coaching. Once you have had a few of the managers complete the training, they can then become an internal school, a center of excellence for training and coaching other managers within the organization.

Note that we started the description of this program with a focus on coaching the executive. However, any such program would be most successful not only for the client but the entire organization, if the program of coaching is eventually extended to other leaders in the organization. After all, it is unrealistic to put the entire burden of improving the organization on a coaching plan for an individual executive. That said we recognize that our primary focus would be the executive who hired us for coaching. Make no mistake in this school of coaching, identifying the behavioral patterns of the executive, alone, can by itself make a huge difference in the growth of the client, their performance, and ultimate promotion.

So what are some of the training aspects of this coaching? While there are common behavioral characteristics among individuals, there are also unique factors that can influence the success of each individual client. One of the most important factors in coaching is the inner game-- what the executive tells herself about their ability and potential. If there are hidden limiting beliefs, it will be challenging to overcome those with classroom training. The first mission of the coaching will be to identify such limiting beliefs and then help the client empirically shatter those beliefs. In cases like that coaching will help the client to identify opportunities and projects where their actions with the help of coaching can overcome the limiting belief in action and the outcome. For example, the executive may believe that there are certain personality types that clash with hers, and based on that makes it difficult to get along, motivate or work together. This would be disastrous if the other person happens to be your boss. In such cases, a lot of times, the coaching process can focus on leveraging the profile of the other individual and discovering the best strategies to communicate with and collaborate with the other individual. In a case like that coaching will help you to make a change in your behavior in order to make a change in the other person's behavior.

When it comes to live-action coaching here are 4 stages of coaching for the executive:

One-on-One coaching of the executive in the absence of other stakeholders

Observation, without the coaching of the executive during meetings with direct reports.

Providing coaching to the executive and direct reports during a meeting, and finally,

Coaching the clients alone during the executive's meeting with her team.

In order for live-action coaching to be successful we need to meet certain prerequisites. The most important aspect of this is the level of trust that must exist between the client and the coach before we can embark on coaching in the presence of other stakeholders.