Executive Coaching Benefits and Potential Areas of Exploration:
- Move beyond self-directed learning and the mechanics of leadership.
- Develop the team that works for you today and can replace you tomorrow.
- Change your daily grind and overwhelm to spend time on what matters most.
- Escape your echo chamber and encourage honest, constructive feedback.
- Lead your culture by recognizing your role in defining and enforcing it.
- Temper your biases and remove your blind spots to engage your leadership.
- Develop the intuition and situational awareness to anticipate the future.
- Let go of the idea of your legacy to create a truly meaningful legacy.
Introduction:
You are a successful executive with the experience and accomplishments that objectively demonstrate your leadership effectiveness. Now, it’s time to think holistically about your leadership and move into the role of the naturally followed leader – a leader your stakeholders follow not because they must but because they respect you and genuinely trust your vision and path to success. A naturally followed leader is one who can lead through a storm knowing that the people around them (e.g. board of directors, executive team, employees, shareholders, as well as family and friends) are aligned, and ready to tackle whatever challenges lie ahead and/or provide support in the process.
Though this type of coaching embraces aspirational aspects of leadership, it is neither touchy-feely nor idealized. The goal remains focused on getting results by systematically addressing blind spots, biases, limiting beliefs, and behaviors that stand in the way of your AND your team’s success.
Your first step takes just 20 minutes.
Reach Your Full Leadership Potential
In the hard-driving, fact-focused professional environments of science, technology, and engineering, results are all that matter (or so we’ve been told). Culturally, we celebrate results and the determined leaders who achieve them no matter the cost. However, equal or even greater success is possible by understanding that success can have many definitions and beneficiaries. A leader can still be hard-driving and singularly focused while inspiring their team to authentically follow them. In so doing, the naturally followed leader creates the sustainable environment and the positive motivation that engages people at every level of the organization and ensures their mutual growth and success.
Benefits:
1. Identify and evaluate your potential blind spots, misconceptions, and limiting beliefs so you may craft a systematic plan to overcome them.
2. Continuously challenge your team to develop and expand their abilities to encourage autonomy, teamwork, and mutually assured success.
3. Demonstrate the ability to accept constructive feedback so your team gains confidence in sharing their own ideas and discussing bad news.
4. Promote a listening culture, ensuring that problems and their potential solutions are discussed openly and with thoughtful consideration.
5. Become the strongest advocate for your culture by narrowing the gap between your desired and actual culture, and promoting a consistent culture throughout the organization.
Benefits:
1. Identify and evaluate your potential blind spots, misconceptions, and limiting beliefs so you may craft a systematic plan to overcome them.
2. Continuously challenge your team to develop and expand their abilities to encourage autonomy, teamwork, and mutually assured success.
3. Demonstrate the ability to accept constructive feedback so your team gains confidence in sharing their own ideas and discussing bad news.
4. Promote a listening culture, ensuring that problems and their potential solutions are discussed openly and with thoughtful consideration.
5. Become the strongest advocate for your culture by narrowing the gap between your desired and actual culture, and promoting a consistent culture throughout the organization.
Manage Your Time & Priorities
Everyone struggles to find the time to focus on the activities that matter most to them. However, not all time management struggles are created equal. As a highly driven leader, you may find it hard to delegate or ask for help, fear losing control of your schedule, or are concerned about your image or reputation. Be assured that managing your time more effectively is not out of reach. Changing your time habits does not mean further sacrificing your professional goals, health, family time, or any other important aspect of your life.
Time management means recognizing your top personal and professional priorities, understanding how they may change over time, and how they align with your long-term goals.
Using various tools like a time-study or even shadowing, 360-assessments, and distilling priorities, we can establish the baseline of where you spend your time, identify the activities that reduce your energy or impact, and where changes are possible to reach your goals. Much like a pressure valve on the verge of failing, small incremental improvements can make a huge difference.
Note: This service can be provided as a standalone engagement. Typical engagement time: 3-4 months.
Benefits:
1. Expand your power base and sphere of influence to delegate more effectively, set clear boundaries, and become more productive.
2. Remove or replace phantom workloads and wasteful activities (unproductive meetings, cell phone interruptions, excessive commutes) that drain your time and focus.
3. Become aware of self-sabotaging behaviors (e.g. creative avoidance) that, when addressed, can meaningfully open up your schedule.
4. Identify strategies to deal with toxic people that demand your time and energy with little to no benefit.
5. Shift your perceptions about yourself and your image so you are no longer beholden to an established persona requiring unproductive time.
6. Engage more meaningfully with your teams to inspire them to do the same, leading to less wasted effort/improved productivity.
Time management means recognizing your top personal and professional priorities, understanding how they may change over time, and how they align with your long-term goals.
Using various tools like a time-study or even shadowing, 360-assessments, and distilling priorities, we can establish the baseline of where you spend your time, identify the activities that reduce your energy or impact, and where changes are possible to reach your goals. Much like a pressure valve on the verge of failing, small incremental improvements can make a huge difference.
Note: This service can be provided as a standalone engagement. Typical engagement time: 3-4 months.
Benefits:
1. Expand your power base and sphere of influence to delegate more effectively, set clear boundaries, and become more productive.
2. Remove or replace phantom workloads and wasteful activities (unproductive meetings, cell phone interruptions, excessive commutes) that drain your time and focus.
3. Become aware of self-sabotaging behaviors (e.g. creative avoidance) that, when addressed, can meaningfully open up your schedule.
4. Identify strategies to deal with toxic people that demand your time and energy with little to no benefit.
5. Shift your perceptions about yourself and your image so you are no longer beholden to an established persona requiring unproductive time.
6. Engage more meaningfully with your teams to inspire them to do the same, leading to less wasted effort/improved productivity.
Access Your Sounding Board
Leadership becomes an ever-increasingly isolating endeavor on the path toward CEO, president, or chairman of the board. Once those levels are reached, there is little room for sharing ideas until they have been thoroughly vetted, or voicing concerns or frustrations with any member of your team. The risks of sharing ideas prematurely or verbalizing your internal dialogue are simply too high, ranging from spreading of misinformation to diminishing one’s authority or even misaligning/confusing employees. Adding to the isolation, outside professional connections, friends, and family may be biased (even in a good way), prone to giving unsolicited advice, or unable to listen effectively.
Having a non-judgmental, unbiased, and completely confidential partner can provide the safe, objective, and engaging sounding board needed to truly elevate your leadership. As a coach, you may ask me to provide added insights and expertise, but as the subject-matter expert, you will ultimately develop the solution that works best for you and your organization without any of the risks highlighted above.
Benefits:
1. Explore ideas, test them out, and consider a full range of potential outcomes before sharing them publicly or with your team.
2. Improve your decision-making process by uncovering unknown-unknowns, challenging assumptions, and making the right tradeoffs.
3. Build confidence, improve stress management, and receive mental support that comes from being able to share your ideas, concerns and frustrations with a trusted confidant.
Having a non-judgmental, unbiased, and completely confidential partner can provide the safe, objective, and engaging sounding board needed to truly elevate your leadership. As a coach, you may ask me to provide added insights and expertise, but as the subject-matter expert, you will ultimately develop the solution that works best for you and your organization without any of the risks highlighted above.
Benefits:
1. Explore ideas, test them out, and consider a full range of potential outcomes before sharing them publicly or with your team.
2. Improve your decision-making process by uncovering unknown-unknowns, challenging assumptions, and making the right tradeoffs.
3. Build confidence, improve stress management, and receive mental support that comes from being able to share your ideas, concerns and frustrations with a trusted confidant.
Plan Your Succession & Legacy
Your legacy might be established in the last years of your tenure, but the risks of doing so increase the possibility that it will no longer be under your control. Part of that legacy is ensuring that your succession is carefully planned and executed, so the organization may continue to thrive after your departure. Coaching to plan your succession and your legacy is something that should happen as early as possible and requires the understanding that while results are remembered by the organization, leadership is remembered by the people that got you there.
Benefits:
1. Identify the steps to empower and enable your team and successor with the tools that ensure their continued success.
2. Evaluate the present state of your legacy and make the incremental changes necessary to achieve your desired legacy.
3. Explore various ideas and goals beyond your tenure to provide meaning and purpose in both your personal and new “work” life.
Benefits:
1. Identify the steps to empower and enable your team and successor with the tools that ensure their continued success.
2. Evaluate the present state of your legacy and make the incremental changes necessary to achieve your desired legacy.
3. Explore various ideas and goals beyond your tenure to provide meaning and purpose in both your personal and new “work” life.
Details and Proposed Process:
Typical Engagement: 6-9 Months
- We choose to work together, allowing a great fit to yield great results.
- Every aspect of our engagement remains strictly confidential.
- I move at your pace and will partner with you to accomplish some, all, or even more than your original objectives.
- My coaching focuses on context only, such as addressing behaviors or ideas that hold you back, and creating a positive, forward-looking attitude. Content development is left to the client, though I am always happy to provide coaching and guidance to ease the process.
- Please review my engagement process. Should you have any questions, let’s discuss them during our introductory call.
- During a follow-up call, we will finalize the terms, development goals, and desired outcomes before signing the contract.
- Sessions are 1-hour long and held on the same weekday and time. Typical engagements are set to meet once per week for the first half and then once per month for the second half. The meeting schedule is customizable.
- Sessions are conducted using teleconference applications, such as Zoom.
My Qualifications:
- Certified Time & Productivity Leadership Coach: Center for Executive Coaching – 2024
- I am a certified executive coach with additional specialties through the Center for Executive Coaching. My credentials and added certifications are available on the Education and Certifications page.
- My business, engineering, and scientific background information is available on LinkedIn.