Coaching Can Boost Your Career!

Coaching

Individual Coaching

In the past, individual coaching was offered only to top executives as a way of enhancing their effectiveness and grooming them for CEO or next level positions. Now, leading organizations are more often turning to coaching in two situations:

Preventing Derailment: helping a talented and valued employee, typically a middle to upper level manager or a skilled professional, to improve in specific problem areas such as interpersonal skills.
Career Development: helping a talented and valued employee continue to hone leadership capabilities to enhance effectiveness in the current position and promotability for the future.

Preventing Derailment

One of the most difficult challenges a manager faces is dealing with a highly talented and valuable employee whose behavior or performance (or both) is out of sync with what is needed in a key role. In the past, the manager’s choices were simple: either replace the difficult person or put up with the behavior for the sake of the talent.

These choices are unacceptable in today’s competitive environment. Replacement is costly, up to 250% of annual compensation. And the demands of customers, as well as of other hard-to-replace employees, make the second option unbearable and unwise.

Sending the difficult employee off to a training program to get "fixed" often provides short-term improvement, but not lasting change. Increasingly organizations are seeking help in the form of individual coaching, once reserved for high level executives. This intensive experience is an excellent investment for any talented, valuable employee.

Often the individual’s manager presents the coaching option, and allows the subject to choose whether or not to take advantage of this opportunity. Individual coaching is tailored to the specific needs of the individual. Our philosophy is to propose a time-limited approach with checkpoints and evaluation of progress built in, as opposed to an open-ended relationship. Consider the following approach:

Stage 1: Initial Interviews and Data Gathering

	Preliminary interview with the subject’s Manager to understand the problem area, to clarify issues and concerns, set objectives, and agree on the process, including agreeing on who else will be interviewed during the data gathering, and what the Manager’s role will be in this process.
	Administering of questionnaires, selected depending on the specific needs, but may include Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, NEO 5-Factor Personality Survey, Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Style Survey, FIRO-B, and InnerView™ 360 feedback
	Preliminary interview with the candidate to set objectives, outline the process, and agree on a schedule and method for working together
	Other interviews as determined by the subject’s manager

Stage 2: Data Analysis and Summary

	Analysis of questionnaire results, as well as other documents as appropriate, such as performance reviews.
	Analysis of interview data
	Preparation of summary and conclusions; preparation for coaching sessions

Stage 3: Individual Coaching Session(s): One entire day of feedback and coaching

	Review questionnaire results and interview data with the subject to identify specific needs for improvement and to test subject’s acknowledgment and self-awareness
	Assess subject’s willingness to commit energy, time, and attention to improvement; review of consequences of not accepting this challenge
	Create action plan to include specific objectives, time tables, and actions to achieve them
	Coach on specific areas of need; videotaped coaching, as needed
	Give specific assignments

Stage 3: Individual Coaching Session(s): by telephone

Weekly telephone conferences or face-to-face meetings if in the local area, 30-60 minutes each, with minimum of 4 weeks:

	Follow up and review progress on assignments
	Provide additional coaching
	Hold bi-weekly telephone conference with Manager regarding reinforcing progress; approximately 15 minutes each

Stage 4: Meeting to Evaluate Progress

Approximately 8 weeks after initial coaching, we'll ask the candidate to self-evaluate his or her progress. If applicable, we can conduct review telephone interviews with the same group interviewed initially.

We'll conduct a half-day, face-to-face coaching session, with videotaped practice as needed. At this point we’ll determine whether to continue, change strategies, or terminate the coaching. We'll provide a written report to the candidate and the Manager at the close of the coaching assignment.

Career Development Coaching

Leading organizations are finding that investing in the on-going development of their key people pays off in increased loyalty and commitment, and enhanced performance. They offer the resource of an external coach in addition to their support of training, education, and other types of professional development. Typically these coaching assignments are voluntarily sought by high-potential managers.

The process of Career Development Coaching is driven by the individual requesting the coaching. Goals are set in a preliminary discussion with the Coach, and a process and timelines are agreed upon. They also agree on appropriate data gathering, such as interviews with key stakeholders, 360 degree feedback, and other questionnaires.

The first coaching session is face-to-face, and subsequent sessions may be by telephone or face-to-face, as agreed upon. Periodically the individual and the Coach assess progress and determine how to proceed.

Case Study

A woman in the technology and operations side of a large financial institution headed up high level, enterprise-wide projects requiring her to interface with executives and their staff in a variety of business units. Her business partners had high regard for her dedication, responsiveness, focus, precision, and quality. But they regularly received complaints about her style of dealing with others on the project teams. She bullied them into meeting deadlines and quality standards, micromanaged because she wasn’t confident they’d get the job done, and often exploded emotionally when the projects weren’t going well.

Coaching allowed her to face up to the fact that although she had received years of glowing performance reviews about her results, she was now near derailment because of her lack of influence skills and ability to deal with stress. Eager to prevent a career she loved from going astray, she embraced the hard work of coaching, learning first to understand the roots of her behavior, then learning how to change it to be more productive. After six months she was able to say “This not only helped me change my behavior at work, it changed my life.” Three months after that, she was promoted.