Coaching: Develop Your Leaders
We develop C-suite leaders facing critical challenges related to their ability to:
- Strategically grow the organization to the next level;
- Manage relationships with others;
- Negotiate and deal with conflict successfully;
- Develop and communicate a clear organizational vision and strategy;
- Lead and inspire others;
- Make sound decisions;
- Provide helpful feedback to others;
- Enable others to successfully execute; and
- Hold team members accountable.
Our Leadership Coaching Philosophy
Our coaching philosophy mirrors our company philosophy. We take an organizational approach to coaching:
- We partner with a Coaching Sponsor. This could be the Chair of your Board, your CEO, or your Head of Talent. We meet with Sponsors multiple times throughout a coaching engagement. Sponsors help us measure success against your Coaching Action Plan and provide feedback.
- Sponsors receive informal coaching from us. We work closely with Sponsors to discover what everyone involved can do break free of ineffective patterns and create new, more productive ones.
- We coach multiple members of a senior team in parallel. This gives us a more nuanced understanding of each team members’ contributions to the dynamics at play. With this knowledge, we can help you shift unhealthy patterns of interaction and create lasting change.
- We maintain a relentless focus on results. Our coaching cycle has three phases: Assess, Act, and Reflect. The purpose of this cycle is to significantly impact the results you are capable of achieving.
Phase 1: Assess
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Lao Tsu
We begin our leadership coaching engagements by building a trusting working relationship with you. First, we get to know one another. We answer your questions, address any hesitations, and build our working relationship. As part of this process, we take a snapshot of where you are today. We do this through “360-degree” interviews. We ask the people you work with—your peers, leaders, direct reports, and in some cases, clients or partners—about your strengths and your challenges. We then analyze the data, paying particular attention to what might represent blind spots for you. We deliver an in-depth, highly customized “Feedback and Recommendations Report.” Next, we help you create your customized Coaching Action Plan: What 1-3 actions will get you where you’d like to be over the next 6-12 months?
Phase 2: Act
All of life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Once we have determined your 1-3 action areas, we engage together in three concrete ways: We Teach, Model and Enable you to think differently and act differently to achieve the results you’re looking for. Through Teaching, you learn new frameworks and skills (from negotiation to feedback to organizational change). Through Modeling, you observe and experience the behaviors and results you’d like to achieve. We role-play your toughest conversations so you can experiment in the real world with greater confidence and ease. Through Enabling, you conduct mini-experiments in safe environments. As our time together progresses, your experiments become bigger and have more at stake. But by then you’ve built up a reserve of experience, so you are set up for success.
Phase 3: Reflect
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Wayne Dyer
After you try something new, we reflect on what you did, what the outcome was, what worked well, and what you would do differently next time. We help you identify and integrate powerful learning from your experiments and translate your experience into tangible next steps. Reflection also happens formally at the end of every coaching engagement. We ask: Where was I when I began this work? Where am I today? What have I achieved? What more is there to accomplish?
Case Study: Resolving Conflict through Coaching
The problem: Shannon and Daphne were Type A, Harvard Business School graduates determined to make a difference in the world through their work at one of the world’s most prestigious non-governmental organizations. Their CEO sought out coaching for them to help grow their leadership capacity, and to address challenges they were having in their working relationship. Read more on the blog >
“I had the pleasure of working with Jen for almost a year in the midst of significant organizational changes and transitions at my company. Our initial sessions lasted 6 months, but I elected to extend the engagement because I found Jen’s input and guidance to be very valuable.
Jen had a profound influence on the way I view myself as a leader – and what leadership really means and entails — and the types of work and activities about which I am most passionate. She has a knack for rewarding one’s strengths, while also very thoughtfully approaching and addressing weaknesses and potential areas for improvement. I appreciated her willingness to lead structured conversations and to raise important topics, as well as her flexibility to let sessions go wherever they might lead. She approached everything we discussed, regardless of the topic, with good humor, keen interest, and valuable insights.
Jen provided guidance on how to navigate relationships with both supervisors and my large group of employees. Jen coached me to have the important and sometimes difficult conversations with members of my team. She also taught me to be more introspective and demanding of myself as a leader, not only for the benefit of my team, but for myself as well.
During our work together, I was awarded EDC’s Leadership Award; I am certain this was due in no small part to the work I completed with Jen. I would highly recommend her and I have already asked Jen to coach other senior executives on my team. I look forward to the impact she will have with them, and as a result, on our team.”
– Jeffrey Nelson, Executive Vice President, Real Estate Transactions, New York City Economic Development Corporation
For more information about coaching, please get in touch at info@alignmentstrategiesgroup.com