Executive Coaching

At this stage in your career you have probably had enough training. What you need now has to be customized for you and your unique situation. Executive coaching is a precision tool for optimizing your capability as a leader. We work with you on an exclusive one-to-one basis to develop thinking and skills specific to your development.

Leadership Development

Recent studies have been very clear about the skills and qualities that we expect of our leaders.

The Centre for Creative Leadership found the number one success factor to be “relationships with subordinates”. Leadership is, after all, a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. Kouzes and Posner, in their extensive studies on leadership over the past twenty years, have consistently found the top four characteristics of admired leaders to be honesty, a clear direction, the ability to get things done, and the ability to communicate a clear vision.

Great leadership is not the private domain of a select number of charismatic men and women. Great leadership is lived and demonstrated by many people in all contexts and walks of life. There is nothing mystical or complicated about leadership development - leadership skills can be learnt and practiced. The bottom line is credibility, and to be a credible leader you need to practice what you preach and do what you say you will do.

Management Development

Good management is the backbone of any organization. Being a good manager requires skills in a wide range of areas; being a great manager requires excellence in many of them. Like everyone else, you have strengths and weaknesses in your management skills. We will work with you to identify and build on your strengths; often more can be gained by building on your strengths to achieve excellence. We will also help you identify and work on areas of weakness: fatal flaws that make you less effective and hinder your career progression. In any management position you need to be a role model for the people around you. We can help you achieve this and support you in becoming an outstanding manager in your organization.

Strategic Thinking and Execution

To be successful in today’s fast moving and rapidly changing business environment you need to be able to think and execute strategically.

In your business you must react to many demands that are generally task-oriented and tactical. In this context you need the ability to align your tactical actions to support the business strategy in the most effective way. You need to be able to pull up and see the strategic context for what you are doing. It requires an ability to understand the dynamics of the business as distinct from the management of the business. The strategic horizon of your business is different from the tactical horizon and different again from the quarterly, weekly and daily horizons of getting things done; and yet they must all be aligned. It is imperative that you see the big picture and have it inform day -to -day decisions. If you don’t, actions that seem sensible in the short term could derail you and the business long term. Decisions that are made in the context of a deep understanding of the business strategy have a much higher chance of success. Strategic thinking and strategic execution are skills that you must develop. They are essential rather than a ‘nice to have’ if you are to be even more successful in your current role and progress in your career.

Career Management

The career model has changed dramatically for most of us. There is far less security and more rapid change. Change confronts us and also creates opportunities that tempt us to move on to something different.

Management gurus and the corporations we work in tell us that we must manage our own careers. No one else is going to do it for us. But what does ‘managing your career’ really mean? And how do you do it, particularly when you are immersed in your current occupation? One thing we know for sure is that we do not know what will happen in the future, no matter how much we plan. There are, however, significant moments in your career when you know that what you are currently doing will not last forever. These moments are opportunities to take the initiative and start to think about the direction that you want your life and career to take. The saying goes that for a rudderless ship any port is a good one. You could leave your career to chance and see where you end up. Or you could take charge and head for where you want to be.

Work/Life Integration

We do not have a personal life and a professional life – we have a life. The more we view our lives holistically, the more chance we have of becoming successful and happy. The more we focus solely on our profession to the exclusion of all else, the poorer we become in terms of a rich and fulfilling life. A nice idea I hear you thinking. But how do we make it happen in a world where organizations are demanding so much of us; in a world where, to take our foot off the gas could be professional suicide? Coaching for work/life integration is not a luxury, but rather a necessity if you are to be healthy and create the life that you really want. It is possible for you to be less stressed, more effective and more fulfilled.

Business Relationship Coaching

Good working relationships contribute enormously to the success of teams and organizations. Poor working relationships block progress, slow things down and sabotage change. Dysfunctional relationships between senior executives also adversely affect the culture of the whole organization.

We don’t have to like each other to work together, but we do need to interact in a professional and respectful manner. Relationship issues are difficult to resolve at the best of times. In business they can be even more challenging because of the environment and the impact on so many other people. Unfortunately, avoiding the issue rarely makes it go away.

Business relationship coaching is a facilitated process that helps the individuals involved to sort out their difficult relationship. This is not formal conflict resolution but a tried and tested process of having two people hear and understand each other, think through the issues and agree a professional working relationship. The desired outcome is a functional relationship that enables high performance, both from the individuals themselves and the teams they work in.

Positive Influence

One of the top two reasons given by people resigning from their job is their relationship with their boss. The biggest moan people have when they come home from work is usually about their uncooperative/difficult/stupid (choose your own adjective) colleagues who are preventing them getting their job done. Does any of this sound familiar?

Organizations are relatively simple systems. What makes them complex is that they are also intricate webs of human relationships. We need to be able to work well with our boss and our colleagues to accomplish the results we want. This is not an option, but rather a basic requirement. Influencing skills are about working successfully with others. They are a range of behaviors that you can utilize to get the job done and at the same time build or maintain good relationships. Sometimes it’s easier to get the job done by walking all over others, but this destroys relationships for the next time. Sometimes it’s easier to give way to other’s demands and maintain the relationship, but you don’t achieve the outcomes you want. So how do you achieve the results you want and build positive relationships? How do you gain others commitment when compliance isn’t enough? How do you influence others in a positive, non-manipulative way, particularly if they are being less than cooperative or difficult? Coaching can help you build an effective tool-kit of positive influence behaviors that will help you get things done and build good working relationships.

For more information, please contact us