Executive Coaching

In addition to consulting services, I also provide executive coaching to operating professionals with an approach that focuses on improving leadership performance and career growth in tandem. My coaching is situated in real problems and challenges faced by clients in the workplace, but always in connection with both their career aspirations and the broader performance demands of the overall organization. Personal growth and planning should be built on performance success for the leader. This provides both a platform for future opportunity and a vehicle for individual learning and reflection. I follow a few other principles that support this approach:

• Honest, fact-based assessment and continuous improvement: use objective standards, as well as input from key stakeholders (e.g. via 360 feedback or similar) to understand true performance needs and growth imperatives. Include feedback and learning from customers, partners and other organizational departments, to complement perspectives of supervisors and subordinates about performance behaviors. Regularly monitor growth and performance throughout a coaching relationship.
• Support personal reflection: performance improvement in the job is enhanced and enabled by personal reflection for clients, and “holding up the mirror” about how both successes and setbacks might guide future development and career aspirations
• Balance “empowering the individual” with advice and shared problem-solving: though any coaching process must build capability in the leader to address and own his/her own solutions to workplace challenges, sometimes advice and guidance from a more experienced hand is just plain helpful. I can often offer that, appropriate to the situation; I'm not afraid to suggest my own answers to a problem, though always in the spirit of encouraging both learning and growth for the future.
• Short swings complement deeper dives: though coaching sessions often take the form of extended and focused conversations, there is great value (following adult learning principles) in short “teachable moments” and briefer, situational guidance when appropriate. I always try to combine extended sessions with appropriate interim and ad hoc coaching, suited to the timing and context of the working relationship.