8 Must Haves In an Executive Coach

Performance coaching produces results that many organizations find wanting in the traditional performance management and appraisal culture.  The major difference is that coaching occurs in real time; and performance appraisal is retrospective and occurs – usually – well after the fact.  The practical impact is that coaching is appreciated and performance appraisal is resented. Theoretically, every manager/leader should also be a coach to direct reports.  Maybe, someday, that will happen.  Imagine the impact on the organization from a personal and professional development standpoint if managers understood how to be an effective coach. To read the end of this article and more like it, click here.

The Successor Coaching Cycle: What are the key steps to this critical component of Succession Planning?

Today I have a post to share with you from one of my partners, Dan Schneider, in which he discusses the key steps to coaching your successor. There are as many coaches running around today as you can imagine.  There are performance coaches, life coaches, business coaches, parenting coaches, relationship coaches, and on and on.  Some of them are qualified to do what they do, some will be in the future, and some will be doing something else in the future. What are the key steps to making coaching work?  Whether you decide to take a stab at it yourself or bring in someone from the outside, here is the coaching system most likely to produce long term, positive results.  Identify the opportunity to coach.  It might be to accelerate orientation to a new level of responsibilities, to provide a critical new hire to the organization’s culture, or to improve performance.  In any case, you are taking advantage of opportunities to educate rather than tell, train, discipline, avoid, or overlook everyday situations. Establish rapport.  Commit to helping people succeed.  Without rapport, you will get resistance.  Discuss and agree on outcomes.  What does each of you expect to gain from the coaching relationship?  Discuss broad impact as well as immediate needs. Explore current performance, recognize steps already taken, and agree on a goal.  The goal should take the person being coached out of her/his comfort zone and be realistic at the same time. Offer support.  Encouragement gets people to keep trying.  Discouragement gets people to quit. Link the goal to higher level aims.  Tie the coaching to personal and professional development.  Where there is neither connection nor alignment between personal and professional goals, there is limited progress. Test commitment to the goal.  Ask “On a scale of 1 – 10, how would you rate your ability to achieve this goal?”  If you get 7 or below, then ask “What can we do to make that number higher?” Test assumptions and beliefs.  Be particularly sensitive to beliefs about what is or is not possible, other people, and relationships. Encourage self-improvement.  This increases motivation and commitment to achieving goals, especially when things seem to go backwards. Offer your experience - subtly.  Offer your experience as an option to consider rather than giving a dissertation on how well a particular approach worked for you.  Leave it up to the person you’re coaching to make the experience their choice rather than your mandate.  Do a “dress rehearsal”.  Have the person envision how the goal/objective/change is going to occur and describe the steps necessary to make it happen. Finally, develop a coaching culture so that everyone in the organization gets the benefit of a living in ever-increasing comfort zones. If you have come to the decision that you need to look elsewhere for your coach, come back next week for some tips from Dan on "Going Outside to Look for a Coach". What was the best advice you ever received from a coach?

Successor Identification - Create A Program for Testing Them Out!

Shel Silverstein writes children’s books.  In one called The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, he covers the role of succession development with a simplicity and singleness of purpose.  For our purposes, the Big O is access to the legendary corner office; and the missing piece is the person who sits in that office after you are finished with it. But, before there can be successor development, there must be a successor identification program in place.  That successor could be a family member, a key manager, or a partner.  Regardless of which, the person chosen must also be a leader. To read the end of this blog, click here.