WHAT EXECUTIVE COACHING INVOLVES

Most executives do not get the support and assistance that they need. Executive coaching offers a confidential relationship using face-to-face conversations to improve professional competency and self-leadership. This collaboration offers confidential assistance in the following areas:

   Defining success

   Clarifying one's personal mission and goals for life

   Developing step-by-step strategies for achieving sustainable growth

   Helping with relational cohesiveness and conflict resolution

   Assisting with the navigation of change and transition

   Supporting smart time management practices

   Encouraging strong management practices: i.e., delegation and supervision

   Aiding with written communication and verbal presentations

   Offering desired accountability and constructive feedback

   Providing a sounding board for decision making, and career planning

Because participants are likely to have personal and/or relational problems which interrupt professional effectiveness, the coach will be prepared to deal with these issues as well. 

FATAL FLAWS OF BUSINESS AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERS

1. Having people at the top of the organizational chart whose motives are suspect. Great leaders ask a single question: What is the right thing to do? Dangerous leaders ask two questions: What is the right thing to do? And how will this decision affect me? Leaders asking two questions are unsafe because in a time of crisis, they will do what is in their self-interest rather than what is best for the organization.
   
   
2. Confusing leadership and headship. Being promoted to a position of leadership does not make one a leader. People become leaders when those around them choose to follow because of a belief that the leader has integrity with the best interest of the organization at heart. Leadership must be earned.
   
   
3. Focusing too little time and energy on acknowledging employees, thanking them, celebrating their successes, and comforting them in their failures and losses. Employees want to know that their leader knows who they are, what they are doing, and how well they are doing it. Leaders need to find time to wander around to discern what is happening.
   
   
4. Promoting the wrong people and retaining ineffective executives. When a manager is not performing well, everyone knows it. Keeping the person around sends a strong message that loyalty trumps performance. As a result, morale and productivity suffer.
   
   
5. Neglecting to spend time training, mentoring, and encouraging young employees with high-potential. These are often the most vulnerable employees in the organization because they are managed by lower-ranking managers who were not promoted because of a fatal flaw. These managers are often jealous of young gifted employees.  Gifted employees can therefore easily become discouraged or adopt their manager's fatal flaw. Great organizations develop strategies to identify, manage, and promote gifted young employees.
   
   
6. Having written organizational core documents (mission, vision, core values) with little substance.  The operative mission, vision, core values are not in print. In times of crisis, having clearly written core documents is essential because it provides a place to refocus; to use a football analogy, blocking and tackling instead of trick plays.
   
   
7. Lacking a sixth sense of how things are going, what the next right thing to do is, and what the potential problems are. This visionary skill is intuition. One either has it or does not.
   
   
8. Failing to make organizational decisions known broadly at the earliest possible moment. Secrets are impossible to maintain. Usually, what leaks out is incorrect, detrimental, and difficult to correct. When people at all levels are told about decisions at the earliest possible moment, they feel valued. It is important that these decisions are communicated in person rather than electronically.
   
   
9. Delivering the bad news last. If leaders have bad news to deliver, it should be  communicated early in the presentation. Nothing is worse than closing on a downbeat. When bad news is delivered early, it can be followed, but explanations and hopeful messages.
   
   
10. Undervaluing employees who add to esprit de corps. There are three kinds of employees: "bringers" (people who walk customers into the organization,) "grinders" (people who grind out work,) and "binders" (relational people who help the organization hold on to employees and customers). "Bringers" are paid the most; "grinders" are important but replaceable; and "binders" are ordinarily underrated in importance. In order to be an effective employee, one has to do at least two of these functions. Being a "binder" makes it more likely that one will not lose his/her job in an economic downturn.
    
    
11. Possessing pride in past performance that blinds the organizations from seeing blind spots that, if corrected, could become the springboard for improvement.
    
    
12. Relying on staff realignments to bring about transformation. Almost any organizational structure can work efficiently if the people involved buy into the chosen structure.
    
    
13. Advocating leadership by avoiding conflict when confrontation is needed. No one follows leaders who are continually negative or argumentative, but positive confrontation is part of the leader's job description. Leaders speak the truth at the right time and in a constructive way.
    
    
14. Failing to recognize passive aggressive behavior when changes are being made.  When organizational changes take place, there are three distinct groups of people that must be dealt with: those who genuinely agree that the change is necessary and right; those who openly disagree with the changes being implemented; and those who appear to be going along are actually consciously or unconsciously undermining the change process. Leaders must be aware of all three categories and devise strategies for moving dissenters to the approvers category.
    
    
15. Choosing people at the senior leadership who tell the C.E.O. what she or he wants to hear, and being punitive with non-aligned executives. C.E.O.'s need people around them who are unafraid to tell them the truth.
    
    
16. Attempting to manage direct reports by means of a job description and annual goals. There is no way a leader can keep all this data in mind. A better way is to ask one's direct report persons to prepare three or four measurable goals to be accomplished within 90 days. The four quarterly reports, if accomplished, should cause the employees to fulfill their job description and achieve their annual goals.