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While leaders typically tend to organizational and individual needs of people all day long, they often do not have the time, space, and opportunity to tend to their own leadership needs adequately. Executive coaching offers you a rigorous and confidential means to develop yourself as a leader so that you are more effective organizationally and more fulfilled personally.

As we work together, I will always be keeping one ear on what it is you most want, and keeping that as our north star as we delve into specific issues. I’ll provide you with tools and frameworks to help you gain clarity, find your own answers, and move forward. I’ll then hold you accountable for doing what you said you would do between sessions so that, in the end, you have far greater impact and fulfillment.

Click here to learn about how the coaching process works.
Click here to learn how Executive Coaching differs from therapy, mentoring, and consulting.

Developing your leadership starts with understanding where you are right now. One of the fastest and most effective ways for you to do this is to use a “360” assessment. While there are many different “360” assessments available, I prefer to use the “Leadership Circle 360 Profile” since it is the most highly respected and most validated leadership assessment available. Here is why:

The Leadership Circle Profile (TLCP) is the only 360 degree feedback instrument that measures your two primary leadership domains– Creative Competencies and Reactive Tendencies- and integrates this information so that your key opportunities for development immediately rise to the surface. Creative Competencies are well-researched competencies that measure how you achieve results, bring out the best in others, lead with vision, enhance your own development, act with integrity and courage, and improve organizational systems. Reactive Tendencies are leadership styles that emphasize caution over creating results, self-protection over productive engagement, and aggression over building alignment. These self-limiting styles overemphasize the focus on gaining the approval of others, protecting yourself, and getting results through high control tactics.

Most importantly, the Leadership Circle 360 degree feedback instrument is unique in that it reveals your internal operating system: i.e. the internal assumptions (beliefs) that run your behavior in both domains. This allows you to see how your world of thought is translating into your unique style of leadership, and whatever productive or unproductive behaviors that comprise it. Ultimately TLCP increases your inner awareness that affects your outward behavior so that you can lead in ways that maximize your results. If you would like more information about this assessment, take a look at the website for The Leadership Circle.

Your Next Step

If you want to discuss how this leadership assessment could benefit you, click the green button below.

Very often, teams don’t get the results they want because of a myriad of human factors. These factors include such things as differing priorities, roles, work styles, incentives, skills, perspectives, and many other factors.

Team coaching enables a group to address these human challenges far more effectively than the group is likely to do on its own, so that it not only meets its goals, but exceeds them. Whether you are looking to align your leadership group, and/or boost the synergy in individual teams, team coaching offers you the opportunity to boost your collective effectiveness.

When coaching teams, I typically work with the leadership of the team(s) to design an approach which will elicit strong buy-in of all team members, and then facilitate a number of different processes to enable the team to make the changes it desires. Often, teams benefit from beginning our work together by taking The Leadership Circle’s Collective Leadership Assessment to get a powerful read on the team’s leadership culture. Click here for more information about this world class assessment. The team coaching which then follows is highly participative, and assumes that all the voices in a system are important. My objectives when working with teams and organizations is to strengthen the effectiveness of the entire system, and all members of that system, so that the team can realize its desired results.

Your Next Step

If you want to discuss how team coaching might benefit your own team, click the green button below.

If you would like to get a powerful understanding of your team or organization’s own leadership culture, consider using The Leadership Circle’s Collective Leadership Assessment. Used for your entire organization or just one of your leadership teams, the Collective Leadership Assessment will tell you and your teammates how you view the culture of leadership that you all are co-creating, and compare that reality to the optimal culture you all want. The gaps between your current culture and your collectively desired culture, as well as between your current culture and the leadership culture of other organizations, will quickly give you a compelling rationale for change. In addition, it shows you exactly where you will want to focus your collective leadership development efforts.

This Collective Leadership Assessment is quick, very affordable, web based, and user friendly. Results are downloadable. The Collective Leadership Assessment also works seamlessly with the individual Leadership Circle 360 Profile so that if your organization chose to do both, the two instruments would provide complementary feedback. For more information, take a look at the website for The Leadership Circle.

Your Next Step

If you want to discuss how assessing your leadership culture might benefit your team, click the green button below.

Why Invest in Leadership Development? The way I think of it, if you want to ride your bike to a destination 50 miles away, you are going to need to do several things. First, you are going to need to figure out the route you are going to take to get there. For organizations, this road map is your strategy. But strategy, alone, won’t get you there. If you’re biking, you need to be in good shape physically and have a bike that is in good shape too. If you and your bike aren’t in good shape, the best plan in the world won’t get you there. The same is true in organizations. You need your people to be operating at their best and be equipped to do their jobs well. And leadership development plays a critical role in this.

Once we have identified your leadership needs, we can custom design leadership programming for different levels of your organization. Typically the top levels of your organization benefit from a focus on their capacity to inspire, connect, motivate, and lead others effectively. All of these capacities, in turn, depend on leaders having highly developed awareness of their own emotions, an ability to manage them well, an awareness of others, and the ability to build effective relationships that facilitate the work that needs to be done. For a more complete understanding of how I view effective leadership, as well as the conditions that I believe promote the development of it,  click here.

Your Next Step

If you want to discuss how leadership development might benefit your own situation, click the green button below.

Those who manage or care for others also greatly benefit from understanding how to take a coaching approach with the people they work with. This curriculum will give your managers and care givers the basics they need in order to listen, empower, and support people well rather than trying to “fix” them. For a sampling of topics that this training addresses, click here.

First time supervisors and younger managers often need instruction in basic supervisory functions including setting a vision and goals, building a team, planning and facilitating successful meetings, communicating well, making change, managing conflict, and managing time. For a taste of what a suite of these training sessions can offer your organization, click here.

Should your board, one of your departments, or your entire organization be in need of a retreat, there are many possibilities. All retreats are custom designed to suit your needs, and typically are highly participative and interactive. Customized retreats may last anywhere from a half day to several days. Retreats may be for a variety of purposes. To learn about retreat topics that you may wish to consider, click here.

If you are looking for some fun and quick morale boosts and/or some specific professional development, you might consider offering a series of short “Lunch and Learn” seminars. For a taste of some topics you might consider, click here.

If you would like to offer one or a series of workshops to your organization, conference, or retreat, click here for some workshops you might consider.

If you are looking to transform your organizational performance, a good place to begin is for us to discuss your vision for your organization as well as how you see it today. Assuming your organization is large enough to have an executive team, we would want to get their input as well. From these dialogues, we would then establish a quick sense of where you are, and then together design the most effective means to transform your organizational performance.

The options we might want to consider from there to get a further understanding of your organization’s current reality are many. For example, we might wish to employ different methodologies for getting a more complete assessment of your leadership culture, your employees’ engagement, your organization’s finances, marketing, operations, and so forth. To do so, I would recommend a team of my colleagues, each of whom have a particular functional expertise.

From there, I would recommend consideration of processes that engage representatives from across your organization in constructive, forward-looking dialogues. Designing these dialogues in ways that minimize people’s fears, maximize constructive creativity, and move the organization solidly in desired directions is critical. There are a number of approaches that do this well including World Café, Open Space, Dialogue Processes, and Appreciative Inquiry, each of which can be combined with team coaching and other organizational supports to meet individual organizational needs. To read more about one of the most powerful approaches, Appreciative Inquiry, click on the next tab and read below.

The Appreciative Inquiry methodology is a highly researched and proven methodology that organizes representatives from throughout your organization in transformative dialogues that build a shared vision, bring out people’s best, create synergy, and engages them to identify, design, and plan initiatives. For a lengthier description of Appreciative Inquiry, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appreciative_inquiry . For additional information see:  http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/ .

Your Next Step

For more information about how Appreciative Inquiry might benefit your organization, click on the green button below.

If your organization has outgrown the human resource systems and organizational infrastructures that are supporting it, you may be seeing secondary problems arising that are putting enormous stress on everyone. To get a taste of some areas that you may wish to assess in order to see if you need an upgrade, click here.

The Appreciative Inquiry methodology is a highly useful methodology to engage representatives of all of the stakeholders to your organization in transformative dialogues that build a shared vision, bring out people’s best, create synergy, and engages them to identify, design, and plan initiatives.  For a lengthier description of Appreciative Inquiry, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appreciative_inquiry as well as  http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/ .

Your Next Step

For more information about how Appreciative Inquiry might benefit your organization and its stakeholders, click on the green button below.