Executive Coaching

Today, with many organisations developing flatter management structures with matrix communication and reporting lines, and where change is a constant, the people side of the equation is often forgotten.

People in their quest for knowledge and the development of skills are searching for support and guidance, however many managers are simply struggling to find the time or in some cases lack the necessary capabilities to assist.

The PINNACLE Business Solutions Executive Coaching Program is specifically designed for each person's unique concerns. The coaching can be a part of a leadership development or team-building program. It can also occur as part of a major organisational cultural change program, or to assist senior management execute strategy throughout the organisation.

Coaching is a powerful process of learning, growth and development.

It is a collaborative relationship between a coach and their client, which enables, through a process of discovery, goal-setting and strategic actions, the actualisation of what they most want in their business unit, organisation and their lives.

Essentially, our program is aligned with the corporate goals of the organisation and serves as an invaluable resource for the individual and the organisation.

Tips for Picking the Right Executive Coach

With the Australian economy now emerging strongly from the Global Financial Crisis, gaps may need to be filled and companies must do more with less. Providing executive coaches to high-potential performers is one way to get the most from untapped talent.

Unfortunately, many executives select a coach based on referrals from colleagues, without adequately considering personal needs. The person sponsoring the engagement usually sends a few coaches for interviews and asks the executive to select one based on “fit.”

But without a greater understanding of what happens in a coaching relationship, it’s difficult to make a fair assessment and pick a good match.

In Your Executive Coaching Solution (Davies-Black, 2007), Joan Kofodimos says a coach should help the person-being-coached to achieve most of the following:

1. Strike a balance between supporting and challenging yourself.

2. Create feedback loops with colleagues.

3. Clarify your true strengths, values and or purpose.

4. Understand and commit to the personal and professional development process.

5. Broaden your perspectives.

6. Learn new interpersonal concepts and skills.

7. Maintain a confidential and safe environment to become more self-aware.

8. Influence how others view you.

Pick a coach for Support and the Ability to Challenge You

You’re more likely to open up to a coach who creates a safe, confidential and trusting environment. PINNACLE Business Coaches accomplish this in part by demonstrating they understand and respect your interests, values and concerns.

But coaches must also provide challenges that motivate you to perform beyond your habitual behaviors; confront you directly, yet non-judgmental, with the impact of your actions; and probe the motives and assumptions underlying your behaviours. At PINNACLE Business Solutions, we believe this is essential for a successful coaching relationship.

Using a Coaching Relationship Well

The way you select your coach is significant. Do you see the coach as a subordinate? An outside consultant? An authority figure whose primary relationship is with your organisation or boss? How do gender or other personal characteristics influence the way you interact with your coach?

Pick a coach who can raise issues impartially and show you how your behaviours affect others.

For Help in Developing Feedback Loops

At home, your spouse, partner or significant other will not provide you with critical feedback because he or she knows that it is more important to maintain the loving relationship versus communicating negative feedback. According to positive psychology expert John Gottman, there is a secret formula in relationships. Gottman’s research revealed that marriages are significantly more likely to succeed when the interactions between the couple are five to one, positive to negative.

The secret formula is simple: Praise your mate often.

Your peers at work will rarely share authentic feedback with you. However, your PINNACLE Business Coach will help you develop the skills needed to create relationships in which you can ask for honest feedback on an ongoing basis from your peers at work.

Instead of encouraging dependence, your PINNACLE Business Coach will teach you how to self-coach and manage your development in the future. After an initial assessment, your PINNACLE Business Coach will show you how to form links with colleagues and how you can help them frame useful, specific feedback instead of vague judgments.

Your PINNACLE Business Coach will teach you to ask for feedback and manage the conversation without being defensive. This includes learning how to determine which feedback is relevant and valid while prioritising issues that you need to address and figuring out how to handle them.

For Help in Clarifying Values and Purpose

Skilled coaches help you clarify your developmental, career and life goals. Your PINNACLE Business Coach will also teach you how to sort out your needs, wants, concerns and boundaries in any particular situation, which allows you to become more comfortable and act more consistently when completing goals, even in complex circumstances.

Here is what one of my executive clients had to say about clarifying his values and purpose during the coaching process:

“Have you ever peeled an apple or an orange with a potato peeler? Slowly the outer skin is peeled away to reveal the piece of fruit.

Phil worked in a very collaborative way with me, slowly enquiring and prompting me to look at my core values and how they impacted on the way I worked with my colleagues and my team. At different times during this process I felt uneasy, Phil recognised this, but at the same time he encouraged me to examine my values and consequently my leadership style. It was a very rewarding experience, leading to a total change in the way I work in my role and my organisation.”

Structuring the Development Process

Your PINNACLE Business Coach will help you manage each step of the coaching process.

Action-based learning for the executive who wants results by working with a proven system and an experienced coach...

Commit to fully engage in the coaching process.
Get input from others
Review feedback and plan development
Hold regular coaching meetings to learn and practice new behaviours
Implement behaviours in your daily work and personal life
Assess actual results in your personal and work life.

For Guidance in Allowing Your Perspectives to Evolve

Your PINNACLE Business Coach will help you break free of any limiting beliefs and assumptions. A significant shift in perspective can occur when your coach:

Provides additional viewpoints
Plays ‘devil's advocate’
Looks at situations as others might
Asks new questions to allow you to reach those "aha" moments
Offers new approaches to put your new discoveries into practice.

Help in Learning New Concepts and Skills

PINNACLE Business Coaches present a mental model of what leadership means, what it takes to be effective and the key skills required. Your PINNACLE Business Coach will teach skills relevant to your particular situation and assist with your implementation in daily interactions…to sharpen your interpersonal skills.

Choose for Confidentiality

Your PINNACLE Business Coach will effectively navigate risky waters filled with sensitive, confidential information. Because there are no other relationships that must be protected, beyond the coaching relationship, both you and your PINNACLE Business Coach can say the “unsayable” to each other in this safe, confidential and trusting environment; which helps you to reach an area of self-awareness where there is great leverage for developmental change.

Assistance in helping you Influence Others’ Views of You

You learn how to help your colleagues notice the changes you make by inviting them to become involved in your development through providing you with requested feedback in specific situations. The PINNACLE Business Coach, an experienced coach, will help you influence others’ views by:

Positively managing your relationships
Assessing key colleagues' willingness to share their feedback from participating with you in customer and internal company conversations
Helping you solicit ongoing feedback on relevant behaviours.

Roles a Coach Should Not Play

PINNACLE Business Coaches will consciously avoid roles that hinder your ability to build self-coaching skills and take independent action:

Cheerleader: Coaches should not give positive reinforcement from the sidelines for everything you do.

Therapist: Coaches should not deal strictly with your personal adjustment and psychological issues, even if they’re qualified and licensed to do so.

Executor of the Boss’s Wishes: Coaches should do more than force you to conform to a superior’s expectations, even when given an agenda when hired.

Shadow Manager: Coaches cannot advise you on business decisions or act on your behalf.

One-Sided Advocate: Coaches must look at all viewpoints and resist taking one side.

Caution: Beware

Since the coach selection process is self-selecting, it is most important that you make your decision wisely.

Intuition is something we rely heavily on to gauge the course of our actions. Intuition is fast, automatic, unreasoned thought and feelings. However, we can be blind-sighted by costly intuitive errors when we over feel and under think.

Beware of deciding upon the look and feel of a good fit. Be sure to balance feeling comfortable with the person against your need to be challenged as you grow. You must believe the coach you select can help you change.

How does the Executive Coach add value?

Corporations have discovered Coaches to be valuable resources for developing their people and adding value to the organisation.

Some examples of where a PINNACLE Business Coach will add value:

Working with newly appointed key people to make the successful transition

Assisting senior management execute innovation and/or strategy change management and leadership during restructures and mergers

Working with valued and talented employees who are dealing with specific developmental challenges or issues

Assisting a technical or functional manager to develop leadership competencies

Following a performance review, 180° or 360° survey

To improve the effectiveness of an established executive

Supporting an on-going training initiative that requires consistent reinforcement and an objective perspective

Providing on-going support to teams lacking cohesion or looking to achieve ambitious goals for the business unit and company

Career counselling, thereby overcoming restructure/merger "blues" due to an executive no longer "fitting" the new organisation.

No matter what the context, our coaching is not just about increasing performance. The focus is on shifting the observer, not just making incremental changes in action. By shifting the observer, the learning becomes transformational as new possibilities not available before become visible as opportunities for learning and growth.

We provide high level executive coaching for individuals, coaching support for training and organisational initiatives and customised internal coaching training programs.

All our coaching programs require mutual trust and respect between our coaches and the coachees. This requires that we have numerous discussions before beginning any contractual program. Each coaching assignment is customised based on the individuals concerns and time available to learn and usually involve a three to six month commitment to working together.

PINNACLE Business Solutions take pride in the transformational results we produce and as with all of our programs we guarantee your satisfaction.