What Does an Executive Coach Do?

Developing Leaders Through Executive Coaching

In our post-pandemic world, how are companies training their future leaders?

It's a critical question as companies struggle with continuing labor shortages, inflationary cost increases, shifting consumer demand and long term climate change.  Too often today, managers are elevated to increasing levels of responsibility without a plan for their development.  On the job training (OJT) is the default plan to gain leadership skills.  Unfortunately, newly promoted leaders stumble along, unclear on how to engage and motivate their direct reports.  Meanwhile, employees impatient with poor leadership exit for greener pastures. 

Great leadership is no longer a "nice to have" competency, it's a "need to have" competency.

So, how should companies help young leaders acquire the skills on the path to leadership excellence?   Many larger companies have created customized internal programs which they utilize to train future leaders.  Mid-sized companies often bring in outside experts to help create periodic leadership training workshops for high potential employees.  However, across the board, the most powerful trend today is hiring executive coaches to work with individual leaders to help improve their performance.

But what does an executive coach actually do?

It’s a fair question for those who have never worked with an executive coach.  While some business executives may have a cursory knowledge of executive coaching, it's important to understand how to evaluate prospective coaches if you are considering hiring one.  There has been an explosion in the coaching profession over the last decade and since there is no universally accepted governing body,  anyone hiring a coach should insure they understand some basics so they don't end up with an unqualified charlatan.  A good coach can help accelerate performance while an incompetent coach can waste time and money.

So, back to the question - what does an executive coach do? 

Starting at the most fundamental level, a coach is someone who can help improve your performance or achieve a goal you have set for yourself.  The difference between an Executive Coach and a sports coach, wellness coach, career coach, or life coach is the focus on the unique challenges business presents to leaders. 

What separates an executive coach from a consultant or advisor is the type of the engagement and approach.  Many large scale business challenges such as process improvement or software implementations are best handled by consultants or business experts.  Advisors and consultants analyze the business problem and deliver a solution.  A coaching engagement to develop leadership skills is different.  Clients benefit more when they are able to develop their own learning plan through dialogue and exploration with their coach.   

A good executive coach listens intently with empathy and genuine caring to a client's leadership challenge, and asks questions based on their knowledge to help the client develop an action plan rather than exclusively offering advice.  In this manner, the client ultimately has more ownership over their solutions.   However, that doesn't mean a good coach won't offer nuggets of wisdom and advice at certain junctures.

While many problems specific to a functional area may surface during coaching, the truth is that most issues are related to human interactions.  How do you motivate people who seem unmotivated?  How do you hold direct reports accountable without being seen as a dictator?  How do you foster better teamwork?  How do you navigate political turf battles?  How do you have a crucial conversation?  These questions and many more are the typical areas of discussion with your coach.  Any business with more than a few people requires the effort of people working together to achieve a common goal.   The more people involved, the more possible friction. 

Sometimes, the issue is internal to the client - how the client perceives, reacts, or possibly creates the issue due to their own behavior or lack of awareness.  A coach's role in these situations is to help clients see what may be invisible by challenging their assumptions.  In my experience as a business executive, it is often lonely as a leader and sometimes difficult to talk with others about some of the specific people challenges which can cause tremendous personal stress.  It helps to have someone to talk with about your challenges and help you see what you cannot see on your own. 

At the beginning of every meeting, an executive coach should ask specifically what you want to accomplish in that session.  Toward the end of the session, the coach should help you develop action steps which you commit to implementing.  At the start of your next meeting (most coaches set up a cadence of meeting  every other week for just under an hour),  the executive coach should ask you to review your action plan and discuss what went well or did not go well.  To become proficient in leadership, one needs to actively practice certain behaviors, reflect on the learning, and then adjust and incorporate the effective practices into one's daily behavior.

What is apparent in evaluating many executive coaches is the business / psychology background divide.  In my experience, the majority of executive coaches come from a background in psychology whether holding PhD's in psychology or being previously trained as therapists.  As a result, many have a strong background in understanding how certain behaviors and ways of thinking can be understood based on models in psychology.  Many other executive coaches have a prior background in business and are more at ease understanding the myriad business issues clients face because they have faced the same challenges at some point in their career. 

Which background is best in executive coaching? 

As is true in many business situations, I believe the answer depends.  It depends on the challenges the client is trying to address, the context of the company situation and specific type of coaching the client desires.  In general, I believe the best coaches have experience and knowledge of both disciplines, business and psychology.  A good coach should understand the dynamics of the business world while understanding the different models in psychology which address human behavior and motivation.

Ideally, experienced coaches should have some accredited coach training.  Accredited training may give the client some degree of  knowledge that their coach isn't simply improvising.  However, it should not be the decisive factor in their decision.  There are many well credentialed coaches who struggle to add value because of their lack of experience overall.  As the great American psychologist, Carl Rogers, once said, "Certification is not equivalent to competence."  Prospective clients also need to be wary of someone who has a great social media following but limited experience in business or psychology.  

Here is a partial list of questions one should consider asking a prospective executive coach to avoid getting an imposter who is simply "trying on" coaching as an alternative way to make a living:

1. Could you share with me your professional background and how long you have been in executive coaching?

2. What coach training have you had and what is the most important part of that training that you utilize in your coaching?

3. What is your process or method for how you structure your coaching calls?

4. What's the biggest obstacle you face in coaching clients and how do you overcome it?

5. What are the results you can point to with your past clients?

A good executive coach is ultimately someone you trust.  You trust they will help you become the best possible leader you were meant to be by actively listening to your issues, asking powerful questions, helping co-develop action plans, and holding you accountable to those plans.  Good coaching can lead to many positive changes in your overall career and life.  By hiring the right coach, you can help fulfill your own promise while helping improve the lives of the people you lead.

Cost Cutting is not the Answer to Your Growth Problem

It was the first of March and the start of a new fiscal year.  Historically, it was a time to celebrate.  I stood behind the Home Fries station in the company dining area, serving employees a “New Year’s” breakfast and thanking them for their contribution.  As a member of the leadership team, I was participating in an annual ritual designed to signal our appreciation for our employees’ hard work.  Despite our efforts at putting on a brave face, our leadership team wasn’t exactly glowing with radiance and hope.  We looked more like an exhausted group of mountain climbers who had miraculously found their way back to base camp after a terrible storm at the summit.

We hadn’t yet announced our year-end results but our leadership team knew we were going to miss the revenue and profit plan again.  We had missed both targets by a couple of percentage points vs. plan.  Every department head had contributed to cost cutting initiatives during the year to help drive our bottom line targets but it wasn’t enough to make up for the top line miss. 

We were trying to project some optimism to employees as we struggled behind closed doors with our predicament. During the past several months, we had worked diligently to identify and address the core reasons for our continued miss of plan.  The list included lack of new product innovation success, lagging sales execution in key strategic accounts, operational recalls on key brands, and geopolitical events in China impacting demand for U.S. goods. 

Not surprisingly, we had begun tackling the key challenges through help from outside consultants and internal project work teams.   In fact, we had already implemented new processes and practices in certain areas which were readily apparent.  However, we knew that these improvements were not going to be enough for the coming year.  The CEO and Board were becoming rightfully impatient.

When we first huddled together to review our situation, we each leveled complaints at our aggressive plan targets.  Every executive likes to blame the plan targets when reflecting on a plan miss.  It’s like complaining about the weather.  It’s the conversation starter before you get into the real discussion. 

We were a public company so we knew the game - share price is inextricably linked to future expectations of growth.  The company was expected to grow above the market.  This wasn’t unreasonable.  As an industry leader with scale and clout, we should have been able to grow faster than the market.  The question was why weren’t we? 

Growth acceleration had been painfully difficult.  We had been hell-bent on driving new products out in the marketplace to help drive our results but we weren’t succeeding.  We were launching imitative products because our New Product Development strategy was aimed at incremental innovation vs. transformational innovation. 

Our CEO wasn’t convinced we were capable of succeeding in transformational innovation because of a costly recall on a new package innovation 12 months earlier so we tried to win with new products that had no real differentiation in a category that saw roughly 18,000 new products every year. 

Additionally, we were under pressure to launch multiple new products every year without the proper in-market testing to understand long term viability.  The innovation team argued for a longer in-market testing period to develop new products that would have a higher likelihood of success but were pressed for immediate results. 

When the pressure for short term results supersedes what’s required for long term success, the odds of winning are reduced significantly.  In effect, we were hoping for “lightning in a bottle”. 

Hope is never a good strategy.

In our case, we were not aligned on how we were going to succeed in the New Product Development game and therefore were walking into the wilderness without a compass everyone agreed to use.

There is another issue with growth strategies which executives often want to ignore - they take time.  If the senior team hasn’t been consistently laying the foundation for growth, it’s tough to accelerate growth in one year without dropping price vs. your competition (a losing strategy in the long term).  I have seen numerous executives try to bullshit the CEO or Board of Directors that they can turn around the business in the next year with no possible chance of success. 

This isn’t to diminish the importance of executing with speed but to acknowledge that organizations need time to create the conditions for a new growth strategy to take root.

It’s essential executive leadership has clarity and alignment on growth strategy before wielding the cost cutting sword.  If not, cutting costs is simply a short-term band aid that can create its own spiral downward.

Many cost-cutting or reorganization initiatives begin to take form when the reality sinks in that a new growth initiative is going to take longer than expected.  Sometimes, cost cutting is introduced as a risk mitigation maneuver in the short term or part of a dual strategy of implementing future growth strategies while tightening costs to achieve financial results in the short term. 

In some cases, it’s even more straight forward – significant cost over-runs need to be corrected.  Cost overages are an issue that have been in existence ever since modern organizations began – the proverbial “cost creep” in organizations of all sizes.  Companies add people to compensate for poor internal system issues or for expected growth that doesn’t occur.  Similar to temporary government entitlement programs, these costs usually become permanent. 

In most cases, managers have the right intentions but never revisit their initial program expansion to ensure they are right-sized for the organization.  Pruning costs should be part of the annual plan cycle in every organizational department.  Rarely does that happen.  People are loath to analyze and reallocate resources annually because it requires upsetting the status quo and without broadly mandated reviews across every department, there is little benefit to the one leader who sticks his neck out to do the right thing. 

The most basic truth why executives choose cost cutting to make their plans is that it is easier and less demanding than discovering new ways to grow. 

Too many reorganizations today treat the symptoms and not the cause of slow growth.  If growth has stalled, the executive team needs to be very clear about identifying the core issues and implementing a reasonable plan to turn the situation around. 

As an executive team, have you asked the right questions and gathered the critical data to answer those questions? 

·      Have you done a cross functional performance analysis on key issues inhibiting growth? 

·      Have you identified the performance drivers that are aiding or blocking your success?

·      What specific solutions have you designed to address the important performance drivers?

·      Are you aligned on the specific solutions across the leadership team? 

·      Do you have the metrics in place to track your success across those initiatives? 

·      Do you have the right leadership talent across the organization to make this happen? 

·      Do you have a strong, collaborative culture to enable an effective working environment? 

·      Are your incentives aligned properly with your goals? 

·      Are people motivated to accomplish the company vision? 

Too often, executives want a silver bullet solution to complex problems which require time, effort and organizational change to correct.  Cost cutting often becomes the de-facto lever to pull when results don’t materialize.  Cost cutting is not the answer to your growth problem.

Top Ten Business Books

I recently met with a group of undergraduate students from the Peter Paul Business School at the University of New Hampshire and one student asked me for a list of my favorite business books.  I’ve read a lot of business books in my life but never put together a list of my top ten.  I thought it would be interesting to narrow down my list of favorites.  In no particular order of priority, here are my top ten:

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker - Drucker is considered one of the original thinkers of modern management.  This concise book, written more than fifty years ago, is a good synopsis of his thinking.   While some examples may appear dated, the habits he suggests for executives are still relevant today and often found in other self-help business literature.

The Modern Firm by John Roberts - This book about organizational design can read at times like an academic textbook but is filled with valuable insight.  Roberts weaves economic thinking, particularly about incentives, with how to structure a firm for organizational success.

Resonant Leadership by Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee - There is a lot of leadership literature in the business realm.  This book closely aligns with what I believe truly makes a difference in leading teams effectively.  It also highlights the challenges of leadership burn-out and how to deal with it when it occurs.

The Articulate Executive by Granville TooGood - I have relied on this book throughout my career for every major speech that I have given.  The author provides a simple and effective way to think about how to structure your presentations in terms of messaging and delivery.  It works if you take the time to follow the structure.
 

Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath –This book does a great job forcing you to think about how to hone your message to "make it stick" with your audience.  Given the importance of narrative in crafting a powerful message, the lessons suggested are practical steps to help you succeed.  In conjunction with The Articulate Executive, this book can be your guide to creating winning presentations.

Drive by Daniel Pink - Pink totally gets it right in terms of what truly motivates employees.  Another helpful primer for managers and leaders as they work though how to motivate employees to drive results.  It should be required reading in every business management course.

The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz -  While the stories are based on Horowitz’s experience in the technology industry, the lessons are relevant across industries.  There were so many examples he shared that I personally experienced as an executive and remember struggling to find the right approach at the time.  Lots of practical good advice.

Good Strategy / Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt - This is a relatively undiscovered gem on strategy.  I have read a lot of books on strategy and I find the ideas in this book to be extremely useful when thinking about business strategy.  It’s a book I have referred to over the years during multiple strategic planning exercises.

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – In life, as in business, it’s helpful to understand why people do what they do.  In this book, Kahneman helps illuminate why human beings often act in irrational ways.  There are so many interesting insights in this book, it requires some reflection to help grasp the implications in business decision making, sales, marketing, and people management.  The book can be dense at times but worth the effort.    

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl – You might wonder why I included a book about the sufferings endured in a concentration camp during WWII on my best business books list.  The reason is related to the overall message of this book.  Frankl shares his strong belief that human beings ultimately have a choice over their thoughts no matter the circumstances.  Choosing your own attitude can dramatically impact how you experience the world.  Additionally, Frankl believes the true meaning of life can be discovered out in the world if you align work with what’s important within. This book helps point the way to living life in a positive and meaningful manner.  

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." –Viktor Frankl

Stranger Things - The Upside-Down World of Acronyms

I am convinced that the more acronyms a company utilizes, the greater the signal of impending doom.  It slowly sneaks into the corporate nomenclature until one day, someone joins your company, and bravely asks "What the hell does the LLT stand for?"

Suddenly, it hits you.  

You've entered the upside-down world of acronyms without realizing it, and it is unclear whether you're going to make it out.   One could literally hear the following at the company I worked for as the Chief Marketing Officer, "We're having a BLT meeting before the MLT, to talk about the LLT prep for the EMC where we need to review EDP, IRI, and NPD."  

The language of Dungeons and Dragons is a breeze compared to this jargon.

Speaking in acronyms is certainly not about communication efficiency, as some would have you believe.  Most employees don’t understand what’s being said but don’t want to admit it so they remain trapped in confusion and misunderstanding. 

For some acronym advocates, it’s a way to make themselves feel superior because of their ability to speak the “insider” language.

It reminds me of a story from my high school years.  There was an amiable guy in our high school class who was a member of the popular crowd.  He had this slightly startled expression on his face most of the time as if he had just seen a ghost.  His complexion also happened to be extremely pallid.  His nickname was Boo.

Boo created his own strange, clipped language when we were in high school.  I think he did it, perhaps unconsciously, as a way to elevate his status even further within the popular clique.  To understand his clipped language required admittance.  If you didn't understand it, you weren't admitted to the inner sanctum of the cool clique at our high school.  

Boo might say very rapidly, "Def hit port sat night for G's."  Translated, this meant, "Let's definitely go downtown on Saturday night for George's Pizza."  I now think of Boo whenever I hear people spewing corporate acronyms in regular conversation. 

Remember, not everyone you communicate with is a psychic.  Speak clearly in acronym free sentences.  You will help liberate all those trapped upside-down in your company who are struggling to understand and allow them to break free.  Imagine the productivity increase you will see.