Executive Coaching
As our series on Executive Coaching heads to a new year, we offer a clear path to the source of Revolutionary Results.
Consider the energy of the word itself:
Revolutionary = innovative, outside or beyond the established and predictable, providing new difference-making possibilities and opportunities, altering the trajectory from past to present to future so that something beneficially unprecedented can happen.
To produce a revolutionary result, a result you’ve not produced before, you need to take actions you’ve not taken before, which requires you to think in ways you’ve not thought before. It’s about revolutionary thinking, action, and results as a flow.
How do you think in new ways?
One powerful access is to identify your habitual ways of thinking: to identify the patterns, formulas, and the familiar so that you can go beyond these.
If you apply this to a team, there is one additional dimension—how the team members relate to each other. It means the team must interact in ways they’ve not interacted before, to think together in new ways, to act in new ways together, to produce unprecedented results.
For a group to become a revolutionary team, they must have a new level of trust and collaboration with each other. This requires:
- Candor—honesty and forthright communication with each other—saying what has to be said.
- Count-on-ability—when you say you’ll do something, you do it and do it when you said you would.
- Listening deeply, hearing each other fully—putting aside all preconceptions, assumptions, biases, prejudices about what others are saying and listen for what you’ve not heard before to expand your own thinking.
- Establishing alignment among all team members, without reservations, on the objectives to be achieved.
- Expressing gratitude and thanks for each other, for what each person contributes to the team’s efforts. Accomplishments are recognized.
- Having each other’s back and rooting for not only the team’s success, but each other’s success.
I transform individuals and teams to become the source of Revolutionary Results.
Ready to leap ahead? Call me at (310) 730-6355 to find out more about Executive Coaching to stop overwhelm.
Executive Coaching, Leadership
For a Leader in a hurry (what leader isn’t?)
Our executive coaching series picks up the pace for those already moving very fast to cover a lot of territory.
They barely have time to ask themselves three critical questions…
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- Why have an executive coach?
- What is the value to me?
- How do I select the right coach for me?
Why have an executive coach? Consider these possibilities:
- You have a challenging issue you are dealing with, and you’re looking for a resolution, such as:
- You are overwhelmed with your workload
- You are having difficulty dealing with someone, such as a partner/report/boss
- You have a team that is not functioning at the level needed
- You have an intractable problem
- You are seeking to develop yourself as a leader—your skill, ability, effectiveness, productivity. You aim to be a great leader.
- You want to surpass your own performance beyond anything you’ve ever done before.
- You would value someone to think and plan with, someone outside your company, outside the culture, who will listen—and who can provide objective, intelligent insight and thought-provoking dialogue for new perspectives and new thinking. A strategic confidante.
- You are in transition from one job to another or one company to another. You’d like to discuss and gain clarity on your next career move. You want to clarify your career path and make it happen.
- You’ve been stuck in some way about something and you want to get into effective action and deal with it.
How do you select the right coach for you?
Here is a quick guide to selecting an executive coach:
- Interview at least 2 candidates.
- If you have a referral from someone you know you can trust, that’s great! If not:
- Check your gut—do you like the person?
- Do they “get” you?
- Do you like their approach/method. Does it make sense?
- Is there a lack of B.S.: do they seem straightforward and honest, do they listen, do they stay on point?
- What is their track record? Do they talk about results or anecdotes and stories. You want results.
- What do they promise you? What can you count on them for? Ask them.
Like any great performer: an athlete, a dancer, a musician— and for a leader in a hurry— powerful coaching can immeasurably increase your performance.
If you’d like to interview me as one of your candidates, it would be my honor. And… remember to ask me about my approach called “Transformational Coaching” which is specifically designed to produce breakthroughs in your performance.
Ready to use this guide? Call me at (310) 730-6355 to find out more about Executive Coaching for yourself.
Executive Coaching
As our Executive Coaching series continues, we noticed the calendar is about to change years. How do you really go about planning a great next year?
Where are you standing now? Are you an executive, a team leader, or a senior member of an executive team who needs to know where to look first for what’s next?
WOULD YOU TELL ME, PLEASE, WHICH WAY I OUGHT TO GO FROM HERE?
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
—Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
In the year-end press to get work done, transactions finalized, and loose-ends tied up, it’s easy to miss or neglect something that can make a huge difference in the upcoming year: creating a powerful plan.
Creating a Powerful Plan. Where do you begin?
If you google “planning,” you will get nearly six billion entries! Advice, tips, strategies, techniques. And then there are the established corporate procedures for year-end reviews and planning. And advisors, consultants, and coaches to guide you.
However, there is usually one most crucial and fundamental step that is left out or short-changed. Without it, plans can be acceptable, thoughtful, and yet they lack a certain inspiration and real creativity that can mean the difference between a great year and a mediocre one.
That missing step is completing the past. Before you look to the next year and what you are going to accomplish, look at your past year and get it complete!
Complete (adjective)
having every necessary part or element; entire
ended; finished
thorough
absolute
perfect in quality or kind
— from www.dictionary.com
When something is complete, you are no longer concerned with it, you no longer “carry it.”
- It has moved to the background.
- It has given you whatever value it held for you.
- It has no influence on you anymore.
- You are ready to move on.
- You are free and unencumbered to create newly.
Planning is a conversation, right?! So have this conversation with your executive team before you turn your eye to what is next: a conversation to complete the past year.
Here are some questions to respond to and guide you and your team:
- What did you say you would accomplish this past year? Goals, targets, projects, issues to resolve.
- What did you actually accomplish of these?
- What did you not accomplish of these?
- What else did you accomplish that was not planned?
- With respect to what you said you’d accomplish that you did not, what happened? What was missing? What got in the way? What are the corrections going forward? What actions can you put in that would be useful? What actions can you take out that were not productive?
- Who should be acknowledged and for what?
- Did you forward fulfilling your mission/vision?
- Is there anything else to say to be complete with the past year?
OK! Now you have a space in which to create a powerful and inspiring plan!
- Put this on your calendar with your team.
- Planning a great next year begins with engaging in these powerful questions.
- It will be time well spent to begin a productive— and extraordinary— new year.
Ready? Call me at (310) 730-6355 to find out more about Executive Coaching for planning a Great Next Year, and leap before it begins.
