The Executive Coaches at CoachWorks® International, Inc. have years of experience in all major areas of executive coaching, and excel in the following specialty areas:
C-Level Officer and Executive Coaching
CoachWorks® has earned a reputation for providing premiere executive coaching to the chairman and chief executive officers-those leaders at the highest corporate and organizational levels.
We have been executives, have experienced many of the issues our clients face, and bring our practical executive leadership experience to the coaching process.
Coaching is grounded in solid leadership development principals, yet very practical and results-oriented. CoachWorks® has an action laboratory methodology, which means the skills and decisions an executive refines and reaches through coaching are applied immediately for behavioral change or strategic implementation. Clients tell us that they often have an immediate application and use for the principles of the coaching they have done with us.
We also coach models that executives can use with others as they lead and coach their teams to sustained performance. Not only do they experience enhanced performance and apply new behaviors and competencies for themselves, but they also gain the insight, understanding and competencies to use with their direct reports and executive teams. When coaching is leveraged in this way, the client company and executive can get two or three times the value of the coaching because they can apply it with others.
CoachWorks® Executive Leader Coaching is practical, experience based, immediately transferable to real situations, and others can be coached or led to grow from the same principals and work that the executive has experienced.
Leadership Teams Coaching and Development
Coaching entire teams involves both team and individual work. Teams can be coached as a whole, in specified or observed areas such as fine tuning of communication, work flow processes, better decision making practices and higher quality work products.
Coaches sit in on team meetings or other organizational meetings and events to observe team behaviors. Individuals on the team can also be shadow coached. Coaching observations, internal feedback or organizational goals determine the development plan, and focus for follow-up coaching to help individuals develop skill sets for a greater contribution to the team.
If necessary, CoachWorks® can help identify both team and individual competency levels, skill gaps, and behaviors, then develop a plan to help both individuals and whole teams get clarity and focus around roles on the team, accountabilities and expectations. Team coaching can involve such issues as relationship challenges with other team members, different individual styles and how to give and receive feedback, and communication. The goal is to build individual competencies within spheres of influence on the team.
Depending on assignment and how contracts are set up, when we are process or shadow coaching a team some of those specific individual coaching pieces may actually be named and brought into team discussion. For example, a naturally introspective researcher may need to recognize that to be a higher performing team member he needs to speak up more. Or, there may be times when a team member realizes that his or her personality and way of processing is so vocal it often dominates the "air time" on a team. Coaching is done both in the team process, and on an individual one-on-one basis. Coaches work to enable members to identify and recognize behaviors that require change, and develop strategies to combat less desirable tendencies and effect needed changes. Coaching looks at finding ways of reinforcing desired behavior, and non-desired pattern interruption.
While team coaching seeks to grow the team's overall effectiveness, the process of getting there actually grows and stretches individual competencies. Coaches hold individuals accountable during the team coaching process. Action Learning Projects (ALPs) are often utilized to allow team members to exercise new skills and coaching challenges in actual project settings. Timelines are established with measurable benchmarks, and progress toward goals is monitored. Team coaching most often requires the coach to work onsite, at least for many of the team meetings. Individual team member coaching can be done through follow-up telephone coaching sessions.
Complex Systems Coaching
Complex Systems Coaching means realizing that no man (or woman!) is an island. One person's leadership affects all other personnel, all other areas. Complex Coaching recognizes, observes and coaches around the various systems of an organization. We recognize that individuals and teams live and work in complex environments. Complex Systems Coaching is attentive to include the politics, teams, customers, all stakeholders and constituents with which a coached individual works. The focus is on the individual, but the coaching is inside the context of multiple systems.
In addition to "complex systems" coaching CoachWorks® can coach across whole systems (multiple individuals). This involves coaching groups to interact better with one another, how to have crucial conversations, and generalized or targeted coaching across functions, departments, and organizational divisions. We may still be coaching an individual or team, but we bring in all the multiple components and systems to use as data points within the coaching. This is similar to a consultant's interpretation of whole systems coaching.
Whole and Complex Systems coaching has become a sort of industry "buzz" word, but before this term was even considered, CoachWorks® has operated as a whole systems coaching organization since it founding, with every client. This is a specialty arena for CoachWorks®, whose executive coaches bring decades of experience in this area to every new client. For more information on this area of coaching, click on the WHOLE SYSTEMS COACHING tab above.
Boards of Directors Facilitation and Coaching
Boards of Directors often need fine turning and facilitation. It is much like team coaching for the highest team in the organization. Because of often diverse and varied backgrounds, it may be difficult for the Board to uncover problems and correct them. Board facilitation and coaching helps members learn to work together successfully, get to know each others' strengths, challenges, and experiences. This kind of coaching is especially useful to help each individual understand the styles of thinking and communication of other members, diversity and how to use it, relationship issues, content issues about the business itself, and process issues (that board does not know how to function together as a board.) It is especially vital for new board members to become part of an efficient team.
Board facilitation and coaching helps members learn to work together as an advisory board to the company, get to know each other well, learn how not to overlook and squelch uniqueness but to draw it out, create board meeting processes, enable members to came prepared, and create a shared purpose for being there, with clear roles within the Board company. This is sometimes a combined process of consulting and leadership development coaching. Coach and facilitating an entire Board of Directors involves process coaching, consulting and mediation skills, leadership development, high level communication, relationship skills and active knowledge of Board etiquette and process.
In order for this process to be effective, the coach must provide an executive presence at the Board level, equal to that within the Board itself. The coach must be viewed as an expert. CoachWorks® has distinguished itself in this area of Board facilitation and coaching. We have an advantage on younger industry coaches, possessing both executive and board experience. This kind of coaching is not what the average executive coach deals with-it involves very complex systems and high level stakes.
Click here for an actual and typical case study involving Boards of Directors Facilitation and Coaching.
Successions and Transitions Coaching
This type of coaching may include executive coaching, consulting, succession planning, recruitment planning and leadership development. CoachWorks® helps companies look at the organization now, and plan for where they want to be in 3-5 years, or more, then evaluate current skill sets of people and how to utilize these people and recruit others. Does the organization have a leadership team to lead into the future? If not, how do you plan to develop such a team?
CoachWorks® has also developed a specialty coaching niche for privately held or family-owned organizations dealing with succession and transition from one CEO or chief executive officer, to another. Family successions can be especially difficult, involving family dynamics, generational and style differences, and competencies and behaviors. This is especially true when the current CEO or other executive officer has been in place for some time. In family owned businesses, it is often assumed the son or daughter of the CEO will take over the business, but little to no thought is given to preparing these apparent heirs for their new positions. CoachWorks® helps these businesses build a distinction between family relationships and roles within the organization, and to regard such relationships as business partners and team members rather than family members. We facilitate how owners and heirs work together both before and after the succession, and how support team members relate to the successor. Succession coaching may include individual and team assessments and feedback, individual executive coaching (for the current CEO or officer, the successor, and critical team members as needed), whole system coaching, specific and targeted leadership development, facilitation of meetings, honest recommendations and evaluation of performance.
