Executive Coaching With A Proven ROIExecutive Coaching: What you need to know
Welcome to the International Coaching and Consulting services of Edward M. Burns, Sr.
Most corporate enrichment services focus on performance enrichment for their senior team members, yet research on lasting and successful behavior indicates that we need to focus on the personal and inner goals to match with success of the corporate team effort.
For years, athletes have hired personal trainers to help them maximize their performance. Now, increasingly, business owners and professionals are doing the same thing.
They’re hiring advisors (known as executive, professional or life coaches) to help them enhance their businesses, careers, and even their personal lives. This process helps the busy executive who is dealing with difficult employees, customers, business decisions day in and day out to put things into the proper perspective for the benefit of their own stress level, as well as, to benefit overall company operations. It's an executive tool, which if not, used increases overall costs to the company and decreases effectiveness of the executive.
Leaders Over-Rate Their Performance --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An impossible 90 percent of managers think they're among the top 10 percent of performers at their workplace. The number is highest among executives, 97 percent of whom consider themselves shining stars, according to Business Week. Put another way, only three in a hundred executives consider themselves anything but an A-list, top performer.
Are we talking to each other at all? When this many managers have no idea how good (or bad) they really are, executive development becomes crucial, to align execs with reality and sharpen their abilities. How would you like to be in the hands of an insanely over-confident airline pilot or surgeon?
Examples: (Also see case studies) (Situation) - Fortune 1000 firm had two senior executives; both were performing well, but both had personnel turnover problems which caused delays and facilitated major customer complaints.
(Resolution A) One executive was not delegating task to managers, yet held them responsible for any failure and only assumed things were done his way. In a three-year period, he had to replace people in these positions four different times. His reason for the failure was lack of quality people. He learned how to understand people and how to turn his managers into coaches for the employees under him. He was instructed on how to read different personalities and use this knowledge to enrich the performance of the managers. (Resolution B) This executive was not reading reports because he felt they were too long and many times requested managers to re-write reports into a simpler format. At times this required three-to-four re-writes of the same material. The executive learned how to focus and understand his managers' preferred format style. He then asked them for suggestions on how the reports could be simplified for the benefit of the individual departments. He also had the managers select the format of their liking and they would all agree on a review. His vote was then always the last and most of the time not even voiced.
Company investment $20,000.00 Return On Investment = 85% decrease in customer complaints Productivity increased 180% = sales increase $255,000
Up to 41% of Fortune 500 companies use executive coaches, according to a recent survey by The Hay Group, an international human resources consultancy. It's not surprising considering the overwhelming benefits of executive coaching.
And in fact, many people feel coaching is essential to success. Bob Nardelli, CEO of Home Depot is one of them. “I absolutely believe that people — unless coached — never reach their maximum capabilities.”
What exactly is coaching?
An executive coach is like a fitness expert for your business or career. Just as a fitness trainer can help improve your body’s performance, coaching can do the same for your professional development by helping you increase your effectiveness and productivity.
Coaching, according to Fortune Magazine, is unlocking a person's potential to maximize their own performance. Technically speaking, coaching is a formalized, transformational learning process that results from on-going interaction between a trainer and client. This mentoring-type relationship is designed to help you change bad habits, develop good habits, and stretch and achieve more than you ever could on your own.
Benefits of coaching for individuals
On an individual level, a coach can help you understand what you really want, so you can immediately focus on what’s most important to you. This can help you hone your goals, needs and expectations and achieve results more quickly. Plus, a coach will make you accountable to your goals, which can dramatically improve your chances of success.
Executive coaching provides an outside perspective that can give you a clearer picture of your situation. A coach provides direct and honest feedback because there are no corporate politics or any hidden agendas involved.
Coaching can help you:
- Do more than you would have done by yourself
- Make more effective decisions and take more productive actions
- Prioritize tasks and responsibilities
- Carefully consider your options and what’s best for you and your situation
- Break bad habits and establish good, productive patterns
- Stop procrastinating and spinning your wheels
- Think bigger and take more risks
- Focus on the actions and behaviors that will produce significant results quickly
- Pinpoint areas of difficulty in communication with co-workers and customers
- Point out how to improve communication on all fronts, at work and at home
- Increase your income by 10%, 25%, 50%, or even 100%
- Move you out of your comfort zone and into new opportunities
- Decrease your stress level
- Get more enjoyment out your life, professional and personal
Impact of coaching for businesses
Professional coaching also offers significant benefits for businesses through individual and/or group sessions. For example: a 2001 study by MetrixGlobal found executive coaching programs produced a 529% return on investment and significant intangible benefits to the business, including the financial benefits from employee retention — boosting the overall ROI to 788%.
Moreover, a 2001 study on the impact of executive coaching by Manchester, Inc. showed an average ROI of 5.7 times the initial investment. The study included 100 executives mostly from Fortune 1000 companies. Participating companies gained improvements in productivity, quality, organizational strength, customer service and shareholder value. Also, they received fewer customer complaints and were more likely to retain executives who had been coached.
The participating companies received benefits from coaching by increases in the following areas:
- Productivity (reported by 53% of executives)
- Quality (48%)
- Organizational strength (48%)
- Customer service (39%)
- Reducing customer complaints (34%)
- Retaining executives who received coaching (32%)
- Cost reductions (23%)
- Bottom-line profitability (22%)
The executives received improvements from coaching in these areas:
- Working relationships with direct reports (reported by 77% of executives)
- Working relationships with immediate supervisors (71%)
- Teamwork (67%) Working relationships with peers (63%)
- Job satisfaction (61%)
- Conflict reduction (52%)
- Organizational commitment (44%)
- Working relationships with clients (37%)
Who should use a coach?
Coaching offers obvious benefits for individuals and businesses alike. But is coaching for everyone? And how do you know if you should hire an executive coach?
You should consider using a coach if:
- It’s difficult for you to fully focus on your goals and to stay on course.
- There’s room for improvement in your work, but you don't know how or where to begin.
- It’s a struggle for you to consistently take the actions which lead to the results you want.
- You would like to communicate more easily with others.
- Time management is an issue for you.
- You’re looking for an edge over colleagues and competitors.
- You make good money now, but wish you could make more.
As for personal coaching, it is specifically focused at the senior management level where there is an expectation for the coach to feel as comfortable exploring business related topics as personal development topics with the client in order to improve their personal performance.
The respondents were executives from large companies who had participated in either "change oriented" coaching, aimed at improving certain behaviors or skills, or "growth oriented" coaching, designed to sharpen overall job performance. The programs lasted from two months to a year. About 66% of the executives were ages 40 to 49 -- a prime age bracket for career retooling. Half of the group held positions of vice president or higher and a third earned $221,000 or more per year. Asked for a conservative estimate of the monetary payoff from the coaching they got, these managers described an average return of more than $200,000, or about six times what the coaching cost their companies. Almost three in ten (28%) claimed they had learned enough to boost quantifiable job performance—whether in sales, productivity, or profits—by $500,000 to $1 million since they took the training. They also reported better relationships with direct reports (77%), bosses (71%), peers (63%), and clients (37%), and cited a marked increase in job satisfaction (61%) and "organizational commitment" (44%), meaning they are less likely to quit than they were before.
So now we have some very simple questions; is profitability important? Are there key people who have talent but lack some people skills? Are there some minor problems you don't want to see get any worse? And, finally, do you feel its time to protect your bottom line?
Request a session to see what coaching can provide you. eburns@dealingwithsuccess.com
Who needs a personal coach?
Maybe you do -- whether you know it or not.
New job. New employer. And new headaches when staffers resist your new approaches. How can you champion enough change to justify being hiring -- without rocking the boat so much you endanger your career prospects?
Leaders in new positions often fail for a few common reasons: unclear or outsized expectations; failure to build partnerships with key stakeholders; failure to learn the company, industry or the job itself fast enough; failure to determine the process for gaining commitments from direct reports; or failure to recognize and manage the impact of change on people.
Onboard coaching of the newly recruited, or promoted, executive can turn around this high level of failures.
FORTUNE magazine reports one reader said, "I went into the coaching experience kicking and screaming at the insistence of my then-boss. And what an eye-opener it turned out to be. I won't even go into the grim details of bad management habits I had unthinkingly developed in my 14-year career up to that point--but I will say that since I was 'cured' by 12 weeks of pretty intense coaching, I've been promoted three times."
Recent Publication Info: Guides help companies develop strategies, implement plans
People, teams, divisions and companies share similar challenges when seeking double-digit revenue growth and that never-ending quest for success.
Executive coach Krissi Barr, founder of Barr Corporate Success, thinks that a lot of problems can be skirted for companies and executives if only people would focus on what they want, as opposed to focusing on avoiding what they don't want.
But figuring out what you want for yourself, your group or your company is always a tough task.
"The question people need to ask is this: a year from now, six months from now, three months from now, what needs to happen for you to feel good about your progress," Barr said.
That is The One Big Question that everybody needs to explore: whether a neighborhood hardware store owner, a brand manager or a rookie account executive
dreading the task of telephone cold calls. "It works in sales, too," Barr said. "That's the one question people should ask themselves this morning."
A Mount Lookout resident, she coaches chief executives and other senior-level executives and managers about effective leadership, strategy and attitude.
"The miss-hit, the miss-connection is that people don't know what they want," she said.
Corporate Success has broad background in mentoring and coaching. Among its recent successes: advising a struggling local technology company on how to
reconfigure performance assessments, bringing renewed momentum to the sales force of a $300 million publicly traded company and helping increase sales and
profit margins at a manufacturing technology firm. Coaches suggest that clients spend a lot of time developing strategies, aligning teams and then creating a
disciplined action plan.The action plan is usually the toughest piece of the puzzle, too. Distractions such as e-mail, phone calls, impromptu meetings and
scheduled meetings can be crippling. "Turn off instant message," . "Turn off the Outlook so you don't see that envelope that e-mail has arrived. Turn off the phone.
"Make sure people know - unless somebody is dead or bleeding, don't interrupt me,".
Accountability must play a role in all achievement initiatives, but often people and companies neglect one aspect of accountability:
"This is very, very hard work," "So it is important to celebrate little successes along the way."
E-mail jeckberg@enquirer.com
Cincinnati Enquirer, Tuesday December 18, 2007
Poll: Executive coaches asked to develop leaders
BY JOHN ECKBERG | JECKBERG@ENQUIRER.COM
Companies that pay for coaching for senior executives expect results to focus on leadership development, according to the third annual international survey from Sherpa Coaching of West Chester Township.
The company, which teaches coaching as a profession to students at three universities, surveyed executive coaches from 35 countries, but centered on the U.S.
This year's survey was co-sponsored by the Tandy Center for Executive Leadership at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. The survey, which has grown from 550 respondents in 2005 to 1,300 in 2007, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Sherpa offered university-level executive coaching programs at TCU, Penn State University and the University of Georgia.
"The industry is placing more and more importance on certification and more and more coaches are getting certified," said Karl Corbett, managing partner at Sherpa, founded in 2004.
"We're finding less and less 'as-needed' coaching. People are going to regular meetings. People also want a more limited scope - six months or less."
The survey found:
Nine of 10 human resources professionals and clients see the value of coaching as "very high" or "somewhat high." The number of business people who rate the credibility of coaching as "very high" or "somewhat high" was 74 percent, up 7 percentage points from last year.
The number of people in the discipline who report employers paying for services increased from 71 percent in 2006 to 78 percent in 2007.
More than half of practicing executive coaches believe that a standardized approach to coaching - similar to the standards created for the accounting and financial planning professions - is essential if the discipline is to grow in importance.
|
