Our Services
Executive Coaching
An organization’s performance is directly related to the effectiveness of its senior leaders. Our consultants provide leadership, team and organizational level coaching services that result in improved performance and more sustainable ways of working. We assist executives by improving the quality and manner in-which they engage in conversations with each other and with those across their organization. Data shows that approximately 50% of all leaders fail—not because of technical capability, but because of their interpersonal skills. Qualities, such as self-awareness and integrity, are particularly important to leadership success. Social skills and empathy are necessary for building relationships with colleagues and key stakeholders and the ability to navigate and understand the business realm is critical for decision-making. All of these capabilities can be enhanced via one-on-one executive coaching.
Becoming more aware of one’s strengths and areas for development is the first step in ensuring progress and success in one’s role. To accomplish this, we often use a 360-assessment, and a personality profile, coupled with in-depth conversations about style, strategic initiatives, priorities, competencies and organizational structure.
Executive coaching is also about enhancing business results by enabling leaders to consult with a professional experienced in strategic planning and effective business execution. The coaching process provides leaders with one-on-one consulting customied to their specific needs, organization and industry.
Career/Transition Coaching
Coaching conversations focus on an individual’s career challenges. The process, based on in-depth questioning to help define the current situation, often leads to increased clarity, personal change and forward action. We ask if the situation is resulting from a pending reorganization; merger; misalignment of one’s abilities and required job responsibilities; poor leadership; an ethical dilemma; advancement concerns; boredom; ability to grow in the job, or other.
Career coaching enables the client to talk through the situation in order to reach the best possible outcome. The outcome is a new awareness about oneself—what motivates each of us is different and the context for fulfilling work changes during various life stages. What was once a “great job” may no longer be satisfying. Individuals are often motivated by challenge and the learning may have stopped some time ago. Another issue for many is “working in isolation”. Humans are social beings and working remote may not be healthy even though it is often convenient.
Together we can decipher the issues to determine the source of negative feelings, then put together a plan for alleviating the problem(s). Sometimes this results in a job or industry change, and or other times, we can ‘fix’ the problem simply by gaining clarity about its cause.
Team Development
Successful team development involves great leadership and support at every stage of the process. A working definition of a team is that it is “comprised of two or more individuals; has specific performance objectives or goal to attain; and coordination of activity among the members is required for the attainment of desired outcomes. This sounds simple enough, but the reality is that very few teams actually perform at the level necessary to reach desired results—due sometimes to structure; team leadership; personal agendas; lack of clarity around objectives and also team member competence. In today’s fast-paced, competitive climate, high functioning, healthy teams are essential.
Our consultants are skilled facilitators who use business performance as the context for their work while promoting robust dialog among team members to build trust and collaboration. The process often begins with a team assessment to help diagnose the current state of team healthiness, followed by implementation of a plan that will help move the team’s performance from mediocre to outstanding.
Strategic Planning/Execution Facilitation
Strategic planning is a crucial part of any business’s future. It is a process of defining the organization's strategy and making decisions regarding allocation of resources to pursue this strategy. It is a crucial process, but often poorly executed. In many companies, leaders say that their strategic planning process doesn't accommodate today's rapidly changing and volatile market conditions. Our consultants offer a systematic process of envisioning a desired future, and translating this vision into broadly defined goals and a sequence of steps to achieve them.
The most important part of implementing a strategy may be communicating it clearly. The entire company should be engaged and made aware of the company’s long-term vision. Each individual must understand how his/her role contributes to the bigger picture. Additionally, every organization should strive for continuous improvement, so part of the strategic planning process is taking time to monitor and adjust as needed. With on-going evaluation and facilitation, business leaders can identify what’s working and what’s not, and pivot accordingly. Strategy evaluation involves setting and adjusting benchmarks as needed, gathering feedback and measuring performance. The results of strategy evaluation can help establish best practices and inform future strategies.
Keynote Speaking
Our consultants have diverse and varied backgrounds representing a multitude of experiences in many industries. We have worked in health care, high tech, educational, construction, manufacturing, hospitality and non-profit sectors. The organizations we have served range in size from small, family owned companies or start-ups to some of the world’s largest and most complex entities. Each experience has resulted in a wealth of knowledge which we enjoy weaving into narratives which can enhance the learning of others.
We accept keynote speaking engagements or participate on panels when topics are of interest to corporate audiences or others such as the rapidly changing dynamics of work, career transitioning, strategic planning, global expansion and resiliency.
Please contact us directly if you have a topic you’d like presented at an upcoming meeting or conference.
Tools
Over the last 15 years we have accumulated a large set of tools and methodologies that cover almost every situation that an organization may face. Some of the most popular include: