No matter their background, industry, or even what part of the world they come from, top executives often face a similar problem: The skills and knowledge that helped them attain that leadership position aren’t the same as the skills they may need to excel in that role.

Sometimes they simply need to up their game in the new role and perform better.

Sometimes the new role requires a new mindset, skillset, approach, or leadership skill.

And sometimes a leader is faced with navigating a crisis, and needs to be supported through that, while at the same time preparing to lead the organization into the future.

Executive coaching is a proven tool for addressing challenges and elevating leader performance.

It functions as a form of highly customized, one-on-one professional development, with the executive coach providing the leader with personalized, timely feedback to tackle whatever issues are most pressing.

How Does Leadership Coaching for Performance Work?

Coaching for performance typically starts with a process to ensure a leader is matched with the right executive coach.

Virtual coaching has made this more accessible than ever before, so executives can connect with a coach who has expertise in their particular industry, challenge, language, or focus area, regardless of where both parties are located. It also offers busy senior leaders an opportunity for development in smaller time increments, on a flexible schedule, at their convenience.

Often in a coaching for performance engagement, executives may have completed assessments of their leadership skills, such as a 360-degree feedback assessment, to help them understand their strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, and habits, or may have taken targeted assessments on topics such as conflict style or approach to change. Using the data from such assessments can help guide the conversation with an executive coach so that the leader can get highly relevant, personalized insights and suggestions.

Or, the leader may not have taken such assessments, and may simply appreciate a coach serving as a sounding board and helping them to navigate their current situation, while preparing for the future.

Either way, to ensure the coaching engagement is successful, the coach and the coachee should work together to decide on goals, discuss ways to measure success, and agree to expectations on things such as confidentiality ahead of time.

The executive coach then works with the leader one-on-one over a period of several months to help them apply what they already know, discover new perspectives and resources, and increase their self-awareness and ability to meet new challenges.

During that time, they work together through job and personal challenges that can hinder the executive’s career success — and the success of the business unit or function the executive leads. This coaching for performance approach ensures the leader is ready to face the challenges of the role.

Issues that often come up in executive coaching include how to handle crises, interpersonal conflicts, work-life balance, and how to get clarity on important issues. The coach doesn’t necessarily provide a solution to these challenges. But the coach helps executives uncover their assumptions, ask smarter questions, and find solutions in unexpected places.

A coaching for performance engagement typically wraps up with a final meeting between the coach, executive, and the direct boss or HR leader if applicable. Progress towards goals is discussed, remaining challenges are noted, and next steps for the leader’s ongoing support and development are clearly identified.

Executive Coaching for Performance: What to Consider

Finding a good executive coach isn’t just about the coach’s credentials. For a one-to-one coaching partnership to work, a strong match on several fronts is required. An executive coach who worked well for one leader, for instance, may not be the best choice for another.

Here’s what you need to know about choosing a coach and establishing a solid partnership.

To begin with, consider whether a potential executive coach has the experience and skills required to help a leader face their particular goals and challenges. Is the coach experienced in the leader’s industry or field?

Once the pair is matched, as the coaching engagement gets underway, the coach and coachee will likely have a face-to-face or virtual meeting to get a good feel for each other and begin to build rapport and trust. They should make goals and expectations as clear for each other as possible.

4 Questions to Help You Get the Most from Coaching for Performance Engagement

To get the most from executive coaching for performance, you’ll want to consider the practical aspects of the coaching relationship by asking these 4 questions:

1. How will coaching sessions take place?

One benefit of executive coaching is that professional coaches can work with you in many ways: in person, virtual coaching, by email or other online communication, or in combinations of these. The leader should consider their own preferences and availability, and talk to the coach about the ways they prefer to work with clients.

2. What kind of schedule will work best?

Talk about the frequency of coaching sessions, but also consider when and how the coach is available at other times. Should the coach also be accessible to report and acknowledge progress, or discuss barriers and problems, or get questions answered about the process?

3. How is confidentiality handled?

Coaching requires you to reveal a lot about yourself and your organization, and it’s only effective if confidentiality is ensured.

4. How are fees and payments handled?

Do any coaching services incur additional costs? Under what conditions are you charged for canceled appointments? What happens if you’re forced to discontinue the coaching engagement?

Remember, executive coaching is a 2-way relationship. Each side has responsibilities to make the engagement successful. A leader’s job is to take an active role in the process and be receptive to new perspectives and to new ways of acting.

Coaching for Performance: Key Indicators of Impact

How do you know if the coaching for performance engagement is successful? Use this checklist to review the success of a leader’s partnership with an executive coach:

• Clarity: Working with a coach has helped the leader view current challenges in new ways.
• Perspective: Working with a coach has helped the leader better understand how context can shift the approach to a current challenge.
• Resilience: Working with a coach has energized the leader to persevere through current challenges.
• Productivity: Working with a coach has helped the leader recognize how to maximize value with limited time.

Successful coaching engagements help executives become more effective in their lives and in their careers. Coaching for performance can help senior leaders prepare mentally, emotionally, and professionally to lead the business through challenging times.

It also produces positive returns for their organizations, which are better able to adapt to dynamic marketplaces and implement new strategies.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Support and retain your top leaders with executive coaching for performance enhancement. Learn more about our high-impact executive coaching solutions.

The post Executive Coaching for Performance: Maximize the Opportunity for Success appeared first on CCL.

But in times of rapid change or disruption to existing business models, the responsibilities of a leader become all the more challenging. It’s through these volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous times that inspiring leaders are needed more than ever.

Broad-Reaching Benefits of Coaching for Leaders

The Impact on Executives

Even in challenging business environments when company resources are under tight scrutiny, organizations prioritize coaching. That’s because in times of uncertainty, leaders are responsible for making strategic decisions with far-ranging impacts that may change the course or trajectory of their organizations, and coaching provides a laser-focused approach specifically targeted to supporting and developing these key people in the organization.

Our research suggests that a behavior-based approach to executive coaching for leaders helps them to find opportunity in the face of great challenge and integrate key skills into their daily interactions.

Overall, coaching for leaders has been proven to result in:

• Better, more sustained, and accelerated learning,
• Development of critical thinking skills,
• Improvement in team leadership performance, and
• Increases in leaders’ self-awareness so they can use their strengths more effectively and manage their areas of weakness.

Through coaching, leaders are better able to tap into the powerful learning opportunities that arise from hardships and disruption they encounter. In addition, coaching for leaders can help executives manage stress and better prioritize their own emotional wellbeing in the face of uncertainty, thereby increasing their effectiveness. Coaches can help leaders maintain 4 areas of resilience — physical, mental, emotional, and social — so they have the strength they need to make tough decisions and to model resilient behavior for their people.

The Impact on Teams

Coaching has a ripple effect that positively impacts the entire organization.

When an executive enhances their ability to lead with clarity, it paves a path to sustainable organizational change. Specifically, when a leader is well-equipped to handle a crisis, they, and by extension, their entire team can regain focus and energy.

Lastly, as coaches engage with leaders, they’re transferring skills and encouraging their clients to use these same skills with their direct reports and peers in the organization. Therefore, coaching can go beyond impacting the individual leader, reaching the entire organization.

This white paper explores why, even in challenging business environments, executive coaching remains important. It explains the benefits of coaching for leaders during times of disruption, and the benefits, both to executives themselves and their teams. It also looks at the reasons why businesses prioritize coaching and rely on it as a tool to carry their organizations into the future. Learn more about executive coaching for leaders and how it can provide needed support and inspire change.

Download White Paper

The post Coaching for Leaders: Why Executives Need Support appeared first on CCL.

The Benefits of Corporate Coaching

With research from the International Coaching Federation (ICF) showing that 86% of organizations see an ROI on their coaching engagements, the benefits of corporate coaching are significant.

The level of satisfaction and impact of corporate coaching is irrefutable, with multiple studies finding evidence that coaching is highly effective.

One such study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology found that executive coaching enhances goal attainment, resilience, and workplace wellbeing, and according to ICF, 96% of those who had an executive coach said they would repeat the process again.

Research has repeatedly found that leaders who receive coaching are viewed as significantly more effective and tend to be more satisfied in their jobs.

Corporate Coaching’s Fastest-Growing Segments

The majority of corporate coaching has been focused on leadership development in recent years. Within leadership development, coaches are helping their coachees:

• Develop their senior leaders and middle managers
• Enhance their culture through more effective conversations
• Help their staff to become engaged problem-solvers

But today, the focus of corporate coaching is shifting. While leadership development is still a critical and growing segment, 2 additional focus areas have entered the scene:

• Coaching for transformation and change
• Coaching for innovation

From a historical perspective, corporate coaching has evolved from individual coaching to team coaching to group coaching. Today, we see the emergence of a fourth possibility: organizational coaching. Because of the interdependent nature of organizations, people and teams are most successful when they are able to work together. When these interdependencies are managed and operate at the same performance level, organizations achieve super-performance. But when they’re not managed, the organization’s success lags.

That’s why corporate coaches are now focusing more and more on the interdependencies between people, teams, departments, and business units. This results in corporate coaching that targets improving relationships, partnerships, and entire ecosystems.

The Future of Corporate Coaching

As the coaching industry continues to evolve under the influence of a “new world of work” — one that is increasingly digital, agile, and transformed for the post-pandemic world — how will buyers expect corporate coaching to meet these new challenges?

To lead their organizations through massive transformations, senior leaders will need coaches who are specialized — not just in a particular industry, but on a specific topic. These specialized coaches must be familiar with relevant research and industry trends, and they must have the ability to analyze data to help leaders solve unprecedented challenges.

The future will see corporate coaching that’s focused on an organization’s overall strategy, ultimately helping that organization achieve its mission by crafting senior leaders who are able to operate at peak performance.

External vs. Internal Leadership Development

Typically, when organizations invest in corporate coaching, they’re considering either:

1. External corporate coaching providers or organizations; or
2. Internal leadership development, whereby HR leaders and managers are empowered to use coaching skills to elevate employees’ skills.

But internal coaching programs often fall short of expectations and do not yield the expected results because the HR processes haven’t changed, and leaders aren’t really equipped to hold coaching conversations, so development isn’t really sustained.

That’s why in the future, senior leaders will require a different type of corporate coaching experience: one that blends coaching and mentoring; professional development and strategic dialogues; individual focus with team engagement; and finally external, professional coaching with internal and external peer coaching.

For many organizations, the 2020 pandemic-mandated shift to a virtual workplace inspired true digital transformation — a new way of working and living. And our research indicates that there are continued significant shifts happening in the corporate coaching and talent development landscape in the post-pandemic world.

Learn more about what 100+ HR and business leaders told us about their expectations for the future of corporate coaching by downloading our white paper below.

Download White Paper

The post The Future of Corporate Coaching: Guiding Leaders Through Organization-Wide Transformation in a Digitally Accelerated World appeared first on CCL.

For some executive coaches, the virtual coaching experience may be nothing new; for others, there’s been a steep learning curve. As virtual coaching continues to be the primary modality used, it brings both opportunities and challenges.

Battling Virtual Fatigue

The increase in virtual work and communication that occurred rapidly over the past few years has resulted in a population that’s more comfortable with technology and communicating remotely. This shift has made the acceptance of the virtual executive coaching experience much higher.

But on the other hand, the fatigue that has come with increased virtual meetings can lead to the virtual coaching experience feeling like a burden for some. Many leaders are swamped with back-to-back online meetings and may approach virtual executive coaching sessions with fatigue. Others think coaching sessions held in an online setting may lack the human connection needed to be effective. To combat these challenges, it’s important for coaches to be comfortable asking their coachees questions like:

• “I noticed … is everything all right?” 
• “What else is going on in your space?” 
• “What was your body reaction when you said … ?”

Questions like these can aid in making the virtual executive coaching experience a co-creation process, using technology in the best way possible to achieve positive outcomes for both the coachee and the organization.

How to Create a Strong Virtual Executive Coaching Experience

3 Ways to Enhance Virtual Coaching

The first way a coach can enhance a virtual executive coaching experience is to make the space more comfortable. Then, consider ways to foster deeper connections on-screen. And finally, focus on co-creation to leverage technology in the best way possible. Here are a few ways to improve in each of these areas:

1. Create comfort.

• Ensure you and your coachee have a quiet, cozy space for the virtual meeting.
• Close all unnecessary tabs and windows during the meeting and encourage your coachee to do the same.
• Make sure your lighting and background are flattering to set a positive tone.
• Set an alarm to allow time for breaks during longer sessions and to ensure a buffer between virtual meetings.
• Establish a backup platform for the virtual executive coaching experience in case the original planned connection method fails.

2. Build connection.

• Start a coaching session with warm-up questions to establish rapport and help the coachee shift gears.
• Look directly into the camera to create virtual eye contact.
• Ensure sessions are on full-screen mode to capture full attention.
• Pay close attention to non-verbal cues and “vibes.”

3. Co-create the experience.

• Let go of the assumption that the camera must be on to be effective and co-create a common virtual space.
• Encourage coachees to walk around and take breaks during sessions to change the energy.
• Ask thoughtful questions to ensure the coachee is getting the most out of the experience.

One thing is certain: Virtual coaching is here to stay. The question is: “How do we elevate the virtual coaching experience so that we create greater impact on leaders as well as the organizations they serve?” This white paper reveals strategies and tactics that our global network of coaches recommends in order to get the most out of the virtual executive coaching experience.

Download White Paper

The post Elevating the Virtual Executive Coaching Experience for Greater Impact on Leaders and Organizations appeared first on CCL.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a tremendous toll on many. No group has encountered more stress and challenge, however, than health and healthcare professionals charged with keeping the rest of us healthy and alive.

As public health mobilized to respond and hospitals struggled to handle an influx of patients, nurses sustained physical and mental exhaustion that many experts believe may have long-term effects on their overall wellbeing.

Nurses were desperately in need of support in order to navigate complex leadership challenges, maintain resilience, and lead themselves and their teams through the crisis. To fend off burnout and continue pushing through the challenges, nurses needed strategies for coping, staying centered, building resilience, and leading with integrity.

Solution

In April of 2020, one of the Center for Creative Leadership’s adjunct coaches, Lanny Moldauer, spearheaded an initiative to provide pro bono coaching to nurses facing the COVID-19 crisis head on. Over 100 CCL coaches volunteered their time to provide confidential coaching services to nurses of all levels and sectors, with sessions guided by the nurses’ unique needs and goals.

The initiative involved several large nursing networks, including the American Nursing Association (ANA), the American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL), NorthStar Network, NurseTRUST, and many more.

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Many of the nursing organizations promoted the  complimentary coaching services on their member websites, encouraging nurses of all levels to participate and receive the support that would help them lead themselves and their teams through the crisis.

As nurses submitted their requests, they were matched with a CCL coach and given the opportunity to schedule ongoing coaching sessions that fit their needs, with no specified end date.

Results

Research shows that nurses who are well provide better care for patients. In an industry that was challenged with burnout before the pandemic, any intervention to support resilience and wellbeing has the power to create positive ripple effects across health and healthcare.

A study by the American Nurses Foundation found that among nurses who indicated they intend to leave their current position, top reasons included work negatively affecting their health and wellbeing (47%) and insufficient staffing (45%).

By the Numbers

The coaching sessions were highly regarded by the nurses who participated, with many reporting the insights they garnered from the sessions having a profound impact on their ability to push through the extremely difficult days of the pandemic. Most of the participating nurses were in leadership positions, and the coaching not only helped them to navigate their own way, but also to guide their teams through the physical and emotional stressors they were experiencing.

One of the challenges of this type of service is publicizing the offer among nurses in order to encourage uptake. CCL’s strong brand reputation, experience serving nurses in leadership programs, and research-backed methodologies contributed to the success of this initiative with the nursing organizations who participated. Over a year into the pandemic — and as the first stage of this coaching initiative begins to taper off — CCL is exploring new ways to support nursing organizations into the future.

Participants Say

The post Coaches From CCL Volunteer 1,400 Hours of Virtual Coaching for Nurses During Pandemic, Increasing Resilience and Leadership Skills appeared first on CCL.

Novo Nordisk is a global leader in the healthcare industry. Part of the company’s strategy to sharpen its competitive edge is an effort to drive a performance-focused culture. In its Europe Region, part of that initiative was to strengthen engagement and improve the skills of nearly 500 People Managers — managers who lead teams of individual contributors, as well as managers who lead other managers.

Novo Nordisk had defined what it meant to be a good People Manager in the region. The company identified 5 competencies as essential:

• Setting direction and strategy,
• Leading and coaching people,
• Focusing on what matters,
• Personal leadership, and
• Making things happen.

The company also wanted to ensure all its managers were trained in the Novo Nordisk way of coaching.

To fulfill these goals, the company sought to implement a personalized assessment and coaching program for nearly 500 managers in 36 countries who speak 13 languages. When CCL and Novo Nordisk began discussing the plan, the company also had an ambitious timeline, aiming to develop and roll out the program in just a few months.

Solution & Results

CCL developed the Insights for Development program to meet Novo Nordisk’s needs, and rolled the program out in a tight time frame. That included translating assessment and coaching materials into 13 languages as well as recruiting and onboarding 10 new coaches to cover the entire Europe Region.

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The program launched with a Europe-wide virtual kick-off that included a senior Novo Nordisk executive. It was then rolled out in 5 cohorts across 7 business areas. The program included a customized assessment and individualized, one-on-one coaching for all of the nearly 500 managers involved.

CCL tailored a 360-degree assessment mapped to Novo Nordisk’s competencies and the Workplace Big Five Profile. In addition to the feedback for individuals, CCL also provided analytics from the Novo Nordisk database to allow the company to compare its managers to other healthcare sector managers who have participated in our programs.

Managers received both face-to-face and virtual coaching based on their assessment results, including a 1-hour alignment meeting with their boss and coach.

The alignment meeting ensures that managers and their bosses both understand the development goals that have arisen for the manager from the assessment and coaching, and that those goals fit the manager’s role and business function.

Managers of managers received 6 hours of coaching broken into 3 sessions. The coaching incorporated business scenarios, a face-to-face developmental conversation with their CCL coach, and a concluding alignment meeting with their boss and coach.

Program Impact

Participants Say

The post Creating a Performance Culture by Developing Managers appeared first on CCL.