“So You’re a Player. Do You Need a Coach?” was the headline of an article in FORTUNE magazine (February 21, 2000) that captured the emergence of coaching as an executive perk four years ago. Executives who may once have thought, “I’m successful so why would I need a coach?” were now proudly introducing their executive coaches to peers and colleagues.
In mid-2001, as the economic downturn took hold, coaching shifted back to a remedial focus. Clients told us, “We have a hiring freeze. We’re stuck with certain people. Anything you can do to make them better will help.”
Now, with the economic turnaround, we’re seeing a return to executive coaching of high-potential employees and high flyers. To my mind, that’s where organizations achieve the highest ROI for their coaching dollars because it’s focused on the people who are the future of the business. As the improving job market gives those employees alternatives, executive coaching takes on renewed importance as a retention tool. When people see your willingness to make a significant investment in them, it sends a strong signal.
With the pendulum swinging back, HR executives face a new and important issue: how to reposition coaching. People are understandably hesitant to embrace something that, until recently, was the step before outplacement. It is critical to erase the stigma by presenting coaching as an executive perk. Some organizations are accomplishing this by using different labels: coaching for high-potential people; counseling for remedial situations.
Applications and Benefits
At The Ayers Group, we have used executive coaching effectively in many different ways. The most popular application is assimilation/transition coaching. Today’s fast-paced business world allows executives moving up within or entering an organization from the outside little time to get up to speed. They are expected to step into a new decision-making role very quickly. Coaching is one of the most effective means of compressing the learning curve while enhancing the probability of success.
High-potential people tend to shift assignments often and quickly, which means the impact of some of their decisions may not become apparent during their tenure. When problems arise later, the new incumbent is likely to deflect blame backward. A trail of problems can eventually derail a promising career. The tendency in transition coaching is to think about preparing for the next job. But a coach can help transitioning executives play out decisions from both backward- and forward-looking perspectives with an eye toward managing their legacies and eliminating surprises for successors.
Coaching is an effective intervention for high-potential individuals who have climbed steadily within the organization but have an isolated flaw. The flaw is overlooked because the individuals are so good, but they eventually reach a less-forgiving peer level. For example, we were recently called in on an assignment where HR thought the stress of a promotion had caused an executive to develop a problem. We quickly established that the behavior in question was not new or unique to the coachee. It was something that had been acceptable at her previous level, in a different role and function, but was having a negative impact on her business results in the new, very different job.
A situation like this differs from what typically gets labeled as remedial coaching in that there is no question of removing the executive from the job or firing her if she fails to change. Instead, it recognizes that improvement of an isolated flaw will produce an even brighter superstar capable of achieving amazing results.
Realizing High Potential
We are often called in to coach in situations where there is nothing specific that needs work but the client wants to help the individual achieve his or her full potential. In such cases, we may look at career history to see what the coachee has become good at and what has been ignored. It’s not a matter of weaknesses but of untested strengths. We hear about natural athletes who are good at one sport picking up the equipment from another sport and proving to be good at that too. Like the athletes, high potentials have untested strengths that have yet to be handicapped because the strengths they recognize are serving them well. The potential benefit inherent in tapping their hidden strengths is enormous.
The objective is to ensure breadth of experience. Research from the Center for Creative Leadership shows that people who make it to the top have assimilated the lessons that come with experience. The greatest breadth of experience—and potential for tapping hidden strengths—comes from assignment rotation. Start-up and turnaround assignments, for example, require different skills sets and competencies. When executives who have had broad experience fail to move up as rapidly or successfully as their peers, probing reveals that it’s often because they took the same skill set to each assignment rather than exploring others that might improve their success.
One important issue for high potentials is the “balancing crunch.” Super-successful people are super-busy people. The more successful they are, the more chaos they have to deal with. High performers face enormous pressure to make tradeoffs in both their personal and professional lives. Achieving and sustaining balance is difficult and a tremendous source of stress. A coach can help these executives “norm the chaos”—accept it as inherent in the job—and then make decisions that help achieve balance, whether that involves tradeoffs in business or between business and personal lives.
Coaching in Real Time
Although we coach by objectives at Ayers—working with coachees on agreed upon objectives over a specified period—much of the dialogue involves real-time issues. For example, “I’ve got a big strategy meeting tomorrow, and I’m not sure whether to go this way or that way.” Much of executive coaching is what I refer to as action coaching or just-in-time coaching. High potential people really know how to benefit from this.
Coachees frequently tell us they’ve gotten as much from executive coaching as from an executive MBA program. No surprise because coaching is more personalized and tailored to individual needs and careers. It’s a perk that benefits both employer and employee.
For more information about coaching services available through The Ayers Group, contact Joan Caruso, Managing Director, Organizational Effectiveness Consulting, at joan.caruso@ayers.com or 212.889.7788.
