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Few things are as important as preparing leaders for the workplaces they will inherit…the business strategy (and perhaps survival) depends on it. Executive coaching has emerged as a powerful tool to help potential leaders transition to the demands of this new workplace. Transitions, whether from first line supervisor to manager to manager of managers to divisional lead to the C-Suite to the CEO to retirement, are a delicate balance of timing, support and readiness. At each step of the leadership journey, the preparation for successfully making the transition is critical to a positive experience certainly for the leader but also for the organization he or she leads. Transitions are not only the visible shifts from one role to another but, when well executed, leaders are prepared, reflective and are poised to be effective quickly in the new role. Businesses depend on professionals who guide the leadership process; one important development tool at their disposal is coaching. 1. Coaching has moved from elitist to inclusive Coaching has evolved from a remedial fix for performance issues to a powerful tool for transitioning leaders into new roles. The leadership pipeline now extends beyond the C-suite and top brackets in the organization with leaders being identified earlier in their careers and developed to assume key leadership roles. a. Development-focused coaching to broaden capabilities and prepare for future roles a) A coaching strategy that is aligned with and supports the overall company strategy, and b) Buy-in from the senior leadership team who understand the value of coaching and believe it can help create a competitive advantage for the company. For example: EY focuses their coaching very specifically on supporting executives in transition. EY provides coaching support to all new partners with the goal of shortening their onboarding time to their new role. 4. Developing teams and people is a top priority for leaders Leading teams and people development, executive presence/influencing skills, strategic thinking/visions, and relationship management are the most frequently addressed topics during coaching sessions. With organizations becoming more global and boundaryless, these topics line up with the need for leaders to head and develop teams across geographies and cultures and to collaborate and communicate across functional silos. 6. Developing a Coaching Culture: The Next Frontier The focus on a coaching culture will need to take center stage in the coming years as organizations grapple with labor and productivity crises requiring more leaders to be coached across all levels; millennials’ need for constant feedback forcing organizations to adapt a personalized coaching approach; and the replacement of performance management ranking systems with regular, informal “check-ins” or “touchpoints.”1 Sapient India launched a coaching program in 2015 to enable midlevel managers to enhance their coaching capabilities and coach their teams. Replacing the annual, quantitative performance management process with a growth-oriented performance management program, called Enabling Your Potential, required managers to coach their teams on a regular and ongoing basis. This coaching intervention was mandated for all midlevel managers across the organization, covering 1,200 to 1,500 managers till date and to continue for the next few years. For leaders in transition or about to begin a new journey, human capital executives and sponsors of coaching in organizations can draw from the trends mentioned in the full report to: View our complete listing of Coaching and Leadership Development blogs. 1 Lillian Cunningham, “In Big Move, Accenture Will Get Rid of Annual Performance Reviews and Rankings,” Washington Post, July 2015; Leonardo Baldassarre and Brian Finken, “GE’s Real-Time Performance Development,” Harvard Business Review, August 2015.
For further analysis on the topic below, read our most recent major report on executive coaching, available exclusively to TCB members.
The 2016 report, with direction from the Executive Coaching Council of The Conference Board, provides global benchmarks to help organizations design competitive coaching programs for managers and leaders in transition. Themes that have emerged from our research:
2. Use of targeted coaching to support leaders during transitions and prepare for future roles has increased Irrespective of the leadership levels, the types of coaching used now and planned for the next 24 months indicate that the focus, first and foremost, is on developing leaders for their future roles. The top types of coaching used are:
b. Transition coaching to accelerate a leader’s transition into a new internal role by outlining support especially in the first few months of the new role. For example: MD Anderson provides coaching to those new to the role or to the institution and has mainly two prescribed goals: (1) to help new executives assimilate into the role or culture of the institution and (2) to develop transitioning competencies. “The focus of this coaching is helping leaders explore the things they need to do in order to be effective in the new position, including letting go of tasks or behaviors they might cherish or may have done very well in the past. They may have been promoted because of their attention to details, but when they get into the executive position, they have to let go and delegate or they are more likely to fail. That’s what we refer to as transitioning competencies,” said Michelle F. DeVeau, Manager, Organization Development at MD Anderson. This targeted coaching lasts six to nine months of the leader’s new role.
c. Onboarding coaching to prepare individual’s onboarding from the outside into a new organization (i.e., from different industry, firm size, nonprofit to profit, etc.). When a leader from a local bank joined Citi India in a leadership role, the leader was not equipped to manage Citi’s global and matrix work environment. Though the leader was familiar with handling large volumes at the local bank, the complexities of Citi were vastly different. The coach in this situation, selected based on the coach’s experience in working through such situations, was able to help the leader navigate through the assimilation process and get better embedded into the new environment. This focus is also seen at Campbell soup where the goal of coaching is to accelerate leader readiness, with particular emphasis on supporting those transitioning to new roles or new to the company.
3. A coaching strategy and leadership buy-in is crucial Companies that have built and sustained robust coaching practices generally have two important factors at work:
5. Role of internal coaching in leaders’ transitions Internal coaching has emerged as a scalable, cost-efficient way to proactively build the next generation of leaders. Sixty-nine percent of companies reported they expected to rely more on internal coaches in the coming years. Google’s coaching program, also called Guru+ program, addresses different individual and business needs across 12 topics. Of these, Career coaching (coaching on career topics, such as exploring a new challenge, making a move into a different role, and longer term career planning), Parenting coaching (coaching for parents on preparation for leave, reintegration into work, consideration of job transfers, building confidence upon returning to work, and balancing work-life demands with children), and New to Google coaching (coaching to support the transition of new employees such as navigating the company and culture) are specifically designed to help Googlers transition into new opportunities and roles.
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