What is Executive and Leadership Coaching?
Executive and Leadership Coaching helps you gain self-awareness, clarify your goals, achieve your development objectives and unlock your potential. Coaching with your Executive and Leadership Coach impact your teams, your organisation, your business, your clients in a transformational way as well. As an Executive and Leadership Coach, I explore those along with the pre-coaching competencies in the initial coaching conversation. The purpose of the NP domino effect is to achieve the desired effect. My mission is to develop elite performance.
My background holding senior leadership positions in Education allows me to understand how I can use leadership models and research effectively to benefit your Executive and Leadership coaching experience.
Executive and Leadership Coaching helps high-performers. High performers are often seen as shining stars. They succeed in everything they do. Well, that?s what you see. You see the end bit. What you do see is the process that takes them there and how they feel.
Fact #1: High performers are an astounding 800 percent more productive
According to this studynoted by McKinsey, It’s remarkable how much of a productivity kicker an organization gets from top talent. A recent study of more than 600,000 researchers, entertainers, politicians, and athletes found that high performers are 400% more productive than average ones.
They achieve organisational goals faster and increase productivity faster. There is, however, another side of the coin. A five-year study in the UK found that the mental health of 20% of the top-performing leaders of UK businesses is affected by corporate burnout. It is also called ‘overachiever syndrome’. High performers’ burnout is caused by their inability to ‘turn off’ or ‘switch off’ as they suffer from an overwhelming exhaustion.
Executive and Leadership Coaching can help prevent this by identifying early signs of corporate burnout, performance issues and behavioural changes.
‘Nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies.’ Larry Bossidy
Fact #2: The importance of Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
High performers give time and effort to an organisation. They bring experience, expertise and a track record. They are achievement oriented. They set (and achieve) clear objectives, tackle difficult projects, assume responsibility and exceed others’expectations and targets. They anticipate change and are proactive in making suggestions to change course so as to best leverage organisational resources i.e. time, people, money. They work hard, are focused and are persistent (and resilient). If you are working in an organisation as a CEO, Human Resources, Talent & Development, Employee Relations, you’d better know that those elite performers are looking for before they join.
When Executive and Leadership Coaching is part of the organisational culture and provides opportunity for growth mindset (learning new skills, sharpening existing ones and learning from their mistakes), you give them the tools to perform up.
Fact #3: There is a correlation between employee talent and business performance
In the book Leading Organizations, McKinsey explores the impact of high performers on productivity. It is the strengths of those people that make them the elite of your organisation. Their performance is consistent. They are marathon runners.
If you took 20% of the average talent working on the project and replaced it with great talent, how soon would you achieve the desired impact?
– If these people were 400% more productive, it would take less than two years
– If they were 800% more productive, it would take less than one
– If a competitor used 20% more great talent in similar efforts, it would beat you to market even if it started a year or two later.
So a valid question could be what do you need to do to keep them happy, motivated and productive without burning out? This is where Executive and Leadership Coaching can help balance raising the bar to keep them improving, moving up to the next level within the organisation with a personal growth that?s sustainable, and a life that’s meaningful. High performers demand an exceptional level of coaching, they also expect their coaching to address their exceptional needs.
If you are a high-performer, think of this truth:
– The better you are, the more others want something from you
– The greater value you provide, the more you’re in demand
– The greater your success, the greater the potential distractions and risk of falls.
Examples of Executive and Leadership coaching questions may be:
How do you build alliance within your organisation and your industry?
How do you expand your network?
What enables your performance in your current role?
What will raise the bar to keep you improving without burning out?
What knowledge, skills and experience do you need to move up to the next level?
How can you work smarter?
What is your inner dialogue when it comes to performance and pressure?
How can you build the mental skills to handle internal and external pressure more effectively?
How can you devote more of your performance into areas that matter to you?
What does ‘great’ look like to you?
What are you capable of, and how can you push yourself further than you thought was possible?
How do you choose what to say yes to, and what to say no to?
And how do you say no?
Fact #4: Being self-driven and exceeding targets doesn?t mean that they are not team players.
High-performers thrive on surrounding themselves with like-minded high performers.
Fact #5: Only 53% of high performers say their manager delivers on their feedback expectations?
According to an article ‘what do high performers want at work?’ in Harvard Business Review, 50% of high performers say they expect at least a monthly sit down with their managers, but only 53% say their manager delivers on their feedback expectations. Feedback is the second contributing factor to job satisfaction for high-performers.
What is the specific training that high performers need to start asking for feedback? Executive and Leadership Coaching can help high performers ask for feedback instead of just waiting to receive it and see the difference it makes on your performance. When employees receive vague, unsolicited feedback (lacking in context and with no clear directive about how to improve), it triggers the brain’s fight-or-flight response. In this ‘agitated’ state, working memory is impaired, abstract thinking is compromised, and comprehension plummets. Rather than reflecting on what they can do better, employees become defensive, ignoring suggestions and resisting long-range goals. So that’s why it is key to find a way for leaders and employees to give and receive feedback in a way that doesn’t trigger the brain’s threat response. Empower employees to ask for feedback rather than waiting to receive it. What happens in the brain when feedback works? Feedback conversations are more opened, informed, and interesting and that employees are more active in gathering information to guide their own growth and learning.
Fact #6: The power of high-performers 1 to 1 Executive and Leadership Coaching
High performers thrive on productive meetings that have a clear agenda and outcomes. As an Executive and Leadership Coach, my 1-1s with high-performers are about finding out what obstacles they need your help on, whether they need more resources or whether there are important changes which might impact their priorities. We explore growth, and career advancement. Growth is like oxygen for high performers so my role is to ensure that they are provided with plenty of opportunities to learn and how they manage distractions. We look at habits so that they notice the importance of time and timings (for example, abandoning the habits of sending emails, reports, questions or spreadsheets late at night, on weekends and during holidays).
Being a high performers does not have to be about having more, being better, getting bigger, achieving higher. It’s about helping them being smarter. Executive and Leadership development can help them.
Fact #7: High Performers and difficult conversations
In an article ‘what do high performers want at work’ in Harvard Business Review, one in 5 High Performers are likely to leave in the next 6 months if they are not satisfied with their job. 42% would be willing to move to a different region, 37% to a different country and 28% to a different continent.
High performers care more about their salary (annual increase) and their performance bonus. Does your company place a cap on bonus pay?
Potential difficult conversations with high performers might be around:
Performance bonus
Autonomy versus collaboration
Short term and long term projects
Managing distractions
Flexible working arrangement
Mental and well-being health
Career advancement
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What people say about me
Nadine played an important role in helping me gain promotion, most recently at 10 Downing Street
Nadine coached me as part of my two year leadership course with the UK Government Communication Service. I found her coaching techniques both innovative and effective in helping me understand the areas I needed to improve to become a better leader. Her assessments are always honest and frank, and her feedback is constructive and remarkably prophetic. She has played an important role in helping me gain promotions and new roles most recently at 10 Downing Street and I would recommend her coaching services to anyone looking to progress within a public or private sector environment.
Thomas Hewett, Chief Press Officer, Downing Street
I have grown in confidence, have a more positive outlook, and am having a greater impact in the workplace
Nadine provided executive coaching to me as part of the UK Government Commercial Organisation (GCO) Development Programme. I really didn’t know what to expect or what I would gain from coaching but Nadine created a safe, non-judgemental environment enabling me to reflect on the areas I wanted to develop. Her careful questioning and listening skills combined with positive challenge, enabled me to identify my own self-limiting beliefs and provided a conduit for change. As a result of Nadine’s coaching I have grown in confidence, have a more positive outlook, and am having a greater impact in the workplace.I have also been successful in graining accreditation to the GCO. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Nadine and wouldn’t hesitate in recommending her.
Sarah Worthington, Senior Category Manager, Commercial Directorate | Department for Work and Pensions