Case Study One: Executive Coaching program for HR Specialist / Manager for a large public entertainment company

The focus of this 3 month, 6 session executive coaching program was to raise the manager's confidence, productivity, performance, visibility and leadership skills.

We began by looking at the client's strengths and expectations, along with the purpose of the role and position description, KPI's and past reviews. We then converted a situation of relative overwhelm to help the client regain control. We did this by concentrating on his coping, prioritisation, planning and delegating skills directly related to specific work tasks and function examples.

Working across a range of self leadership coaching concepts, we focused on the client's confidence, beliefs, visibility and behaviours. We also invested strongly in enhancing his "soft skills" like listening, diplomacy, rapport, communication, and assertiveness; as well as grooming his leadership skills such as planning, delegating, negotiating, presenting and performance management through active leadership coaching.

We worked on developing his team through delegation, better task and resource selection and planning, teaching, coaching, monitoring and inspiring; so that he could learn to relinquish more control for better time management.

We also revisited his personal and work related values, correlating them to those of the company and his team to further enhance alignment and productivity.

The client was acknowledged for his new confidence, visibility and assertiveness by driving his team's commitment and the measurable productivity outcomes.

Specific strategic, tactical and approach level preparation for the client's annual performance review taught him to positively drive his own bus in order to achieve goals. This highlight exceeded both the client and his managers' expectations.

Building on the success of his previous coaching results, three months thereafter we commenced a 6 week, 6 session follow up executive coaching program that focused mainly on career planning and career management.

This second coaching phase included a mind mapped matrix that outlined a range of career attributes and criteria. The map ranked these criteria in order of importance and defined the client's ideal role. We analysed his current performance against the new requirements of that ideal role.

We encouraged the habit of browsing relevant roles that were advertised on sites like www.seek.com to form a picture of the composition, requirements and dimensions of specialty leadership roles. He self analysed sample roles and together we mapped the gaps between their requirements and his self assessment of current competencies.

I coached him on sharpening his internal and external networking skills in terms of developing them into an ability to know and understand new possibilities. More specifically, how he could use networking to close the gaps; learning the terminology necessary to be competitive within such new roles.

Introducing the concept of "leapfrogging", we planned scenarios to identify which doors should be left open or closed within or outside his organisation. Using scenario planning we performed an opportunity, risk and mitigation assessment of the best, worst and most likely options; considering any "safety nets" leaving nothing to chance.

All the while, we concentrated on finetuning my client's team leadership skills. A highlight was the positive management feedback and measurable results his team achieved within his month of vacation absence. This was proof of how well the executive coaching and performance management coaching was working - both for him and his organisation.

When my client was pursued for a specific external opportunity, he was extraordinarily well prepared to ask the right questions. He mapped the potential new role into his ranked matrix and assessed the fit to what mattered to him most. He could then use that assessment to position his strengths, mitigate potential gaps and highlight his value in order to maximise his value proposition and negotiate the position. Such was his confidence that my client chose to do this entirely on his own; as a test of the benefits of our work together. Needless to say, I was impressed.

The final step in our successful follow up program was to coach him through the entrance strategies for his new role in a new organisation. My client was able to "hit the ground running". We did this through pro-active planning of his introduction, visibility and expectations at the new organisation. To cover all the bases, we also prepared safety net and mitigation strategies as a fallback.

A final measure of success was that his role at the previous company was not replaced, given the success of our coaching programs had enabled those employees to become more self-sufficient under his delegation and leadership. All in all, this case study provides a very satisfying win - win - win outcome for all involved.

Such successful outcomes are just a phone call away for you, too. Contact me today to determine how such a tailored coaching program may be best for your career.

Case Study Two