From my associate, Janice Giannini.

Close your eyes for a moment and create a picture of your company where 70% of the leaders are resilient and empowered to be adaptable and innovative. Then, create a picture of the competitive advantage the entire organization creates by working in this way. Is that a place you would like to lead and work for? That is what Strategic Coaching can deliver.

‍Why is it important to be resilient, adaptable, and innovative?

• ‍Actively planning where you are going short, mid, and long term and understanding how to stay ahead of the competition is critical.
• Effectively managing risk, balancing the risk of change, and staying the course is the difference between success and defeat/stagnation.
• Operationally, doing the right job at the right time in the right way closes the deal!

Do any of these thoughts surface periodically and get in the way?

• ‍Are you doing the best you can, or are you doing what you need to do to accomplish your growth goals?
• What is the risk of change versus continuing down the same path you are on, strategically and operationally?
• What gets in the way of changes that will close the gap between where you are and where you need to be?
• Are you dealing with too many artifacts of past success, such as outdated processes or resistance to change, versus what is needed / appropriate for the world you live in today?
• What would your revenue, profit, innovation, and market presence be if your leaders and associates performed at their peak on a regular basis?

‍If the answers to the above questions do not immediately come to mind, immediate reflection and action need to happen.

Does the leadership team have the same clear understanding and ability to articulate?

• What does the business need to accomplish, and what are the risks and constraints? It is critical to be honest with yourself and others.
• When and how does the environment enable a leader to openly say, “I don’t agree or understand,” and the team responds, “Let’s spend time getting on the same page?” Or Not?
• When is Change a dirty word in your environment versus an opportunity for success?
• What do you need to give up to achieve your goals/mission?
• What are you willing to give up?
• When the need to let go is greater than the willingness to do so, change management is required! Lack of alignment of the need and willingness to let go dictates less or rocky growth, lower innovation-impaired competitiveness, and lower market presence with revenue and profits left on the table.

‍‍A Strategic Imperative on the critical path to growth and innovation

Coaching is a time-proven process that decreases the gap between need and willingness to change. This will close the gap between where you are and where you need to be to achieve your growth, innovation, and profit goals/mission.‍

Let’s look through 3 different lenses to understand how coaching can be a performance multiplier:

1. The coach’s perspective
2. The person being coached perspective
3. The Sponsor’s (Executive or other leader in the organization, including self) perspective

The Coach’s Perspective

‍I invite you to consider an Executive Coach as your growth catalyst as you navigate the turbulent waters and transform yourself and your leaders to meet the challenges of today’s rapidly changing world.

‍The relationships and personal growth catapult the leadership team to greater results. Coaches grow and evolve along with their mentee/ client/ leader/ associate. Coaching helps the mentee recognize the roadblocks, blind spots, limiting patterns of thought, and under-utilized/recognized strengths that constrain professional and, therefore, company growth.

As the coaching process is a two–way street/relationship, the coach and the mentee grow. As the coach goes through this process with their mentee, both parties better understand how to work more effectively together to accomplish the mission and goals.

This leads to implementing a tiered strategic-minded coaching approach; the senior leaders embrace personal coaching themselves and, as a result, become more adept at coaching the organization itself. In the process, the senior leader is reshaping how they see themselves and how others perceive them in the organization. The senior leader also becomes more aware of how their struggles contribute to or interfere with team alignment. What would a 20% increase in team alignment enable the business to achieve or avoid?

The Person Being Coached Perspective

From the vantage point of closing the gap between where you are and where you need the company to be, coaching helps individuals reframe and transform how they see themselves. This transformation from manager or technical expert to a visionary leader results in greater confidence, resilience, and adaptability. Additionally, it causes an increased ability to inspire and positively impact those around them. It can help people’s willingness to step out of their comfort zone with the confidence to recognize and drive strategic initiatives that strengthen the company and themselves.

While a person initially may not see themselves as a natural-born leader, they will become able to see themselves as an influential voice, inspiring others to work more confidently, to fully engage, focusing on insights and more immediate changes that yield significant impacts for the business.

Additionally, people more quickly recognize a lack of alignment and develop the ability to speak up, identify, and collaborate to find better alternatives, enabling growth. These changes in leaders’ self-perspectives drive necessary changes that ripple across the company and its success.

It is important to recognize that progress is often incremental. It may not be the”Big Bang Theory.” It may be smaller incremental movements that, in the aggregate, can be huge progress and success. These smaller successes cascade upon themselves, driving people to want to do more to help the company’s continued growth.

This perspective on coaching leads to considering, as another tier of the approach above, to identify the multiple less-experienced associates in the company, who may and may not have the title manager behind their name, as significant beneficiaries of coaching. Therefore, a coaching plan typically becomes a hybrid approach, continuously using professional coaches as needed and in-house leaders. The benefit of external coaches is that they do not eat/ sleep/breathe in the same environment and can see areas for growth and reinforcement more objectively.

The Sponsor’s Perspective

Sustainable and long–term growth is a function of doing the right things at the right time and in the right way. Companies and enterprises that accomplish long-term growth have a strong, positive, empowering culture that recognizes and values people to make results happen. Coaching is a critical risk-reduction activity that boosts competitiveness, growth, and innovation. It is not discretionary; it is a mission-critical investment for growth.

In the rapidly changing world we live in today, an ecosystem of continuous learning, flexibility, resilience, and adaptability is imperative. ROI is reflected in revenue, profit growth, and innovation, which is essential for marketplace competitiveness.

Coaching ROI tracking checklist:

• ‍Improves critical team retention. More or less turnover is less optimal and more expensive. (American University Exec coaching industry results: 48% increase in retention and organization performance)
• Improves team engagement. Team leaders observe less divisive conflict and a greater willingness to respectfully speak up and resolve issues.
• Increasing associates’ satisfaction scores. Associates initiate more positive collaboration themselves versus directives from a manager. (American University Exec coaching industry results: 50% increase in collaboration and team performance)
• Coaching surfaces heretofore hidden leadership potential in associates for the future (near, mid,long term), avoiding leadership gaps. Use annual reviews for succession planning to avoid critical gaps.
• Improvement in leadership performance metrics across the company.
• Aligning with business needs happening more quickly than in the past. Is there a more remarkable ability to let go of what is and to adopt what needs to be with a positive attitude across the board? (American University-industry results: 48% in performance with revenue above expectations)

‍I encourage all leaders to view coaching as a Strategic Imperative for themselves and others in their company. Coaching is about investment in the current and future strength of the company’s business results and culture.

‍The reality and risks of the business world today require different capabilities at most levels in any organization. One or two executive leaders cannot do it all. They must recognize the issues, implement change management to enable growth and develop the associates’ capabilities to stand strong and follow through.

‍Are you ready to create a future-oriented organization with committed, resilient, flexible, and empowered leaders who now create immediate and impactful change? If not now, when?