Executive Coaching – case study

 
A member of our team was asked by an executive director of a large city council to provide coaching. They began by meeting the director for an informal contracting meeting to gain an insight into the context for the coaching, agree the overall purpose and identify the key issues he wanted to address. A programme of six two hour coaching sessions was agreed.

A range of issues was covered over the programme, including current job challenges, enhancing personal performance, managing relationships with his Chief Executive and peers in the senior management team and managing the performance of his own departmental management team. Two issues were concentrated on in detail. Firstly his relationship with his CEO and as part of exploring this, an additional session took place with the CEO to get his perspective. This was then fed back to the coachee to help raise his awareness which he found very helpful. Secondly, the coach and coachee focused on improving aspects of his management style where his acknowledged drive for high performance was having negative consequences on some of his key reports,  who had become reluctant to challenge him or give him ‘bad’ news because they thought they’d be criticised. The coach and coachee looked at what was going on for him when he ‘defaulted’ to this hyper critical style and explored practicing different styles of leadership so he could flex his approach when it was needed.

This programme was a success. The coachee felt he had shifted in his thinking and his behaviour and he’d had excellent feedback both from his CEO and from his own direct reports. The coach was subsequently asked to undertake a further six coaching sessions and also to facilitate two team development sessions with his new departmental management team which had been formed following an internal restructuring exercise. Early signs show that these sessions have had a positive impact on the quality of the relationships between the team and have helped clarify expectations on how they will operate in the future.