Executive Coaching
Phillip’s executive coaching experience ranges from Board-level/C-suite to senior functional Director/Manager across a wide range of industries including MNC High-tech/Electronics, MNC Manufacturing, MNC Social Media, Professional Services, Public Sector, MNC Pharmaceuticals, Services & Technology Start-Up, Financial Services, Food & Beverage Commercial and Manufacturing, Utilities and Construction.
Phillip’s coaching work draws heavily on his CEO experience; he has first-hand experience of working with Chairs, Boards and Executive Teams, Ex Com’s, SLT’s, etc. He is client-centred, where the client sets the agenda that she/he wants to work on, and he provides a balance of support and challenge to achieve both business and personal objectives.
What is Executive Coaching?
The purpose of Executive Coaching is to provide personal support and development for business leaders as they face the challenge of leading in today’s increasingly complex environment. For many business leaders, finding a safe and trusted confidant to explore the complexity of issues they face can be all but impossible. The resource of a highly-skilled Coach with a purely objective ear and an unwavering support for their Client is something that more and more leaders are turning to.
The Coach and the Client work together in first understanding the current paradigm and then on setting strategies, goals and objectives to address or change that paradigm. Sir John Whitmore acclaimed Coach and author (see Resources) explains this as “An independent coach can reflect ideas, evoke solutions and support their implementation in a way that few insiders could ever do”.
This support is primarily non-directive in nature as the Coach holds the firm belief that the Client has both the capacity and the resources to identify solutions and to implement them. The Coach will provide whatever type of support and/or challenge is required to ensure that the Client is successful. The real essence of this is well put by Tim Gallwey (see Resources) “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.”
When to consider Executive Coaching?
Executives consider coaching in a variety of circumstances, some examples include:
- When experiencing any significant change, transition and/or new challenge
- To understand how to develop their capacity to motivate team members
- To assist them in creating accountability from Team members
- When recognising the need to improve dysfunctional working relationships
- To transition from an Operational to a Strategic Leader
- To improve Team Dynamics and Team Performance
- When actively seeking a new career challenge
In my work with senior executives, particularly those that are taking a step up, we invariably confront the need to develop “Vertically”. In other words, rather than adding new “Horizontal” skills such as financial acumen, change management, strategy development, etc. the need to develop the coachee’s thinking, mindset, mental models, etc. I like how Nick Petrie (CCL) illustrates this in the figure below as he sets out three stages of Vertical Development:
But let’s make this more tangible. If we consider the leader’s mindset or mental model of Conflict for instance, we can see three very distinct stages of Vertical Development:
- The Dependent Conformer – Conflict is to be avoided; authority is in charge and feels torn by conflict.
- The Independent Achiever – Conflict is worked out behind closed doors; conflict produces winners and losers.
- The Interdependent Collaborator – Conflict is regarded as a healthy way to gather more views; it’s something to be encouraged and it can increase learning and performance.
Petrie (2014)
Adapted from Petrie, N. (2014) White Paper. Vertical Leadership Development–Part 1. Developing Leaders for a Complex World. Centre for Creative Leadership
My Coaching Philosophy
Every coach will have clear objectives for our work together, some of which are discussed above, and whatever the objectives are, the coach brings her/his own consistent and personal coaching philosophy to the work.
Most coaches have a number of primary influences that inform their coaching style, and for me the Gestalt premise that awareness leads to change is a fundamental influence. Through raising awareness, people are then mobilised to take action and ultimately to seek improvement, resolution or closure.
My other primary influence is Person-Centred and the premise that people strive to make the very best they can of themselves and the Coach adopts the perspective of unconditional positive regard, non-judgemental acceptance and accurate empathetic understanding.
These two influences combine to create a coaching philosophy where the coach’s way of being is curious, fully tuned in to the Client’s thinking, empathic, positive and supportive to the client. The Coach is also however very attuned to reflecting back to the client how she/he is, in the interest of challenging the Client. The apparent paradox of unconditional positive regard and providing challenge (to the client) is fundamental to my approach. Imagine your greatest advocate and how you would receive the challenges they put to you; and then imagine a highly critical peer or line manager and how their challenges would feel.
I know whom I would rather have supporting and challenging me.
Testimonials
“I worked with Phillip over a 12-month period as I was making the transition from leading the commercial function to a role leading the entire global organisation and I found it invaluable. Phillip’s first-hand knowledge and experience of the challenges of the CEO position, working with the Chair and the Board, and aligning the leadership team towards ‘working on the business’ instead of just ‘in the business’ had a huge impact. I found him to have a great capacity to help me reflect and ascertain what conversations need to take place, with whom, and how. Overall, it made be a more self-aware and confident leader. It was challenging work, but Phillip is a hugely supportive coach.”
CEO/President Aircraft Leasing