Case Studies
Executive/Leadership Coaching
Background:
Our client was in a high-level leadership position within a healthcare organization. She has tremendous subject matter expertise and is a great strategic thinker. She recognized that her team wasn’t high performing and she received feedback that her impatience and style of communication were holding her back from being more effective across the organization. This led to a deficit in her influence and credibility. She readily agreed to engage in executive coaching.
Goals:
The goals of our engagement included:
- Expanding her emotional intelligence
- Strengthening her performance management skills with direct reports, and
- Building strategic key relationships across business units
Approach:
This coaching engagement included pre and post 360 degree feedback, and a self assessment tool to enable the client to gain valuable feedback and understand her core thinking and behavior styles. Specific goals was identified, along with the descriptive behaviors that needed modification. The client learned how to become more self-aware in order to gain a clear understanding of her challenges, appreciate her strengths, and discover ways in which to adjust her thinking and beliefs about herself and others. By using the tools and coaching models prescribed by her coach she was able to lead and present herself in a more confident and empowering manner.
Results:
The post 360 feedback survey provided excellent information about her changes. The impact of these changes was observed first hand by her direct reports, colleagues and her manager. As a result, she turned her team around and she became more influential across business units. Within a year she was asked to take on a role that required transformational change. She was ready for the new role, and attributes her coaching experience as the key factor in enabling her to take on this high level transformative leadership role with greater responsibility. The key to her success was the fact that she embraced coaching and lifelong learning. She saw the coaching engagement as a real investment in herself.
Business Coaching
Background: Our client is a small business owner in the service sector who enjoyed early success. She was juggling business ownership with family life. As shifts in the economy occurred, she encountered a decline in revenue and an eroding client base. As often happens in this circumstance worry and anxiety took over. The client had many ideas about how to grow the business. The missing component was a strong ability to step back and look at the big picture, along with the tactical actions needed to turn the business around.
Goals:
The primary goal was to identify how to grow revenue and profits. From this goal a subset of goals were identified and focused on:
- Finance management
- Developing a new business strategy
- Personal leadership strengths and where she needed help
Approach:
This coaching engagement began with a one day retreat to examine the state of the business. An analysis of the internal and external environments took place. As a result, the subsequent coaching sessions focused on the client creating a new service offering that was a complement to the core service, utilizing her strengths, learning how to let go of functions and tasks that others did better, and how to utilize her financial resources.
Results:
Within one year the client was building a new service offering with success, increased revenue at a satisfactory level, and changed her role in the business. She focused on her leadership and business development strengths. She committed to stress management practices that helped her reduce worry and anxiety. She attributes the coaching engagement to her ability to step back, look at herself, look at the business, and make positive changes.
