Forecast for Coaches: You’ll Be Training the Next Generation of Professionals

In today’s era of increasing activist investors and boards, a heightened focus on fast results is making the first few months for new corporate leaders feel more like a trial by fire than a honeymoon.

“Boards are more willing to toss people out and [are giving CEOs] a much shorter leash,” says Michael Watkins, author of The First 90 Days and a former Harvard Business School and INSEAD professor. “Many senior executives feel they have a much shorter time frame to prove themselves.”

Executive search firms, leadership coaches, and consultants are building specialized “executive onboarding” services to add to their client offerings. Onboarding, as the name implies, helps new managers get a running start through coaching that assists them with detecting cultural nuances, accelerating strategic plans, and navigating the personality mine fields of their new teams. The term is also now used to describe orienting new hires.

Thanks John. Can you talk a bit more about onboarding? How long does this special coaching last, and what do you (or others out there) see is the greatest benefit in this process? How does it differ from traditional executive coaching?

Linda,

Here are some onboarding coaching tips and a link to the business case for engaging an onboarding coach. Usually, an onboarding coaching engagement would last from 6 months to one year….the approximate time it takes to be accepted by the new corporate culture.

For an executive taking a new role as a corporate leader, the first 100 days are “a temporary state of incompetence” when you know the least.

You are advised not to “hit the ground running” but assess the elusive corporate culture at your new level and begin to learn what matters around you. Engage in substantive one-on-one meetings with others to elicit information about the business, build trust and test how engaged each person really is.

During this onboarding period it is valuable to have an outside coach with an independent viewpoint to brainstorm with in discussing what you are seeing and how you might best respond to each situation.

For the onboarding business case, go to:
http://home.att.net/~coachthee/next/index.html

Excellent info, John! Another change I am seeing as I pour over media each week for the Chronicle of Coaching (http://www.thefoundationofcoaching.org/chronicle) is an increasing distinction between business coaching and executive coaching. As these various branches and niches break off and re-form, isn’t it interesting to imagine how powerful an impact coaching can have. Did you see the prison story on the home page? Talk about potential impact!