Executive Coaching

Executive coaching is a facilitative one-to-one, mutually designed relationship between a professional coach and a key contributor who has a powerful position in the organization. This relationship occurs in areas of business, government, not-for-profit, and educational organizations where there are multiple stakeholders and organizational sponsorship for the coach or coaching group.

The coaching is contracted for the benefit of a client who is accountable for highly complex decisions with wide scope of impact on the organization and industry as a whole.

The focus of the coaching is usually upon organizational performance or development, but may also have a personal component as well. The results produced from this relationship are observable and measurable, commensurate with the requirements the organization has for the performance of this person being coached.

Quick Points of the Definition:

• A relationship exists between Coach and high-level individual(s) of the organization.
• The relationship occurs in and is sponsored by differing kinds of organizations with multiple stakeholders.
• Coaching is for the benefit of a person with high levels of responsibility and broad scope of impact.
• Focus of the coaching may be both organizational and personal development.
• Outcomes are observable and measurable, and match organizational performance requirements.

Lori Muldowney of Dark Horse Strategies offers confidential Executive Coaching services. Our coaching includes personal and professional assessment tools, regularly scheduled sessions of at least twice per month for a minimum of a year, the benefit of a seasoned management professional advisor, resources and materials to support the Executive.

Call Dark Horse Strategies for a complimentary coaching session to learn how our Executive Coaching programs can benefit you and your organization. You’ll be amazed at the results!

ROI for Executive Coaching

Poll of mostly FORTUNE 1000 companies*:

The respondents were executives from large companies who had participated in either "change oriented" coaching, aimed at improving certain behaviors or skills, or "growth oriented" coaching, designed to sharpen overall job performance.

The programs lasted from six months to a year.

About 60% of the executives were ages 40 to 49--a prime age bracket for career retooling.

Half held positions of vice president or higher, and a third earned $200,000 or more per year.

Asked for a conservative estimate of the monetary payoff from the coaching they got, these managers described an average return of more than $100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies.

Almost three in ten (28%) claimed they had learned enough to boost quantifiable job performance--whether in sales, productivity, or profits--by $500,000 to $1 million since they took the training.

They reported better relationships with direct reports (77%), bosses (71%), peers (63%), and clients (37%)

They also cited a marked increase in job satisfaction (61%) and "organizational commitment" (44%), meaning they are less likely to quit than they were before.

* Fortune, 2/19/01

A recent USA Today article reports that while male executives usually want female coaches, female executives always want another female. Men hold 94% of the highest corporate jobs, but they usually turn to women when they want the advice of an executive coach.

George Habel, vice president for Capitol Broadcasting, says the company offers coaching to its highest executives. The executives can choose the gender of the coach, but only one has selected a man.

Many of Capitol's executives run minor league baseball teams, and all rate at least an 8 on "a macho scale to 10," Habel says.

"In their worklife, they're competing primarily with men. In the end, they're just more comfortable talking to a woman."

Not that men don't try. Twenty-five percent of 4,300 certified members of the International Coach Federation are men, and Coach U, the largest training school for executive coaches, with 6,000 graduates, says more than three in 10 graduates are men.

Good coaches are intuitive, good communicators and have done a lot of personal development work, says Sandy Vilas, a man and CEO of Coach U.

"Generally speaking, that profile tends to fit women better," Vilas says. "CEOs are hard-charging, Jack Welch-type people. They recognize, in order to be balanced, they need a softer side."