What Effective Executive Coaching Looks Like
Our coaching engagements are structured to have a direct impact on business performance while accelerating personal development and performance.
Our clients include CEOs, C-Suite and business leaders, and high-potential individuals who are open to change and eager to improve their performance.
Our ingredients for successful executive coaching engagements:
- Clear objectives
- A disciplined process that pushes the client to do the hard work that leads to meaningful changes
- A coach who understands the client’s situation, observes carefully, asks tough questions, and gives direct recommendations
- A client who is open to being coached and committed to making change
When these elements are present, leaders can change and develop—improving both their personal effectiveness and their organization’s bottom line.
Our definition of executive coaching:
“A skilled professional using a disciplined process to provide observations, recommendations, and tools to a business leader to improve that leader’s skills, capabilities, and performance.”
Our executive coaching process:
We take a structured, disciplined approach rooted in pushing against business-focused objectives.
We start by working with our clients to define success and specify goals. We help them identify areas for improvement, pinpoint clear and measurable targets, and articulate clear-cut actions they can take to achieve success.
When appropriate, we engage key stakeholders, including supervisors, to align expectations and outcomes.
Types of Coaching Engagements
Our approach is versatile and flexible, meeting each client’s individual needs. While each coaching engagement is unique, they typically fall into three categories:
- Coaching for Performance
- Coaching for Promotion
- Coaching for Perspective
While the goals, roles, and processes associated with these three categories are distinct, they do not preclude hybrid approaches. Each client has unique needs and aspirations, so each engagement is adapted to the situation.
Many Coaching for Performance engagements include elements of Coaching for Promotion—and a Coaching for Promotion relationship may transition to Coaching for Perspective after the leader has settled into a new job. The coaching relationship may evolve further as the leader progresses. A leader who thrives during a Coaching for Performance engagement might undertake Coaching for Promotion the following year and eventually seek help with Coaching for Perspective.
Coaching for Performance
We work with executives who are delivering suboptimal performance and/or who are experiencing a rough patch. We help them identify performance barriers, develop strategies to address these barriers, and set measurable goals.
The coaching engagement focuses on trying new leadership behaviors while developing better processes and tools to drive results.
When coaching for performance, a critical first step is to align expectations and outcomes not only between coach and client, but also with the client’s supervisor.
Coaching for Promotion
We work with executives who want to advance their career, who will soon take on a new role, or who have recently accepted a new role.
The coaching engagement includes taking stock of the client’s leadership history, identifying which skills and behaviors to carry forward and which to leave behind. We also work with the client to acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, and, once in the role, to navigate the new landscape.
Throughout the engagement, we focus on helping the client identify and develop the necessary behaviors, skills and tools so they can thrive.
Coaching for Perspective
We work with senior-level executives, typically CEOs or other C-suite leaders, who seek additional perspective on the internal and external realities they are facing.
Through the coaching engagement we help clients gain perspective and think through new ideas and strategies. Further, we help leaders get explicit with themselves about their lifelong ambitions, the legacy they want to leave behind, and how their current job plays into both. We challenge leaders to make time to review their goals, plot a career strategy, and carefully manage the big transitions like taking over as CEO or preparing the organization (and themselves) for their retirement.
Why Brimstone?
The maturity, executive experience and skill of our coaches and the relationships we build with clients to help them achieve their desired results differentiate us from other consulting firms.
Our coaches are former business executives, entrepreneurs, educators, community leaders, and athletes. We are united in the belief that every individual has the capacity to improve their performance.
We work side by side with our clients on their critical issues and opportunities. We engage with our clients on a personal level and help them to realize success.
