Executive Coaching

Speis means ‘spirit’
and connotes life, wind
and motion

Everyone has blind spots, but when they impact a team or a company’s performance they lead to stress and conflict.

To be competitive in the fast-moving business environment requires all hands on deck. Relentless targets leave little room for error, and in order to succeed, organizations need people to be on board with all their talent and capability. Yet fault lines are exposed just as professional and emotional resources of workforce and management are most in demand, often creating stress and conflict. A leader’s blind spots can be as obvious to others as they are not to themselves. Alternatively, a leader may have reason to fear that the fishbowl of leadership leaves little room to work on personal foibles without costing losses in leadership gravitas and authority.

Executive Coaching can efficiently identify the specific aspect of an individual or team’s behaviors, beliefs, habits, or emotional or communication style that have the most impact on their effectiveness. An external coach is able to provide a safe and confidential container to identify, process, and work through what is needed for a leader or team to grow.

When Does Executive Coaching Help?

Here are examples of normal human behavior that can impact work functioning. It isn’t that there’s something wrong with what each individual brings to the table, but how a person’s traits or habits fit and support an organization’s goals — and how they sometimes collide. In other words, to identify what needs to change it is necessary to understand what is working, or not, in the fit between a person and their context. It is a non-blaming and non-judgmental process in which the client collaborates in the process of defining the “problem” and reframes and reintegrates it into their own vision of personal growth – a process that gives their team or company the means and opportunity to do the same.

A new leader harbors high expectations of her own performance while internalizing the pressures of various problems. Her efforts to manage her own inner critic detracts energy from managing complex and fast-moving demands, as well as make her more risk-averse in making decisions.
A founder CEO consistently backs away from firing employees who are not performing well, or who are actively pushing the envelope in ways that negatively affect morale.
A critical player balkanizes his department from the rest of the organization, and avoids transparent accountability for his progress, implying that he is most likely to succeed if he can be left alone.
A new team leader has difficulty getting her team to perform, which continuously seems to fragment and stall.
A valuable and effective top executive needs help with executive presence in high visibility situations.
An organization has difficulty finding the right balance between rewarding a star performer and reining in his excessive independence and lack of teamwork.

What Are the Desired Results of Coaching?

Increase of engagement, confidence, productivity, and overall well-being of the client being coached, and often knock-on effect to others in their team and organization
Focused understanding of what specific behaviors or attitudes are relevant to what’s not supporting an individual’s fit with organizational goals; and guided learning on how best to change
Better decision-making, that may include when a situation requires more work from the individual (inner game) and when a situation requires attention to the outer game
Increase aspiration and vision of what is possible, and harness energy and motivation through a clearer sense of purpose and possibility
More resilience through stress and difficulty
Improve individual, team and organizational resilience through improving positive attitudes and respectful, positive relationships
Develop skills to better manage relationships in areas of communication and conflict, managing difficult or ambiguous business situations
Develop skills in self-management
Get unstuck from vicious cycle of stagnation and repeat to move into virtuous cycle of learning and growth

How Does Coaching Work?

The goal of coaching is to harness and maximize the talent stored in ourselves, while minimizing opportunity cost in failing to do so, in failing to tap potential. Executive Coaching is a science-validated, evidence-based process that is at once highly structured, yet fluidly adaptable to the client’s learning needs.

Coaching is intended to widen your repertoire. It’s easy to fall into a habitual pattern of choices – for example we often get our lunch from the same takeout; or we take the same route to work every day. Chances are good that we evolved these “solutions” after a period of trial and error – same as we do our behaviors. Once we have our pattern, habit and efficiency usually carry the day and many of us do not vary our routes or repertoire much, except with conscious effort. Coaching is part of that effort to re-evaluate achievable and productive additions to our repertoire, whether it means new behaviors and strategies for dealing with issues, or altering our responses to situations.

The process of coaching starts with identifying and recruiting an individual or team’s key strengths in the service of the desired change. Good goals and action plans are made possible by collecting good data and the presentation of honest, reliable feedback. From here coaching is a collaborative effort to identify the change most likely to make a difference, and the learning methods most likely to support sustainable growth.

The change and skills derived from coaching can vary from solving specific problems, to learning new skills, be they interpersonal skills or self-management skills. In all cases coaching aims to increase awareness and the capacity to be present, be more reflective and intentional.

What Does the Coach Bring to Coaching?

I work to communicate directly and respectfully to my clients so that we can collaborate on our joint project to help you grow.

I offer a safe, confidential space for clients to look at themselves and reflect on their own impact on others.

With 15+ years of formal education and even more years of experience, I toggle between lenses and approaches as needed by a person’s specific learning need at any given moment or throughout the coaching process.

I help clients safely navigate psychological vulnerability if that emerges in the coaching process. My aim is to help clients gain confidence in their own capacity for authenticity and the personal power and self-respect that comes from that.

Pricing and Fees

My fee is set by project or hourly, depending on the client’s needs and goals. I offer a complimentary initial conversation or meet and greet by phone, video or in-person depending on our respective locations and schedules. Contact me if you’d like to set up a time to discuss your needs.