An Interview with Dr. Michael Nates

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnates/

Email: michael@Multiverseconsultants.co.uk

In a rapidly evolving corporate landscape, the emphasis on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles is no longer a choice but an imperative. As companies wrestle with integrating these principles into their operations, the importance of guidance and leadership becomes paramount. In this fascinating interview, Michael explains how, as a seasoned executive coach with a mechanical engineering background, he guides executives through their transformative ESG journeys.

Michael, how has your journey in executive coaching intertwined with the increasing emphasis on ESG principles in today’s corporate landscape?

My motivation for training as an executive and leadership coach came out of my recognition that organisational transformation is heavily premised on the CEO’s and leadership team’s perspectives, values and beliefs. If the head of the organisation is looking in one direction while the organisation is trying to move in another, then progress is unlikely. In my experience, the vast majority of senior leadership and board members are significantly ill-prepared and ignorant of the consequences that global warming, climate change and the resulting environmental and social changes are going to have on their businesses. For example, during a recent training session with board members, 20% of them thought that coal was a renewable resource. Coaching creates a safe space for discussion of difficult topics, including environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. A coaching session that focuses on ESG may initially be more of a mentoring session that lays the foundation for the executive to deepen their understanding and enable more sustainable options and decisions

Are ESG and sustainability one and the same concepts, as they are often used interchangeably?

ESG and sustainability are two distinct concepts and should not be used synonymously. ESG has its origins in a United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) publication from 2005 that used ESG as the basis for a risk management and due diligence process to assess the ESG risks faced by an organisation that could materially impact its value. Sustainability first emerged in the 1980s and addresses the impacts of an organisation on the external environmental, economic and social dimensions. Sustainability is often summarised as the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. Counterintuitively, an organisation could meet ESG risk criteria while still being unsustainable, while the reverse is unlikely.

How do you perceive the role of ESG in change management and transformation?

All organisations, and I mean all, are going to be impacted by climate change and the resulting changes in economic markets and  global society. Organisations that actively engage with these risks and opportunities will be better prepared to survive and thrive in the years to come. By way of an example, the younger generation Z entering the labour market are giving preference to organisations that can demonstrate their sustainability credentials. This younger cohort understand that climate change is existential and do not want to work for misaligned organisations, so the fight for talent is becoming linked to your ESG credentials. Organisations that choose to ignore ESG considerations as part of a transformation programme will face greater challenges and performance headwinds.

Can you describe a pivotal moment in your coaching career where ESG principles significantly influenced the direction or outcome of a transformative process?

Part of the social dimension of ESG is diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). During a recent project initiation meeting, I noticed that the team lacked diversity. Understanding the importance of diversity and the benefits it brings through different viewpoints and challenges, I encouraged the client to augment the team with a broader range of ethnicities, gender identifications and neuro-diversity. The larger range of experiences and backgrounds necessitated additional team meetings and engagements, but the outcome was a much richer insight into the problem, with the resulting solutions being more widely accepted and easily adopted.

What are executives’ most common challenges when integrating ESG principles into their strategic transformation agendas?

Most corporate decision-making processes and decision-makers are almost totally based on financial criteria. Their decisions lack consideration of environmental and social issues. This is exacerbated by the lack of understanding (at both an organisational and individual level) of the importance of environmental and social issues in the outcome of longer-term strategy and planning. The significant obstacle is the lack of executives taking up leadership positions to move the organisations forward towards a more environmentally and socially responsible operating model. However, as noted above, most do not have a functional understanding of the issues and how they would positively benefit the organisation. So, the central challenge that needs to be addressed is the upskilling of executive decision-makers on the opportunities that ESG has to offer while simultaneously revising decision-making processes to include sustainability considerations. These two changes will fundamentally transform an organisation.

Conversely, where do you see the most credible opportunities for companies to leverage ESG principles as catalysts for change and transformation?

Besides changing decision-making processes to include non-financial criteria, organisations should consider three other fundamental changes. The first is to include sustainability considerations in the procurement of all goods and services. Responsible procurement will have an impact up the supply chain that will benefit organisations directly and indirectly. The second is to include sustainable culture and values in the recruitment process. This will have twin benefits of signalling to prospective candidates that sustainability is a core value, and it will enable the organisation to have the human capital necessary to meet and address the coming economic and societal changes. The third area for action is to ensure that anything that leaves your organisation be it goods, services or advice, embodies your organisation’s sustainability ethos. By way of an example, professional consulting firms should be offering their clients insight into how the proffered advice could be augmented to make the outcomes more sustainable or future-proofed for foreseeable climate change impacts.

How do Multiverse Consultants assist clients in balancing profitability with ESG responsibilities?

The key issue is helping clients understand that profitability is a short-term perspective while thriving in the changing world is a longer-term imperative for shareholders and stakeholders. What an organisation may lose in short-term profitability it will make up and recover in longer-term performance and efficiency gains. We help clients understand and make room for decisions that are longer-term rather than short. Part of this process is openly and transparently engaging with the Board of Directors, shareholders, and stakeholders to build trust and explain how the long-term plans will ensure future success. Trust is fundamental to ensuring reputation and brand value.

How do you approach executives needing clarification or support to integrate executive coaching strategies?

We simply listen. All journeys and relationships start with deeply listening to each other’s
backgrounds and contexts as a first step to building a shared reality. I do not have a preconceived outcome or expectation for these first sessions. What I hope will emerge is mutual trust and respect and a commitment to addressing, in an open, honest and collaborative manner, whatever may arise. What I propose is that we establish a professional partnership where we support each other in delivering the organisation’s ESG goals. I bring the sustainability content knowledge, hold a safe space for challenge and reflection, while the executive brings their organisational culture and understanding so that together we innovate and create practical ideas and opportunities.

How does your background in mechanical engineering help inform your work as an executive coach?

My engineering background enables me to understand at an operational level how things are made and how businesses function. I have a deep and technical understanding of, for example, how carbon emission reduction plans need to be developed and implemented. My understanding is of an industrial nature, which is exceedingly useful as compared to an ecological or  environmental science background. Secondly, coaching is quite emergent and complex, requiring lateral vision and spaciousness, which can lead to a lack of structure and focus. My engineering nature grounds my approach and brings the sessions back to actions and plans.

Do you foresee any potential challenges or pitfalls for companies superficially adopting ESG for branding or image rather than genuine commitment?

There is a very old saying; “the truth will out”. Attempting to short-circuit or greenwash an organisation’s ESG image will (as has been seen repeatedly) lead to the product and services being rejected by the customers when they come to understand the actual underlying facts. My advice to organisations is to put all that effort and energy into understanding and preparing their organisations for the environmental and social opportunities that are emerging all the time.

Today, we have the pleasure of sitting down with Alba Contreras Rodriguez ,the founder of FONS LLC (Focus on Solution) - https://focusonsolution.com/. Alba's journey from Venezuela to the United States and her successful career in various industries led her to pursue her passion for coaching. Alba is an expert in executive and team coaching, helping leaders and organizations excel in times of transition and transformation.

1. Alba, thank you for joining us today. Please share an overview of your personal journey and how you found Focus on Solution Coaching.  

I was born and raised in Venezuela and moved to the United States right after High School to learn the English language. My childhood dream was to become an architect and later shifted to a STEM path in business administration and computer & information sciences, opening the door to a successful career in various industries.

After graduation at 21, I moved back home and started working as a systems programmer and analyst. I later worked for General Motors, KPMG management consulting, and Ford Motor Company. Ford offered me an international assignment at corporate headquarters in Michigan. They sponsored me to become a USA citizen and return to school to get my MBA at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. In 2017, after 23 phenomenal years with Ford, I decided to retire early to pursue my next career. 

I launched FONS LLC, which stands for Focus on Solution, to pursue a new path by following my passion or calling. I was motivated by several key lessons: the importance of focusing on the humans in any transformation; knowing myself and being confident in defining my path; learning to become a CEO, and being a lifelong learner. To become a successful coach, I attended a coaching school, got trained and certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and became a team coach practitioner credentialed by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). 

FONS provides Executive, Team, and Group coaching for leaders and organizations to excel and enable transitions and transformations focused on human readiness. 

2. The name of your company, "Focus On Solution" (FONS), speaks to a positive and forward-thinking approach. How does this philosophy inform your methods in executive and team coaching?

My coaching approach is grounded in empathy, intuition, and trust-building, which describes me as a spiral lighthouse coach – I am all about getting the holistic 360 view and finding the connection between the BEING and the DOING. It is all about deepening the learning and creating a grounded harbor of trust, safety, and connection. I encourage my clients and teams to think beyond their comfort zone and expand their horizons by focusing on the ecosystem and interdependencies. My coaching philosophy and methods allow me to help my clients navigate VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) business environments and deliver results while improving their well-being. I am a thought partner, accountability partner, and sounding board for my clients.

My coaching programs are focused and tailored to the goals and challenges of the individuals, teams, and their stakeholders. My clients trust me to help them build self-awareness and develop new attitudes to be more effective leaders and teams through reflection, experimentation, and action.

3. You've been recognized as one of the top coaches in Detroit by Influence Digest. What unique strategies or techniques do you offer your clients to ensure your services stand out?

With my extensive experience in various industries for over 30 years as a corporate executive, management consultant, and credentialed coach, I am a coach who understands the power of coaching in transforming leaders and organizations. My purpose is to help leaders and teams recognize and achieve their highest potential to serve better and add value to their stakeholders. I understand the responsibility and how it feels to be in their shoes. 

My Focus on Solution Programs©, for individuals, teams, or groups, use a structured, flexible process and set of tools based on the needs of the client(s) and mainly focuses on their BEING, not only on their DOING. The program's main components include honoring confidentiality, building a relationship of trust, gathering data through assessments and 360 interviews, identifying the areas of development and focus, and co-creating a coaching plan to deliver the expected goals and success metrics. The coaching sessions have an agenda of the client's needs; the work outside the sessions is about reflection, practice, experimentation, and learning. 

4. You offer a Team Coaching service. What, in your experience, are the key benefits an organization can gain from investing in team coaching? And what are the benefits of team coaching over individual coaching?

Team Coaching is a powerful and effective process that enhances the performance of the individual members, the leader, and the team as a collective, impacting the immediate business and broader organization.

Eighty percent of organizations operate almost wholly in teams, and today's world is complex and changing rapidly. Today's challenges need collaborative teams, and organizations need qualified team coaches and leaders who can create connections on multiple levels to develop a sustainable and prosperous workplace.

Integrating Team Coaching into an organization can: 

• Enable teams to adapt and navigate the challenges of today’s hyper-complex and fast-changing world
• Help team members think beyond themselves and their team to consider the organization’s larger objectives as a whole 

• Facilitate teams to work with each other and every stakeholder across the organization 
• Develop greater clarity of purpose, better processes of decision-making, communicating, and organizing work 

Unlike one-to-one coaching you might be more familiar with, Team Coaching explores issues related to collective performance, enabling the team to recognize and manage influences on its performance, now and in the future. Team coaching takes a systemic view of those influences, which may concern the team's internal dynamics and how it interacts with its stakeholders.

5. Dealing with diverse personalities and working styles can be challenging in a team coaching environment. How do you approach these dynamics to create an inclusive and beneficial coaching environment?

Throughout my corporate career, I was responsible for leading and collaborating with diverse teams worldwide, which allowed me to work with diverse personalities and working styles. Inclusion relates to belief and behavior. It’s the magic sauce that activates and releases the power of diversity. 

I use three main ways to create an inclusive and beneficial coaching environment.

1. Imagine an iceberg; as a coach, I create trust, safety, and connection to help people explore what is above and below the waterline and assist them in exploring layers and perspectives. I encourage teams to utilize different lenses that allow them to understand and navigate the culture of their organization and as part of a more extensive ecosystem.

1. I can raise awareness of where I notice specific biases in the team. As an outside pair of eyes, I am in an ideal position to notice what they cannot do from within. Helping the team identify their fundamental biases and their impact on their ability to perform at their best is an excellent first step.

1. Making ongoing feedback safe, with ways for actively sourcing this, ensures the perspectives and experiences of others are consistently understood.

6. What are some common challenges you've observed teams facing when striving for better collaboration and efficiency, and how does your coaching address these?

The teams I have coached share common challenges as they operate in highly complex, intense, and rapidly changing environments. Some of the issues that impact a team’s ability to collaborate include:

1. Undefined or unclear purpose, strategy, and processes
2. Lack of trust
3. Blurred roles and responsibilities

My team coaching programs consist of supporting the team as a whole and individually. I conduct team sessions in workshops, team meeting observations, assessments, stakeholder interviews, and experiments within the framework of the action plan that we co-create together.

Think of team coaching as fitness coaching for the whole team. It will take some hard work, both in the coaching sessions and outside, but the result will be a more nimble team that is "Fit for its Purpose."

7. Can you share a success story where your coaching significantly impacted an executive's performance or led a team to achieve exceptional results?

I have experienced great success at coaching global executives on navigating corporate culture and processes, as well as cross-generational leadership and multicultural organizations. Clients seeking to lead strategy and implementation of significant transitions and transformations have leveraged my expertise to ensure human readiness for success.

One of my success stories is a Senior Vice President promoted to President of a Hospital and Regional Leader for multiple healthcare organizations. While transitioning to an enormous responsibility scope, this executive struggled with being more strategic, figuring out her new role, and working for the board of directors. I designed a customized coaching engagement with 360 interviews to identify professional growth opportunities and co-created a coaching action plan. Following the coaching engagement, the client, team, board, and sponsoring organization saw growth, enhanced communication, and executive presence, which also played a crucial role as the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. In my client's words, "Alba's support and direct feedback helped limit my stress during adapting to a new role and working in the new normal of a global pandemic."

8. With the shift towards remote work and digital collaboration, how have you adapted your coaching techniques to remain effective in this new landscape?

Since I launched my business, I have supported clients virtually worldwide. During the pandemic, remote work became ubiquitous, and most clients use a hybrid model. 

I use a digital platform and tools that help facilitate coaching sessions, offline work, and communication. Regarding team coaching, I have supported teams virtually and in person, which is more convenient for the workshops.

9. Could you describe what a first-time client can expect during a typical coaching session with you?

My Focus on Solution Coaching program© starts with getting to know each other. The success of a coaching engagement depends on a relationship of trust, which is only possible by honoring confidentiality.

We start the session with check-in and what has transpired since the previous session. Discuss the homework and pending items, identify the main topic for the session, which can be an agenda item we have agreed to, or discuss a situation or issue. We end the session by gathering the client’s takeaways and commitments. The session's notes and fieldwork go to the client, who also has access to me in between sessions via email, call, or text. 

10. Lastly, for executives or teams considering coaching, what advice would you give them as they embark on this journey?

When executives or teams consider embarking on a coaching journey, I suggest being intentionally focused, patient,  disciplined and enjoy the journey. Find a formally trained and credentialed coach who can support you effectively.

A successful coach must be curious, empathetic, open-minded, and comfortable with challenging clients to get out of their comfort zone. Primarily, my experience and willingness to challenge the client are why I have gotten hired as a coach; simply going with the flow would be doing the client a disservice.

In terms of what to expect during a coaching experience, similar elements apply to executives and teams: 

1. Be curious to seek and accept feedback. 
2. Be challenged individually and collectively to become your best selves. 
3. Be willing to be uncomfortable at times. The ask is that you treat each moment of discomfort as an opportunity to learn for your benefit and the benefit of the team and the stakeholders.
4. Be open to experimenting.  
5. Be ready; it will be a transformative experience.

Why should more leaders consider executive coaching?

Executive coaching is well spent talking time. It is inquiry-driven and outcome-based. It’s not training or consulting. It is non-directive curiosity and facilitated discovery. It is a whole-person solution to improving capacity and leadership, focused on removing barriers and opening up opportunity for the win.

Executive coaching is part replacement of inherent deep-thinking space stolen by podcasts, 24-7 email and text communication and part professionally hosted personal awareness, tradeoff awareness and outcome-based thinking workshop. The benefits of executive coaching ultimately are accomplishing what you want within your real constraints. It’s optimisation 101.

One of the most valuable aspects of executive coaching - and often one of the most difficult obstacles for clients to embrace - is that the client chooses what to optimise, how to optimise, and when and with whom to optimise. It can take time for a client to begin to problem solve without being led, especially if at the starting point the objective seems overwhelming. But by doing so, the client’s mindset shifts. Self-efficacy blossoms as small successes change the way obstacles are addressed. Resilience grows. The client begins to think like the coach when they are not on a coaching call, asking themselves powerful coaching questions throughout the day. They begin to ask more powerful questions as they lead and manage others, modelling for them this optimisation mindset of movement through resistance to desired results.

How would you describe your coaching methods?

I describe my coaching and the coaching we engage at 2StepExec as hospitality. Instead of hosting someone in my home, I host a conversation that invites my client to be known for what’s on the inside, not just the results they accomplish on the outside. Sometimes they don’t really know themselves.

We believe that being known is more valuable than being productive; it’s the source for effective and enduring achievement. We’ve built our executive coaching partnerships around this value.

Step One of our two-step 2StepExec™ Partnership process uses the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment to help our clients get to know themselves at a deeper level. Step Two utilises ongoing coaching conversations to positively and strategically apply what they learn to optimise leadership influence and build sustainability into their innate and extraordinarily driven nature.

We are like high-octane gasoline made for high-performance vehicles - except we service high-performing leaders to keep them moving forward with more energy, confidence, fulfilment and fun.

What are the most common challenges executives in the financial sector struggle with?

Executives in the financial sector are good at what they do; their struggle is often finding balance between career and family. They strive to serve their clients with excellence, and they want to discover ways to do so without compromising their value for relationships in other areas of life. In addition, they want to lead their teams in ways that drive both the bottom line and better relationships.

When I think about executives I’ve coached and the common challenges they face, the particular business sector they work in seems to take a back seat to their simply being human.

How do you help them overcome them?

We help our clients see their challenges in light of their overall desired outcomes. Then, we help them choose to take appropriate steps to get where they really want to be. Executive coaching is comprehensive thinking that leads to appropriate action. It engages feelings, values, beliefs and asks the question: “How do you want to respond?” closely followed by the question: “When will you do it?”.

Clients gain valuable processing time and a sense of empowerment, even if it means the only answer is to acknowledge nothing much changes. As they envision what it is they want, consider the trade-offs, the cost of changing what they already have of value and gain awareness of what’s going on inside of them, they may realise the step they want to take is to do something like a shift to an attitude of gratitude, choose joy more often, refining their understanding of limits and life, of fulfilment and fun. Overcoming obstacles is personal and something the client discovers and chooses for themselves, not something the coach dictates or prescribes.

Executive coaching is well spent talking time. It is inquiry-driven and outcome-based. It’s not training or consulting. It is non-directive curiosity and facilitated discovery. It is a whole-person solution to improving capacity and leadership, focused on removing barriers and opening up opportunity for the win.

What do you think has been the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on leaders?

I think the pandemic pulled back the curtain. All leaders were put into the winepress – the pandemic hurt. Leaders struggled to one degree or another because change inherently brings a challenge. I observed, however, that leaders who were healthy when the pandemic hit the lead with more power and influence through the storm, driven by their desire to serve others. Even when changing strategy daily, and holding on by a thread, they lead with dignity and strength - along with tears. Leaders who were already unhealthy and just holding on experienced the loss of some of their coping mechanisms and distractions exposing their need for help. This showed up sometimes only in their private lives.

What’s your advice when it comes to juggling many things at once?

Some people are made to juggle. I work with high-achieving leaders. I am a high-achiever. The last piece of advice I need to hear is: “Stop doing so much”. I’d die on the vine. I am made to do stuff. Many people are made to do stuff. I think we need to ask ourselves the question: “Am I identified by all the things I’m doing, or am I serving others with the things I’m doing?”. If I’m finding my identity in my work, I may be juggling more than I need to be juggling. Connecting my value and worth to opportunities that come my way inherently makes me more apt to say ‘yes’ to more than I have the capacity to handle. If I’m freely serving others, I’ll likely be driven more by my ability to serve them well, making me more apt to say no when I’m aware that my results may be compromised by one more thing.

What’s your overall advice when it comes to achieving success and living a happy life?

I would say two primary things about success: the first is that while we love performance that meets or exceeds the measure of the results we want, success is acknowledging people are worthy of love, not their performance. The second is that we’ll never get any results if we don’t do the courageous thing and step into our story, right where it is just as we are and do what we can. We get to choose to make it a success.

Jan Bowen-Nielsen is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Quiver Management. Renowned for excellence in executive and business coaching, the company’s 15 coaches, trainers and consultants work with corporates and professional firms across the UK and internationally.

Having spent the last 15 years as an executive coach and trainer of coaches, Jan also speaks regularly at conferences and corporate events about how leaders can use coaching to develop their teams and how client facing professionals can use the same skills to improve their services. Here he tells us all about the work that he does and his upcoming book.

Tell us about the book that you’re currently writing?

The book is targeted to financial advisers, accountants and other professionals whose careers revolve around helping their clients.

I know that most came into their chosen profession with a genuine desire to really help and make a positive difference for their clients - as well as building successful lucrative careers. As true professionals in their chosen field, I’m sure they all work hard on building up and maintaining their technical competencies and expertise.

But these technical skills are in reality merely the minimum! We have to appreciate that to ensure that we help meet our clients’ needs, we must first understand our clients, their situation and their aspirations really well. In many cases we even need to help our clients recognise their own situation better and help them clarify what they want. When we start to provide solutions without fully understanding this, we are doing our clients a disservice.

To help us create a successful career, we also have to recognise that technical skills can only get us so far. An arguably much bigger factor for career success is our ability to forge relationships and engage effectively with our clients.

It is a sad fact that our schools and most professional higher education pays very little attention to interpersonal and conversation skills. It is my argument that professionals should regard these skills as essential professional skills in their own right and they should have just as much focus during formal qualification training as well as in their continuous professional development throughout their career.

Thus, my book is aiming to address this. It is based on my coaching and interpersonal skills training of more than a thousand advisers and experts across a range of professional services.

 Can you give us a summary of the book’s main topics?

I will share why experts often struggle to listen well and what practically to do about it. I will discuss how to ask powerful questions to help clients’ thinking, how to build trust and how to uncover your clients’ goals and deeper needs. I will also share techniques on how to help clients make quality decisions and change unhelpful behaviours. But this is not about nice-to-have ‘soft’ skills; I will show how these skills are essential to career success, business development and better advice and I will also look at how to practically include these in the readers’ advisory practice.

When can we expect the book?

The book is expected to be published around the turn of the year. We will publish more details on our website when it’s available. If anyone is interested in learning more beforehand, they are very welcome to attend one of our open courses or contact me to arrange an in-house course.

What are the most common challenges that financial advisers and accountants need Quiver Management’s help with?

The underlying challenge is usually ‘how do we differentiate ourselves from the rest?’. Our clients recognise that the transactional side of financial advice and accountancy is becoming a commodity that clients are unwilling to pay much for. Their service proposition is shifting to becoming a trusted partner for clients. The cornerstone for this is interpersonal skills, being able to forge strong relationships based on understanding clients’ underlying needs and then creating tailored personalised services and solutions that meet these needs. This is what they need our help with.

Contact details:

Website: www.quivermanagement.com

Email: jan@quivermanagement.com

Tom Leach Coaching is a small business providing executive coaching and mentoring in the public and voluntary sector and in higher education. Set up in 2013, the business has grown beyond its early roots in leadership development in the health sector. Conceived as a small, fast-moving and flexible enterprise Tom Leach Coaching draws in other coaching professionals with a range of expertise to support team and leadership development.

The Founder and sole Director of the business, Tom Leach, is a qualified coach with higher degrees in management and education. He has been a Lecturer and Researcher in higher education in Scotland, an Associate Lecturer for the Open University Business School, Head of a team of internal consultants in the health sector, and National Project Manager for the NHS in England. Below, he speaks to Finance Monthly about the common problems that he helps businesses and leaders with and the benefits of having a business coach.

What common problems do businesses and Executives fall into that coaching helps to address?

The world is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Politically public services are under huge pressures to respond to overwhelming expectations within the tightest constraints of financial and economic resources imposed by austerity. Technological and scientific improvements unimagined by earlier generations have created magnificent opportunities, but have stoked up huge public expectations. Climate and environmental change offer vivid examples of the prevailing uncertainties in all walks of life.

In the last 24 months, Tom Leach Coaching has worked with public sector leaders striving to find more effective ways of working across organisational boundaries, breaking down the old silos of health and social care, building multi-disciplinary teams, coping with organisational mergers, and stabilising services under constant pressures of change.

For most of our clients, critical personal and career questions surfaced as they struggled with their organisational and leadership challenges. For the Chair of a commissioning group, a priority was to identify their particular role on the Board, to manage her own finite energies, reduce her unrealistic expectations of herself, and concentrate her attention on areas of the group business which would produce the most significant returns.

A Finance Director starting in a new role on the board of another health organisation was coached over the period of transition, helping him to achieve a better level of performance in a shorter period.

Executive coaching often provides the most effective, cost efficient and most accurately focussed means of achieving such leadership development.

What difference can having an executive coach, like Tom Leach Coaching, have on an individual’s strategy and career path?

Leaders in the private and public sectors typically face huge business pressures, which in part arise from the volatility and uncertainties of the environment in which they work, as described earlier. As we have seen, however, personal management and career issues often become entangled in day-to-day decision-making at an emotional level, increasing personal stress and reducing resilience. Without exception and since Tom Leach Coaching’s creation, our clients value highly the time that executive coaching allows them to think through issues in a structured way and view them from a range of different perspectives. Having the time to think makes all the difference. Frequently, it results in a complete change of approach.  

When should a company or their Executive consider speaking with and hiring their own business coach?

Executive coaching can make a significant difference to leadership performance where new appointments are being made. Ideally, coaching should be considered in the period before a transition and during the critical first weeks of ‘on-boarding’ and integration of a new post holder. Large corporations replace 12% of their executives annually. That means a lot of transitions are taking place. Research shows that as many as 40% of new leaders fail (fired or resign) or underperform during this period of transition.

Most executives and organisations do not plan enough for their transitions. Executive coaching can help.

What differentiates a good executive coach from an excellent one?

Differentiating a good from an excellent executive coach may be less difficult than separating the good from the rest. Numbers of coaches have grown rapidly in recent years and there has been a confusing proliferation of qualifications and titles. Professional regulation is progressing, but the field is wide open and careful scrutiny is essential. Professional recognition is a starting point. Relevance and length of experience are likely to be significant but not sufficient guides. A recent survey reveals that most executives follow the recommendations of colleagues when making their choice of coach.

Above all, it is essential to make use of a ‘chemistry session’ to test the experience and promises of a potential executive coach. Good coaches usually make these available free-of-charge.

Website: www.tomleachcoaching.co.uk

Email: tom@tomleachcoaching.co.uk

Finance Monthly speaks to author and President of CDR Assessment Group – Nancy Parsons about her company and their coaching tools, her philanthropic initiatives and the passion that drives her.

Tell us about CDR Assessment Group, your career path prior to co-founding the company and your books.

Twenty years ago, I co-founded CDR Assessment Group, along with my business partner Kimberly R. Leveridge, Ph.D. CDR is recognized as one of the top firms for combining the science of assessments with the art of developing people. We provide our proprietary assessments for leadership development and talent management for global clients.

Kim and I developed the CDR 3-Dimensional Assessment Suite® in 1998. The Suite digs deep beneath the surface to help each leaders’ self-awareness move to a whole new level to improve their performance, work relationships, success and satisfaction. Our coaching tools have helped leaders accurately measure their character traits and strengths, risks for derailment; and drivers & reward needs. The Suite is available in five languages (Spanish, French, Italian, German and English.) We have built a global team of certified CDR executive coaches and consultants who provide services for CDR clients.

In late 2017, I published a research-based book, Fresh Insights to End the Glass Ceiling and since publishing, I’ve been interviewed by over 50 radio hosts and a national television show. The book sheds new light on why the glass ceiling exists – and it is not what most people think. The personality-based research shared in the book reveals why so few women make it to the top, and the staggering costs of not promoting more women to senior leadership positions. My book is packed with practical solutions to end the glass ceiling for good.

I enjoy writing and have authored more than 30 articles and have had a blog since 2009. My second book, titled Transforming Leaderocrity is scheduled for release in late 2018. I have enjoyed presenting at international, national and regional industry conferences and am an NSA member. As a speaker, I have been described by others as being “refreshingly frank, gutsy, funny, wicked smart and passionate.”   When presenting to groups, I enjoy shedding new light on why people do what they do, both the good and the bad.

In 2016, I founded the Vets Coaching Vets philanthropic initiative and since then, our team has worked with six different veteran organizations to coach more than 50 transitioning veterans to accelerate their career success. Since 2000, CDR Assessment Group has been a women-owned WBENC certified business and is now affiliated with WBEA.

I am delighted to be married to the love of my life and have four grown children, three grandchildren, and three very spoiled dogs.

Can you detail the key services that CDR Assessment Group offers?

We provide consulting, executive coaching and training services that wrap around our unmatched assessment tools. We train executive coaches (both internal and external consultants) to use the assessment tools with their clients.

While most of my actual client work centers around coaching senior executives and executive coaches, CDR Assessment Group is able to reach and develop thousands of leaders and professionals each year. Of course, a good portion of my time is devoted to running and growing the business. We have a network of globally dispersed executive coaches who utilize our tools with their clients and who participate to serve as consultants and coaches for our projects as well.

One differentiator for us is that our assessments are like the Swiss Army Knife of the assessment world. In addition to using these tools for executive coaching, we use these scientifically validated measures as an integral part of our consulting and training services to help clients with:

• Employee selection;
• Succession planning decisions;
• Strategic executive team development;
• Custom Authentic Leadership learning programs combining assessments, coaching and custom workshops based on the data of the leader participants;
• Executive performance forecasts;
• Leadership capability analysis;
• Research and validity study projects.

Why would you say experienced corporate executives need the services of an external management consultant/coach?

Corporate executives need our propriety assessments and coaching so that they can gain an acute sense of self-awareness that they otherwise cannot achieve, even with the best soul-searching techniques. By completing their initial coaching debrief session with the CDR 3-D Suite (about 2.5 to 3 hours), they can hit the ground running with new, deeper insights to help them better understand their strengths, risks, vulnerabilities and motivation to a nuanced level. Equipped with this new level of self-understanding, they can improve their leadership capability well beyond their current effectiveness level. They can also begin to see what makes others tick and how to be more effective with their teams and stakeholders.

How important is it to have first-hand experience of running a business in order to provide valuable insight to other business leaders?

I think having experience as a CEO is extremely valuable as a coach because one has then walked in the shoes of strategy, operations and P&L. However, experience alone is not enough because one then only scratches the surface. By adding scientifically validated assessment tools into the coaching process, we accelerate impactful, usable real-world dialogue from the first coaching session. We don’t hold hands wasting valuable time getting to know our executive clients, we are able to dig deep and accelerate results from the first coaching session.

We then link executive team data to business strategy to be sure that the actual profiles of team members are well aligned to achieve strategic objectives.

Here’s recent feedback of a COO who is a Ph.D. in the pharmaceutical industry:

“I gained valuable insights into my leadership style and I particularly enjoyed her session on how stress impacts me as a leader. That part of our session is something I use almost every day. As a scientist, the data-based assessment was very appealing and gave me some good data to rely on when discussing my role at the company with the board and my CEO. In addition, while the assessments were very thorough, what I enjoyed most was my one-on-one coaching session with Nancy. Her advice, opinion, and experiential knowledge gave me some good perspective on my current job and also my future career. So much so that I wish I had done this years ago!”

What makes your job rewarding?

I am rewarded by knowing that we are revolutionizing leadership and talent development by identifying true talent to a level not done before. That will help us increase leadership effectiveness which has suffered to this point. I love helping people become self-aware to a whole new level. Most executives say they wish they had done this 20 or 30 years ago. Those “aha” moments and the sheer joy people have, despite acknowledging their risks and vulnerabilities, in going through the assessment debrief is my performance fuel.

Another area that brings me a high level of satisfaction is helping individuals get onto the right career path. So many leaders, veterans and others are off track but do not quite know how to identify what is the best career for them. We are able to help these individuals find clarity of their best course forward.

I also really enjoy facilitating executive team development sessions (that are custom designed based on the CDR data) once all team members have had individual coaching debriefs with their assessments. This transforms team dynamics, effectiveness and ability to convert conflict into positive performance.

What differentiates CDR Assessment from its competitors?

• The scope, accuracy and individualized, detailed level of assessment results and proprietary coaching debrief session.
• We accelerate success. One client in the medical device industry wrote an article reporting that using our assessments shaved up to 2 years from their leadership development cycle time.
• The value added due to the multiple uses of the assessments without ever having to retest.
• Our services are boutique-like. You talk to experts, not sales people. Some of our clients have been with us for two decades so we build sustained relationships based on trust, support and service. We jump through hoops for our clients.

What do you hope to achieve with your philanthropic organization Vets Coaching Vets?

I am passionate about our philanthropic effort. We hope to build this program through building partnerships with corporations who benefit from hiring Veterans and who want to make sure they are hiring them and developing them in a way that taps into their inherent strengths and satisfies their motivational needs.

Liz Beck speaks to Finance Monthly about elevating individuals, teams and businesses to become the best version of themselves.

What is your previous experience and how do you draw on it today?

My corporate career was in various HR roles where I had the privilege of working in Global brands such as Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Caradon and The Body Shop International. These years gave me important commercial grounding and the inspiration to build a business around people and the development of their potential. Today, I find myself working across many sectors including Pharmaceuticals, Retail, Banking, Manufacturing and Not-for-Profit.

What excites you about being a Coach?

For me, coaching is about giving people back their power and enabling them to be the best version of themselves - and it appears in many forms.

It is the opportunity to operate and experience at another level; to find out what is possible and how you can achieve goals, dreams and often things beyond your own expectations. I am endlessly inspired by what people discover and achieve as a result of coaching and it reaffirms my belief that people are capable of so much more than they ever realise – they just need the space, support, challenge and mirror to see the opportunities, which is exactly what coaching provides. You wouldn’t see a gold medalist without a Coach and there is good reason for that!

What are the typical ‘coachees’ that you work with?

Coachees come to me with a variety of objectives – to become a better leader; to create followship; to improve their performance; to realise their potential; to find better balance; to improve their influencing and stakeholder management; to get the next promotion etc. Each person, and their goals, is unique and coaching offers them a space where the agenda is really theirs - a space where they can think and work on their wants and needs and the other person in the room is their partner, dedicated to helping them get where they want to be.

People often ask me: “who is coaching for” and my answer is always the same - “anyone who wants to explore what is possible and how they can achieve more of what they want”. But coaching isn’t some fluffy space – it is a real commitment. The stretch can feel significant but the rewards can be equally so. I encourage anyone who wants to embark on a coaching journey to really explore what they want to achieve and be prepared to commit 100%. If you have a great Coach, they will expect nothing less and will hold you to that commitment. If they don’t, you should question how dedicated a partner they are for you.

To my delight, more and more individuals, teams and organisations are realising the power of coaching and how it creates sustainable change in behaviours and cultures. There has been a significant shift in recent years to this way of working and I think the opportunity now is to understand how coaching can integrate into a way of ‘being’ for organisations and teams rather than be a stand alone activity that is reserved only for specific objectives or individuals. I truly believe a Coach Approach has the power to change the world for the better. A big statement, I know, but imagine a world where people were healthier, happier, free of self imposed ‘rules’ and were therefore operating and contributing to society, organisations, families in a more productive way – that’s the world I wish for the next generation of employees and the ones that will follow after that.

What is your vision for the future of AspiringHR?

Aspiring is growing - across all our service areas. We’re supporting an increasing number of businesses with their HR, Performance and Development needs as well as expanding our individual and team coaching and culture work. We genuinely believe there is better to be had - in business, in leadership, in teams, in governments, in schools, in homes.......in us all.

Chris Dyson is an executive coach who runs a company called The Big Blue Box Ltd. He founded the company in 2002 as a vehicle for his emerging coaching practice, however, he’s been coaching full-time ever since. According to its founder, the mission of The Big Blue Box is to ‘unlock potential’ and its aim is to make a client’s working life more enjoyable, productive, fulfilling and, as a consequence of this, happier. This is achieved through coaching in a style which facilitates, supports and challenges people and, in doing so, brings about positive, life-changing results, both inside and outside the workplace. Here Chris tells us more about it.

What would you say makes you and The Big Blue Box ideally placed to provide coaching?

Whilst I did not consciously plan my career to bring me to this role, everything I have done in my life and career has contributed.

My coaching style has been informed and shaped by my experience in senior leadership roles, both inside corporate life and outside of it. I’ve experienced and worked through many of the things my coachees bring to our conversations. Rather than basing my practice on a single specific doctrine or pure theory, it has developed through my own experience and by observing what works for different coachees in different situations. My coaching practice is eclectic, integrated, flexible, practical, pragmatic and evolving. It plays to my strengths and draws on my capabilities.

I keep in mind my coachees come wanting tangible results and structure coaching accordingly. I come to the coachee’s chosen meeting location and ensure they get value right from their very first session with me.

Can you tell us a bit about your background career prior to setting up The Big Blue Box? 

My career started as a graduate in retail, moved on to managing teams, then larger teams and ultimately - a nationwide organisation. I transferred to the supply chain, logistics and distribution side of things and moved through a series of general management roles before gaining Board experience as an Operations Director. An MBA enabled the step up to Managing Directorships through which I gained invaluable experience managing investors and shareholders and shaping leadership teams, operations and strategy.

How did the idea about The Big Blue Box come about?

Before starting the Big Blue Box, I’d always worked for other people. What I really wanted was to have control of my destiny. Initially, I became a bit of a serial entrepreneur - experimenting with a portfolio of business ideas and structures.

During this time, I was undertaking some consultancy when a client said: ‘Chris, can I have a word…?’ We went into a quiet office and the client asked if they could just talk to me about some things that were on their mind and had nothing to do with the project. I said OK and they started to tell me their concerns about their job, their boss, their career, their life!

It set me thinking - the client clearly found value in the conversation and applying what they’d gained from it had potential for greater immediate impact than the project I was working on. Equally clear was that I seemed to have an aptitude for this style of conversation. Back then in 2002, in the very early days before coaching was as mainstream as it is now, HR were cautious and senior leadership sponsorship was hard won so marketing was tough. However, early successes proved the concept and I developed my style and skills.

Coachees became advocates and my business grew organically. People I had worked with in one organisation moved on and introduced me to their new organisations.

What is The Big Blue Box, how did you decide upon that name?

I became intrigued by the simple idea of a tool box - somewhere to find the right solution for a problem, to find that special tool, to use it and then to put it back till it is needed again. Somewhere solid and stable to keep things – somewhere safe and secure with a lock and key. It is blue because that is a cool, calm, natural colour – but also suggests blue skies, space (and the cliché about ‘blue sky thinking’).

People find the image intriguing, it has the unforeseen benefit of being a great conversation starter when people ask about it! The phrase ‘The Big Blue Box’ is a bit tricky to pronounce, making it memorable. I also liked the anonymity of the name: like my coaching, it’s not about ‘me’. The name and logo just seemed to be right on so many levels.

What motivates you most about coaching? What inspires you to press further into your work?

Many people have said that they wish they could have my job. I love coaching, it seems very natural to me, and it doesn’t feel like work. I get to meet interesting people and to have engaging conversations with them. More often than not, there are ‘significant moments’ in the conversation, perhaps an insight, a connection, a moment of reflection or a realisation. A coach is like a catalyst - enabling a change to happen but unchanging themselves. Changes happen and it’s incredibly rewarding.

For a coachee, a coaching conversation is unlike any other conversation they might have with anyone else in their life – it’s not like a conversation with a boss or a colleague, a life partner, family member or a friend. Because it is confidential and like talking to a stranger, people open up.

People really value their coaching, almost every person says it is the only time that they can legitimately stop everything, and talk - the only time that it is just about ‘them’, when they can get some perspective, to reflect, think and plan. You can see their mood change, they often look different, smiling, calmer, clearer and focused, energised, resolute and decisive. Often, when we meet for the next session, people can’t wait to tell me about the things they have achieved.

But coaching is also part of my life in other areas – in my spare time, I work in a charity as an advanced motorcycling instructor.

How is coaching perceived?

In the early days, I recall one organisation responded to our marketing outreach by saying ‘Oh no, we don’t believe in coaching, they [our people] should be able to do their job’.

Until a few years ago, coaching was seen as a remedial activity, individuals would have been concerned about even engaging with a coach because of the signals it could have sent.

The balance is shifting, coaching is now seen as a powerful, premium intervention. Individually, people are now actively seeking out and engaging with coaching. Leading organisations are integrating it into their culture - they now understand and actively support coaching for their key people. Senior players in an organisation would usually seek out an external coach, for the stimulus and challenge but also to avoid any internal conflicts of interest or confidentiality issues.

What are the typical ‘coachees’ that you work with?

My coachees are almost exclusively employed within organisations. They are 30+, mid-life and mid-career, highly ambitious, experienced in their role and with significant responsibilities. They could be part of the talent pool, the high potentials, or the emerging or current leadership cadre through to Board level, C Suite. Their roles have titles such as: Head of, General Manager, Director, Managing Director, VP and Chief Officer. etc. They can be from any functional area or expertise and are highly skilled. Their professional skills are not an issue.

I also have a small number of private clients. These are often coachees who want to retain the coaching relationship beyond their corporate’s sponsorship. Several of my coachees and corporate coaching sponsors have even engaged me privately, to work with members of their family or recommended me to their friend’s.

What kind of challenges do you find your coaching helps with?

All my coaching is focused around improving the performance of the individual - at work. But if the ‘whole person’ comes to work then their performance can be influenced by factors inside and outside work. And the benefits can be outside the work context too.

Most coachees have complex lives, they are ‘time poor’ and have significant demands made upon them. They could be stressed or even overwhelmed, their behaviour may deteriorate, and relationships become strained.

They are often struggling to achieve a balance - between work and home, their own career and their partner’s, between ‘carer responsibilities’ for children and sometimes for aging parents. Support and resilience is tested. They don’t have time to care for themselves, their diet, exercise, or rest.

For some, the ‘rules’ change: before and after promotions or restructures, they struggle with detail and perspective, with the change from professional to manager or leader, moving from operations to strategy, from control to influence, and with understanding politics, negotiation and compromise. Some other challenges are: delegation and managing upwards, conflict – and how to manage it, time and personal effectiveness - perhaps with significantly overfilled in-boxes of ‘unread’ messages.

They don’t have somewhere to talk about many of these things, so decisions don’t get made and the cycle continues. That’s when coaching can help.

Do you work in particular industry sectors, what kind of organisations do your coachees work in?

Client organisations tend to be substantial, structured and with international reach. The organisations I coach in are diverse – I work across sectors including financial services and banking, industry and professional bodies, automotive and airlines, engineering and architecture, IT and media, consultancy and design, the NHS and central and local government and agencies, restaurants and entertainments. It’s interesting but whilst some organisations take comfort from knowing that I have experience in their sector, but really, it’s all about people, and actually, the ability to ask the apparently simple question opens up a new understanding.

Whilst the majority of my client organisations are UK-based, I have worked in Europe and I’ve continued to work with clients in the USA over several years.

How does coaching work?

Emerging understanding of the workings of the brain is very informative, particularly around stress and emotions. Change can be a challenge but raising self-awareness is a good starting point.

The key to unlocking our understanding of ourselves is often hidden in plain sight, but it may take someone else to help us to see it, coaching helps to find the key and implement the solution. For example:

The 50-year-old leader of the ‘stand out’ business unit in a global organisation had recently developed a fear of reporting at the global quarterly reviews. Asked to explain how that felt, the coachee said: ‘It feels like I’m back in the headteacher’s study at school’. From that insight, identifying the key to understanding their behaviour identified the precise trivial incident that triggered this fear, originally experienced in the headteacher’s study, but replayed in the board room.

Tell us about your coaching, is there a process that you go through with your coachees?

I may be given a briefing by the organisation about the coachee and I would decide to proceed if the brief fits my capability. Contact details would be exchanged, and an initial phone call would seek to answer any of the coachee’s concerns before a first meeting is arranged.

It may be an obvious point, but coaching sessions are held at a venue that is comfortable and appropriate for the coachee. This could be at their place of work, perhaps a quiet meeting room, or ‘off-site’. For me, having the flexibility to travel by motorbike is a great advantage, but it’s also often a connection, a conversation topic, and a useful metaphor.

One of the single most important factors in the effectiveness of any coaching project is the relationship between the coachee and the coach. One objective at this first meeting is a simple ‘Chemistry Test’ – can the coachee and I work together? I would also clarify the understanding around items such as ethics, boundaries, confidentiality, the initial objectives and the process. Almost invariably the coachee engages, the relationship is established, and the coaching happens ‘naturally’.

I undertake a ‘diagnosis’ with the coachee. Whilst there may be ‘presenting’ issues, sometimes the ‘real’ issues are only revealed by careful exploration.

The conversation gives the coachee time to tell their story. As the coach, my initial role is simply to listen, ask questions, observe patterns, unravel the details and illuminate them for the coachee. Challenges and suggestions may be appropriate. Sometimes, it may be helpful for me to share my own experiences, but it is all about helping the coachee raise their self-awareness.

There is usually some significant moment in the first session when something happens for the coachee. The conversations are often ‘emotional’ and can be life-changing.

I ensure that I have a clear understanding with the organisation that the coaching conversation is confidential. This means that I don’t report back to the sponsors about the discussion, the issues or the outcomes. Any reporting back to the organisation has to come from the coachee. Trust is essential.

Initially, I limit any coaching project to just 4 sessions – everyone expects results and a limit to the number of sessions tends to focus the attention. However, each session is of ‘indeterminate duration’ – as long, or as short as it needs to be. Usually the first two sessions can be 2 – 3 hours long, some are even longer. The purpose is to fully explore the coachee’s story, not to cut it short by time constraints.

I ask my coachees not to have important meetings just before or after our sessions. On several occasions, the immediate outcomes have been powerful enough for the coachee to want to go home after the session to reflect.

Later stages in the coaching process move to explore ways that the coachee could enhance their self-management and ability to be aware of and influence other people effectively, based upon their understanding of themselves.

I often encourage coachees to invite their sponsor or boss to join us for a 3-way conversation in our final meeting in the coaching series. This can be very impactful. In one case, over a period of time, a coachee had made themselves ill, striving for the recognition which had not been given to them as a child. Hearing praise from their boss in our 3-way meeting brought tears, and changed the boss’s behaviour too.

I ask all my coachees to complete an evaluation questionnaire as they move through the final stages of the coaching series. This captures their reflections and assessment.

What kind of outcomes can be achieved, how could our readers measure the outcomes?

Almost without exception there is one outcome all coachees achieve – they remark that the coaching conversation is the only time in their lives that they stop, have time to talk, to think, to reflect.

My coaching usually creates a multitude of outcomes which can be across any area of the coachee’s life, these outcomes could have an immediate and direct impact at work. Other outcomes, perhaps outside the work context, could be confidential for the coachee.

This creates a challenge for measuring coaching. Anecdotal, observation and self-assessment may capture the extent of the outcomes but not quantify the change. The coachee and those closest to them are most likely to have the best opportunity to determine the real outcomes. A report from the coachee and sponsor at the conclusion of the coaching and a further review after the passage of time would be a pragmatic approach.

Sometimes, an outcome could be a simple ‘quick win’. Email is often a significant cause of stress and poor performance, leading to poor communications and decision-making and the culture of the organisation is in part responsible. Strategies to achieve a ‘Zero Inbox’ might be a simple outcome and a quick win!

Hard outcomes, unlocking the potential in coachees include: winning competitive promotions, supporting succession and promotions to board level roles, accelerating career, team performance outcomes, behaviour changes in senior leaders – with consequent impact cascading through the organisation, catalyzing culture change within an organisation - introduction of a coaching culture, helping board members negotiate new roles and become strategic and politically more aware, enabling a leader to understand their response to conflict, enabling delegation with improved performance and engagement from direct reports.

Softer outcomes include finding or rebuilding a balance in life, improved relationships with work colleagues and crucially, also at home, being clearer about a career direction or career choice, gaining a greater sense of purpose, enhanced confidence, self-esteem, but also losing weight and getting fitter.

Life-changing outcomes, when significant change is achieved in several areas, are exemplified by the case of assisting a key person to return to work after an absence caused by stress. In the coaching sessions they re-examined their values, drivers and purpose, which changed their behaviours. This changed relationships at home and at work, and also rebalanced their lifestyle, which improved resilience, and their performance at work. Their talent was retained by the organisation.

What are your main goals for the future?

I’ve seen the business grow organically and by recommendation. I envisage that is how it will continue. It’s about the personal connection and I want to retain that.

I’d now particularly like to grow my business into the USA.  I’ve got a significant number of coachees and a good network out there and I’ve tapped into some of the Government-funded support available. I’d like to see my US client base expand over the next few years, developing both my existing clients and connecting with new ones. I have been particularly successful in California, so that is a specific target area.

Website: https://thebigbluebox.wordpress.com/

Jan Bowen-Nielsen is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Quiver Management – a European quality award-winning coaching, leadership training and change consultancy company working with clients across the UK and internationally.

 Jan Bowen-Nielsen comes from a corporate background with senior management roles in the UK, Europe and America, including a CEO role for an international business in USA. He became known for being a good ‘trouble-shooter’ and at times a ‘trouble-maker’, so he gained a lot of experience in initiating and leading strategic change initiatives. When he returned to the UK in 2002, he set up a change consultancy together with a partner, called JBBI, believing that they were some of the first to combine executive coaching and change consultancy – coaching senior teams to successfully drive change through their organisations.

This brought Jan into the coaching industry and he found himself speaking at UK and international conferences about how his company used coaching to bring about organisational change. He was also invited onto the Advisory Board of EMCC (the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, the leading professional body for coaching and mentoring in Europe). Here he speaks to Finance Monthly about his career in coaching, the industry itself and his business.

What attracted you to founding a coaching company?

 Through my EMCC board work, I became heavily involved in helping to raise the professional standards in the coaching industry. In 2008, I exited JBBI and decided to focus on coaching, as I was receiving a lot of calls from previous clients and through recommendations to coach senior executives and leadership teams.

However, my vision was to spread the benefits of coaching beyond senior executives. I wanted to bring ‘coaching to the heart of leadership’. I could see huge potential if we get line managers within organisations to coach and develop their own team members to increase performance.

So, we designed and put together a practical coaching training programme for leaders, accredited by EMCC. This enabled us to give line managers an internationally recognised qualification in coaching and mentoring. The relatively short programme is designed to be practical, relevant and embed coaching skills into a leader’s daily working environment. It has been highly successful and a cornerstone of our business ever since.

What does the business look like today?

This month we celebrate 15 years as a business and we now have a great team of 19 coaches, trainers and consultants spread across the UK. All of our coaches are qualified and very experienced business leaders.

We work with large corporates, professional firms and high-growth businesses across all industry sectors. Our client list within the financial services sector includes well-known large corporates such as Standard Life, Tesco Bank, Macquarie Bank, Lloyds Banking Group as well as independent financial adviser practices.

Our range of coaching and leadership training courses has expanded significantly, and an important development has been how we train professionals, such as financial advisers, in coaching techniques to help them improve how they interact with clients and deliver their advisory services.

What is your ideal assignment?

An ideal assignment would be when we combine our coaching, training and change consultancy expertise to help develop a coaching culture within an organisation. This would involve coaching the team of top executives, training all line managers in coaching and adding other leadership skills to the mix, such as motivation, development, performance management and helping people through change. We have had some outstanding success stories which has attracted national media attention. Seeing how some organisations go from an old-fashioned command and control approach to a modern coaching style is immensely rewarding, as is witnessing the benefits on staff morale, personal growth and business results. This work allows me to see my original vision coming to fruition!

What motivates you most about coaching leaders?

Our coaching assignments vary considerably, but it is fundamentally about developing a business leader’s thinking, behaviours and performance. Sometimes, this involves being a sounding board for key strategic decisions, other times,  it will be about driving radical organisational transformations, or it might be helping a functional director (such as a CFO) to step up to a CEO role.

What really motivates me is when I see leaders get ‘aha’-moments and question some of their beliefs about themselves and the world around them, and through this insight get new ideas, or radically change how they think, behave and lead their organisations. Since these leaders are influencing many people in their organisations and in some cases, even their industry, the impact can be felt by hundreds, if not thousands of people. Months later, I may hear some positive news in the media or see something change in their organisation, and I know that I was there when the CEO made the ‘discovery’ that started this. It’s a great feeling to know that not only did I help the CEO, but also positively helped many more people. The glory of course goes entirely to the CEOs - it was their insight and decision-making, I just facilitated the thinking that led to it.

How has the coaching industry evolved and where is it going?

15 years ago, coaching often involved helping underperforming leaders. Now, leaders increasingly understand the benefits of coaching and our clients tend to be very successful leaders in their own right, yet are looking to improve even further and step up to another level. Think of how a successful sports performer looks to their coach to continue to improve and gain an edge over their competitors. It is similar in the business world.

We have seen coaching evolve from being an exclusive benefit for a few fortunate top corporate executives to become more mainstream. Large organisations employ internal coaches to help middle managers and other staff, and managers are trained to use coaching as part of their style. We are seeing coaching being applied to help business owners and entrepreneurs grow their businesses and we are seeing ‘health coaching’ for patients in the NHS. So, the coaching approach is now finding many positive outlets.

Coaching is not a protected term, anyone can call themselves a coach, but through the work that the professional bodies are doing, organisational buyers are increasingly discerning and will readily ask to see qualifications and credentials. They are right to do so, coaching is not an easy discipline and it takes a lot of skill and training to do it well.

What would you say makes you and Quiver Management ideally placed to provide coaching for leaders?

Over 15 years we have steadily increased our credibility as coaches. My entire team is made up of qualified and experienced business leaders who have long been at the leading edge of using coaching to help individuals, teams and organisations develop and grow. We’re proud to have won a number of quality awards for our coaching and training programmes. We are members of professional bodies and have signed up to their Code of Ethics. Our coaching training programmes are accredited by EMCC and our leadership training by the ILM. Most importantly of all, we have an impressive track record with excellent feedback from our clients.

What would you say are the top 3 qualities that make a good leader?

I am of course biased in terms of advocating that coaching should be at the heart of good leadership. Great leaders believe in the importance of developing their people and building capability, and they possess the coaching skills to have high quality development conversations with their team members. But of course, coaching is not the only quality that makes a good leader, I also believe that good leaders are visionary. They can paint a picture of the future and inspire their team to follow their vision.

The third element I would pick is their ability to execute. A great leader is able to engage, motivate and when needed - ‘drive’ their teams to meet their goals. I’m fortunate enough to be working with great leaders across many different sectors and types of organisations.

I would like to add one more characteristic of a great leader, and that is that they are often humble enough to recognise that they are far from perfect and that they are keen to continue learning, to be challenged and develop.

 
Thank you for taking the time.

You are very welcome, it has been a pleasure.

 Contact details:

www.quivermanagement.com

jan@quivermanagement.com

James Scouller spent nearly 30 years in the corporate world before becoming an executive coach. In that time he worked in engineering, fast-moving consumer goods, fashion retailing, packaging and wallpaper.  In his last 11 years he held three international CEO roles.  After the third, he left to set up The Scouller Partnership, an executive coaching firm, in 2004.

James coaches leaders and their teams – his clients are CEOs, heads of divisions and subsidiaries, MD-owners of smaller private firms, other senior executives and younger high-potential managers.  Their age range is typically 35 to 55.

 James is also author of The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, a critically acclaimed book which has received international recognition for its new ideas on growing leaders.

Why do you think executive coaching has become so popular?

Put simply, because it works.

Traditional training is great if you want to learn technical skills and absorb theory, like law or accounting. But as most of us have noticed, it’s not so good for transferring interpersonal skills.

Think of the people you know who’ve gone on expensive leadership courses. Did they behave any differently on their return to work? For almost everyone I’ve talked to, the answer is always ‘no’.

Why didn’t the training help? It’s because if we’re trying to learn and apply new behaviour that clashes with powerful limiting beliefs and the habits they create, the old beliefs and habits triumph every time. And that blocks the learning.

For example, imagine you’re teaching senior executives to handle difficult conversations better. They may hear what you’re saying, but deep down they often believe it’s risky to open up and say what they’re really thinking and feeling about the other person’s attitude or performance. This is because they’re often afraid of conflict or coming across as a nasty person. Those fears – which stem from limiting beliefs – will easily overwhelm an embryonic new behaviour. So under pressure they won’t change their behaviour even if they’ve practised several role-plays.

The only way to build and apply new behavioural habits in the face of powerful limiting beliefs is to surface and examine them. But I don’t know any executive who’d open up to the rest of the group on a training course and admit private stuff, especially stuff they are uncomfortable with. It’s not going to happen.

But it can and does happen in private, with a skilled executive coach they trust and respect. The coach can help the person let go of the old belief and build new habits that persist even under pressure.

In other words, the coach can go to places that the trainer can’t. That’s why I think executive coaching has grown so quickly in the last twenty years.

So what kind of results can clients achieve with good coaching?

It’s no exaggeration to say the effects of executive coaching can be transformational.

Let me show you two typical examples of before-and-after coaching profiles. Both clients scored themselves on 32 qualities – 10 focused on their mental performance state and 22 on their ability to choose their behaviour skilfully under pressure.

To make sure they weren’t kidding themselves, we also interviewed their colleagues at the start and end of the coaching assignments. In both cases, the observers’ comments backed up the clients’ own ratings.

The important thing to note is the dramatic change in both clients’ overall profiles.

As you can see from the first example, over 13 months the client achieved a huge change in her overall profile, with feedback from colleagues confirming she had become ‘much more effective … with greater leadership presence.’  You can see she changed all of her negative scores into positives. She’s since been promoted to a Managing Director role.

The second client’s challenge was to become a more skilful leader of organisational change. After 14 months’ hard work, he achieved a remarkable change in his overall profile. Feedback from his six observers confirmed the shift. His mental state changes laid the foundations for his improved ability to connect with and influence others while displaying greater leadership presence. He has now adopted a much more personal touch when communicating with both board colleagues and everyone else in his firm.

How does this kind of individual transformation benefit an organisation’s performance?

The major mental and behavioural shifts that you can achieve through good coaching always translate into performance gains for organisations – sometimes very quickly.

Nine years ago, I coached the engineering director of a £5m engineering firm in Scotland. His boss was the Managing Director and owner of the business. He’d hired the engineering chief three years earlier to help him win more business in four ways. First, by inventing new products. Second, by raising on-time delivery of customer engineering projects (as too many had been arriving later than promised). Third, by delivering the projects faster. Fourth, by responding quicker to customers’ requests for quotes.

The engineering director had been given money and three new engineers to support him. In all, the investment had added hundreds of thousands of pounds to the firm’s cost base.

After three years, there’d been no invention. On-time delivery of projects to customers (which was the most important metric of all) had worsened. Engineering projects were taking longer – so long they were now behind the industry average. And customers were receiving quotes even slower than before.

The Managing Director had done everything he could to help this man improve his performance. He was a fine engineer, but nothing worked. Unsurprisingly, relations between the two were tense.

I was hired to help the engineering director turn his performance around. With the Managing Director’s input we agreed three coaching goals to be achieved within seven months:

(1) Improve project on-time delivery from 40% to 80%.

(2) Cut project lead times from 11 weeks to 9 weeks.

(3) Raise the percentage of customer quotes answered within 5 days from 42% to 60%.

After seven months the results were staggering. The client had raised on-time delivery from 40% to 93%; well beyond the 80% goal. He cut lead times from 11 to 7 weeks (the best in the industry) and 2 weeks better than target. And he boosted the percentage of customer quotes answered within five days from 42% to 63%, just ahead of the 60% target.

The firm’s sales and margins soon increased and the ROI from coaching was clearly visible.

What is the key to getting results like these?

You won’t be surprised to hear there’s no single key, but certain basics must be in place. Yes, the coach must be well-trained. But more than that, coach and client must build a strong relationship based on two-way respect and trust. Clients must feel their coach knows what they’re doing, understands their challenges and that everything they discuss remains confidential. That’s the first thing.

Second, clients must be serious about growing as a leader. Clients have to put work in if they are to change their behavioural habits under pressure. The clients who get the best results with me are the ones who do what they said they’d do between meetings.

It’s important too that the whole process is measurable. After all, companies are paying for clients to be better executives or leaders than they were before the coaching. In other words, clients and their sponsors want to see positive change.

It’s essential to set measurable goals at the start, with feedback from the client’s colleagues, and measure progress as you go. At least halfway through – and certainly by the end of the coaching – the client and sponsoring firm should be able to see what change there’s been with measurable data. I don’t think coaches can forget that companies want a return on investment. You’ve seen how we can measure results from the earlier examples.

I’d say the fourth key is the coach’s own experience as a leader. Too many people approach leadership as an intellectual concept. To some degree it is, but as seasoned leaders know, it’s also a felt experience. Coaches working in the leadership field need to have experienced the pressure – the difficult times – of having to lead, of having to connect upwards, sideways and downwards. My own first-hand experience as a leader means I can understand other leaders’ personal challenges and emotions – plus the wider pressures on them coming from the rest of the company.

There’s a fifth key. If clients want transformational results, it means they’ll be working on their inner limiting beliefs, feelings and perhaps their values. Here it’s not enough for coaches to rely on tools and techniques. In my view, they need to be working on their self-mastery – that is, mastery of their minds and habits. Why?  Because clients will have to work on self-mastery if they want to achieve transformational outcomes. Coaches must walk their talk and show their own commitment to self-mastery so they can act as models for their clients.

The final key is a clear coaching process that’s grounded in sound, powerful ideas around leadership and personal growth. Coaching shouldn’t jump around from session to session in a random way.

You mentioned powerful ideas so let’s talk about your book, The Three Levels of Leadership. Who is it for and why has it sold so well?

The book is a practical manual for leaders and people aspiring to be leaders. This is regardless of their field, whether it’s business, military, education, charities or whatever.

I think it’s sold well because it has new ideas and tools to help 21^st century leaders meet their greatest challenges. It has probably the most compact, complete learning model you’ll find for executives wanting to grow themselves as leaders. I compare the book to a Swiss army knife – it gives you all the key ideas and tools you need in one unified, compact master model.

So much has been written about leadership already. Why do we need new ideas? 

You’re right – the market for leadership books is saturated. But so much of what’s out there is either academic or based on personal experience. So it isn’t intended to – or able to – help leaders grow.

Meanwhile, all the data shows that business leaders are struggling to engage employees. And research shows repeatedly that the higher your people’s engagement, the higher your margins, innovation, customer service, growth and shareholder returns. The biggest survey I saw showed that only 13% of employees feel fully engaged and nearly twice that number are actively disengaged, meaning they’re prepared to commit hostile acts. The rest, just over 65%, don’t care at all. That’s not the only problem. Belief in business leaders’ competence, trustworthiness and honesty is 20% at best.

In short, leaders are struggling to lead. That’s why we need new ideas and that’s what I aim to deliver.

Could you give us a quick summary of the book’s main ideas?

The book provides an in-depth, easy to read collection of models and tools which I call the Leadership Mastery Suite. Keeping things simple, it has three learning blocks.

The first is mental model mastery. It’s about surfacing, unpacking and replacing your old mental models around leadership and being the leader to help you pay more skilful attention to what matters most.

The big idea here is what I call the four dimensions of leadership.

Let me explain. Without realising it, pretty much every leader I work with, holds unhelpful ideas (mental models) around leadership and what it means to be a leader. These ideas usually cause you and others serious problems. For example, they increase leaders’ sense of inadequacy. This magnifies your tendency to be too task-focused (and ignore the need to connect with and influence people) or be too relationship-focused (and ignore the need for clear tough choices and decisions).

Mental model mastery is about uncovering these unhelpful ideas, challenging them and then replacing them with something far more useful and practical: the four-dimensional view of leadership. Once that’s done, it’s about helping you understand the four dimensions in detail and the specific aspects you need to focus on in your role right now. This is the foundation stone for the other two learning blocks. Without this foundation, I’ve found most leaders find it harder to succeed.

Historically, I’ve used confidential one-to-one coaching in this learning block. However, I’ve recently introduced a one-day intensive for those who want powerful experiential learning in a group setting. I also offer an enterprise diagnostic to help leaders understand which of the four dimensions they need to focus on right now and which aspects within that dimension need action.

The second learning block is self-mastery. This is the most transformational of the three learning blocks. It’s about helping clients handle the four dimensions of leadership with more skill, presence, flexibility, energy, resilience and genuineness. This enables you to connect with and influence people better.

Self-mastery is where we get into limiting beliefs and the tools – especially a technique I call 4R – for helping you change your behavioural habits even when your hot buttons are pressed. The results you saw in those earlier diagrams came from self-mastery coaching. Most of my client work is in the self-mastery zone, although I expect my assignments in the other two learning blocks to grow in the next five years.

The last block is knowhow mastery. The aim here is to help you gain the technical knowhow most leaders lack in addressing the four dimensions of leadership, which was the big idea in the first learning block. If you set aside the question of seniority and sector, there are only four knowhow areas all leaders should master. They are:

• Time management: personal goal-setting and using your time well under pressure.
• Motivation: how to mobilise your colleagues’ intrinsic motivation.
• Leading wide-scale change: what research tells us about organisational change, how to create and put across a vision and how to apply my new Spiral-Waves change model in your company.
• Group psychology and team-building: my Dual Force, 3C and 7P models and how to use them to create and maintain teams.

For knowhow mastery, I combine one-to-one coaching with group coaching, team coaching, workshops and enterprise diagnostics.

What should readers do if they’re interested in learning more?

The ideas and tools I’ve touched on here are explained in the second edition of my book, The Three Levels of Leadership. If you’re interested in exploring coaching or any of my other services you can email me at james@thescoullerpartnership.co.uk and ask for a free “How to lead change” extract from the book. Or you can call me on +44 (0)1525 718023 to explore the Leadership Mastery Suite and discuss how I might help you or your organisation.

Contact details

James Scouller
The Scouller Partnership
Website: www.thescoullerpartnership.co.uk
Email: james@thescoullerpartnership.co.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1525 718023