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Special Considerations for Coaching CEOs
It's becoming increasingly difficult to function as a CEO in today’s
high pressure business environment, but the rewards can be immense.
Many CEOs make more in a year than their employees will make in a
lifetime. The average CEO of a major U.S. corporation earns in excess of
$12.4 million, including salary, bonus and other compensation such as
exercised stock options, according to a Business Week survey of
executive pay.
That's $34,000 a day including Saturdays and Sundays and represents 475
times the average income for US workers. Compare that to 1990, when CEOs
made 85 times the pay of average factory workers, and to 1980 when they
made 42 times as much. That’s real exponential growth.
This represents a huge and growing gap that serves to isolate CEOs from
their colleagues. CEOs can’t be absolutely certain in whom they can
place their trust. Employees who report to them want to be liked by the
organization’s leader, meaning there always exists a temptation to tell
their CEOs what they want to hear and gloss over the truth.
CEOs Go it Alone
Theoretically the company’s directors can serve as advisors to the CEO
for major decisions but once a leader is perceived as weak or indecisive
the board will be tempted to seek a replacement they feel is stronger.
CEOs tend to go it alone when it
comes to making decisions.
This is why bringing in an outside advisor as an executive coach to the
CEO can generate immediate and lasting benefits for the business.
The coach is ‘invisible’ to the
organization’s employees as well as the board of directors. The coach is
neither embroiled in the political processes of the company, nor in a
position to benefit from expressing anything but the truth.
Murray Axmith is a principal of Toronto-based Axmith & Adamson
Consulting, a firm that provides coaching services for senior business
leaders. He recently wrote in an article published in the Ivey Business
Journal: “Executive coaching is a relatively new area of management
consulting that has emerged primarily because of the increased pressure
on senior executives.”
Axmith has his own view of the
coaching process and says there are two key attributes of executive
coaching – first, its purpose of enhancing the executive’s contribution
to the business and second, the executive’s ownership of the actions
that arise from the coaching process.
Understanding this second point is essential to obtaining success in
coaching CEOs. The coach brings no function-specific solutions to the
business. The coach can only drive the CEO to develop and implement his
or her solutions to the problems that are identified.
Axmith believes that everything the coach can do for the CEO fits
broadly into these categories:
• Assist a newly appointed CEO to make a successful transition into a
key role
• Help a valued CEO with a specific performance problem to develop new
skills and make necessary behavioral changes
• Act as a confidant to CEOs as they make difficult strategic and
operational decisions
Improving Necessitates Changing
Creating improvement in a CEO’s performance often requires a combination
of organizational and behavioral change. To be successful an executive
coach should have a good knowledge of business management, together with
an appreciation of psychology and human behavior.
The CEO needs to be given a clear understanding of their role in the
business. CEOs don’t often have a mentor to guide them into their
positions when they first take over, and as a result they may be doing
too much or too little in some of the aspects of their position.
If a CEO is demonstrating behavior that indicates insecurity or is
overly aggressive it may be that they have been placed in a position
beyond their managerial abilities or simply that they have been isolated
by subordinates from the realities of the business they are supposed to
control.
The coach needs to encourage the
CEO to practice self understanding and self analysis so that they can
work together to develop corrective measures without experiencing a loss
of confidence. In turn, the CEO must be receptive to adopting new
behaviors.
It is essential that the coach has the ability and the opportunity to
ask questions that will stimulate the CEO into both objective and
subjective considerations about their position. The coach needs to
challenge the CEO’s decisions and judgment so that their intellectual
and problem-solving abilities are sharpened.
The coach must bring out the CEOs personal values and encourage a
comparison of them with those of the business. It is important that the
CEO’s values are in tune with the guiding principles of the
organization, and if any adjustments are necessary to relieve stresses
they will most likely have to be made by the CEO.
The person who coaches CEOs must be able to function as an equal and not
be intimidated by the executive’s status or income. The coach must have
the respect of the CEO in both a personal and a business sense, and
trust between the two is equally indispensable.
Ten Coaching ‘Focus Points’
Charles R. Polcaster, PhD, principal of coaching firm Associates in
Professional Counseling identifies ten coaching ‘focus points’ that have
led to measurable results in his CEO coaching experience:
1. Designing a plan to rapidly increase personal effectiveness.
2. Retooling personal time management to spend adequate time with family
and be a high level performer.
3. Overcoming procrastination.
4. Improving communication skills.
5. Identifying key result areas.
6. Developing teamwork.
7. Developing a practice management plan.
8. Building a peak performance pyramid.
9. Identifying and utilize the benefits of travel time.
10. Building values based management.
The truth is that occupying the position of CEO can create demands that
are impossible for one person to handle on their own. This often affects
their abilities to deal with other people and, to quote a contemporary
piece of wisdom: “CEOs are hired for their skills but fired for their
personalities.”
Increasingly the coaching of CEOs is taking place where it can be seen,
and even applauded, by others. Some prominent CEOs with acknowledged
coaches are eBay's Margaret Whitman, Pfizer's Henry McKinnell, Unilever
Group Co-Chairmen Anthony Burgmans and Niall FitzGerald, and Belo's
Robert Decherd. The senior leadership at American Express has also
worked with business coaches as has U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H.
O'Neill.
Coaching CEOs will only work if the talents of the coach are matched by
the ability of the CEO to make the necessary changes, but there is a
growing appreciation of what coaching can do for people in top
positions. According to Daniel Goleman, Annie McKee, and Richard
Boyatzis in their recent book, Primal Leadership: "Without a coach, a
lot of CEOs are likely to give up."
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