Please download the attachment, which provides a sample illustrative executive coaching plan. At the Center for Executive Coaching, we get much more specific and detailed about how to coach clients for results than other programs. By providing you with toolkits and methodologies, you learn much more than the ICF Core Competencies.
In the illustrative example that you can download, you see a general coaching plan. This plan has produced great results for: leaders seeking general coaching to get better. It also has been very effective for internal coaching groups seeking to use coaching to bring their top talent to new levels of performance.
Plan Summary
Session one is the opportunity to start the process by discussing goals and groundrules, and getting the assessment process started. For internal coaches, this is also a time to confirm fit with clients by making sure they see the coaching program as a privilege and reward, and that they are open to being coached.
Between sessions one and two, the coach and client get to work on completing the assessments. IMPORTANT NOTE: We do not condone giving clients a thick pack of assessments to complete. The assessment process should be efficient and designed to achieve “nowhere to hide coaching.” In other words, the assessment should collect enough data to highlight precisely what the client can do to improve performance and achieve his or her goals. Nothing more, nothing less.
During session two, which is typically longer than other sessions, the coach and client review the assessment work. The deliverable is not only improved self-awareness and insights, but also to choose a specific behavior to work on in order to demonstrate measurable improvements. The behavioral coaching we do is based on cognitive psychology, and layers in tactics to make a key behavior a habit. The behavior can be something the client starts to do, a strength to build upon, something the client stops doing, or something the client does less.
Session three gets the behavioral coaching process going, and also leads into coaching conversations to move towards results.
The remaining sessions combine discussions of behavioral coaching, review of the Leader’s Dashboard that the client completed during the assessment phase (a proprietary tool in the CEC Coaching Toolkit), discussion of current challenges and — when time permits — review of various tools to continue to build on strengths and leadership. Tools include processes to address a range of situations and challenges that leaders face, from how to better engage employees to building one’s power base of relationships, managing up, resolving conflict, creating a high-performance culture, leading change, building teams, and juggling multiple priorities. A partial list is included in the right-hand column of the coaching plan.
These toolkits are one of the advantages of joining the Center for Executive Coaching, because they are ready for you to use and guide clients through coaching on key issues. Note that any of these topics could be a coaching engagement in and of itself; in this executive coaching plan, we are providing a coaching curriculum for leaders who want to get to that next level of performance and advance their careers.
Throughout the process, client and coach set and track goals, make mid-course corrections as needed, and celebrate results. Follow up is built in to ensure that new behaviors and attitudes stick.
Again, this is only one example of an executive coaching plan, one for a general situation in which the client wants to improve overall leadership. We teach other approaches depending on the client’s situation and how he or she defines results.
I hope you see the difference that our program makes possible for you with our focus on results and proven methods to work with clients. Here is what a recent graduate wrote:
“Having competed in four Olympic Games and experienced the best that coaching has to offer in the athletic arena, I know expert skills in this field when I see them. Andrew Neitlich, and his Center For Executive Coaching is unmatched. Andrew has the ability to take a multi-faceted situation and break it down into proven processes that can be brought directly to the field. It was obvious that every person who attended the seminar graduated armed and ready to implement our visions with Andrew’s proven processes. It was a true pleasure, and beyond a worthy investment, to take part in the Coaching program.”
Attached Document:
Download CEC Illustrative Coaching Plan
