Why work with an Executive Coach?

When I tell people that I am an executive coach, one of the first questions I hear is, what does an executive coach do? If you break down the words, executive means administrative or managing responsibilities, and coach means instructing or tutoring. At its most basic level, an executive coach helps individuals learn how to be better administrators and managers. But they really do so much more. An executive coach is an important partner that can help leaders reach their full potential by helping them to understand better who they are and who they want to be. Professional tennis players like Serena Williams who are looking to perform at their highest level work with a tennis coach. The same is true of top-tier singers like Beyonce, who frequently work with vocal coaches to help them expand their range, sing with more strength, and perform at a consistently high level. Professional athletes, vocal performers, and other professionals who work with specialized coaches know that no matter how good an individual is, there is an opportunity to be better and more consistent by working with a knowledgeable coach. Executive coaches can do for executives and managers what sports coaches do for athletes. Coaches help people to pause, reflect, learn, and continuously improve. One of the best-kept secrets of top-performing business executives and owners is that they work with executive coaches. Executive coaches are not discussed much but are essential to how talented executives and business owners reach their full potential.

My experience working with a coach

I worked with an executive coach when I was first promoted to Vice President of Operations. It was indeed a life-changing experience for me. The coach I worked with helped me to

• Clarify my professional goals

• Reflect on who I was a leader

• Define who I want to be

• Take on new perspectives

• Build new skills

• Be more strategic

The clarity I gained from working with a coach helped me feel more confident as I transitioned into a role that carried significantly more scope and responsibilities than any of my previous roles.

Clarify my professional goals

One aspect the coach helped me with was clarifying my professional goals. For most of my career, I focused on climbing to the next rung on the ladder. This served me in my career because it drove me to identify how I could excel in my current role. I knew I must first demonstrate mastery in my current role to advance. I would also take time to understand what skills, knowledge, and network were necessary to be successful in the next role, and I would spend time building toward those future needs. I felt like I had made it to the mountaintop for the first time in my career. I landed my ideal job of being an operations leader in geography close to my extended family. I could build an organizational culture, influence strategy, and run a multi-state business. With no next role to work towards, I had to re-evaluate how I would define success. My

coach helped me to explore my values, define my priorities and put words to what I wanted to accomplish going forward. For me, the goal was improving the quality of my employees' and Franchisees' lives. I knew that we had opportunities within our culture. Employees felt overworked and undervalued. Franchisees felt under-supported and unheard. I made it my mission to listen more than I spoke and to work on behalf of the employees and Franchisees within my zone to simplify operations, streamline priorities, and refocus our attention on serving customers and driving profitable growth.

Reflect on who I was as a leader.

After we explored what I wanted to do, we spent time researching how I would do it. As you move into higher levels of management, your role shifts from being

• an individual contributor responsible for managing yourself.

• to a manager of managers responsible for managing others

• to a functional manager accountable for segments of a business

• to a business manager responsible for the overall business

• to a group manager responsible for multiple businesses

• to an enterprise manager accountable for all operations

Each of these shifts requires developing new skills and changing how you spend your time. As you move up the ladder, you spend less time doing and more time leading. For example, one of the things that I greatly enjoy doing is building spreadsheets and analyzing data. This skill helped me stand out from my peers early in my career. I allocated hours weekly to building and analyzing data which enabled me to build my business acumen, improve my judgment and anticipate emerging trends. Now that I was in a senior executive role, spending time putting spreadsheets together was no longer the best use of my time. Every time that I built a spreadsheet myself, I was

• robbing someone junior to me the opportunity to build their data analysis skills

• reducing the amount of time, I had for other leadership activities

• not leveraging the skills and knowledge of others

My coach helped me understand that what got me into this role was not what would help me thrive. That I was more than a data analyst. I was a strategic thinker, a communicator, a developer of talent, and an inspirational leader. For me to excel as a Vice President, I would need to be comfortable wearing many different hats and be purposeful in not wearing the hat that I wanted to wear but the one that was required at any given moment.

Define who I want to be

With a sound foundation for who I was, we were able to begin to craft who I wanted to be. This was one of the most enlightening parts of my working with the executive coach. I defined my leadership philosophy while pursuing my MBA and during other leadership development training. I felt grounded in my leadership approach and felt like it served me well, especially since it afforded me three promotions in the prior four years. As I began working with my coach, it became clear I was the leader that others wanted me to be and not the leader I wanted to be. To get ahead, I developed masks I would wear when dealing with Senior Leaders because I thought being myself would not be accepted. I need to be an "executive," which I had interpreted as being reserved, stoic, agreeable when dealing with senior leaders, resolute, never wrong, and willing to do anything to get ahead.

Wearing these masks was fatiguing. I

• am not a stoic person

• enjoy speaking my mind

• admit when I am wrong

• do not believe in winning at all costs

• enjoy a good debate

• care deeply about people

• am playful

• am a big believer in the health debate.

These are all aspects of myself that I readily showed to my direct reports but cautiously shared with company leadership. I am at my best in an environment that encourages creativity, the exploration of new ideas, openness to failure, comfort with conflict, and two-way communication. For the most part, this is the culture I had built underneath me. Through discussions with my coach, he encouraged me to define better the leader I wanted to be and try to help influence cultural change at the organization. He helped me believe that I could help be the change I wanted to see within the organization. It just required me to be myself, post great results, and communicate to others how leading differently could lead to better results.

Take on new perspectives

One of the skills that supported me in removing my mask was the time we spent exploring the different perspectives. He helped me to understand that I did not need different masks when dealing with people but different intentionality. When I interacted with Senior Leaders, they did not want me to be a yes-man that went along with everything they said. Being a yes man would lead us to make bad decisions because there was information that I had that Senior Leaders needed to lead the organization effectively. They did not want me to undermine their authority by challenging them during inappropriate times. If I was concerned about a policy or direction, they wanted me to address it at the proper time and place. In general, they preferred that I voice my concerns before making a decision. If a decision had been made and there was a need for a course correction, Senior Leadership's preference was for me to bring it to them privately and then to bring it up in group meetings. By slowing down and better understanding my leader's perspective, I was able to influence better and be more effective. My coach would encourage me to observe my actions from different vantage points.

• How would my peers look at what I was doing?

• How would my supervisor look at what I was doing?

• How would my direct reports look at what I was doing?

• How would my indirect reports look at what I was doing?

A leader's responsibilities were not to anyone stakeholder. Leaders have various stakeholders that are all looking to them for leadership. A leader can only perform at their highest level once they consider all of these perspectives and make the best decision based on the information they have. Leaders also need to be willing to learn and course correct when mistakes are made. Learning how to take different perspectives will help leaders to make fewer mistakes.

Be more strategic

One of the most significant changes you must make as you move up the corporate ladder is improving your strategic thinking. At higher levels of an organization, leaders must learn how to deal with scale, leverage, and resource constraints. The first and most important word that a leader must know is no. Learning to say no is essential because saying no, enables your organization to focus on the most critical priorities. When I took over the VP role, the biggest complaint of the team was

• priorities changed too frequently

• it was not clear what was important

• that we were asking people to do too much

Too many priorities, lack of clarity, and inconsistent vision are common challenges for businesses. The world is pregnant with possibilities, but you only have so much time and resources. As a leader, you must set the direction and define what is important. Keeping the team focused on what is important puts your organization in the best position to generate sustainable results.

Build New Skill

As mentioned earlier, moving to higher organizational levels requires you to develop new skills. An executive coach will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses through the coaching process. Then they will assist you in developing plans for building upon your strengths and mitigating your weaknesses. One important skill for me to develop was scanning for opportunities. When I found them, I needed to do a deep dive into problems, communicating a need for action to the person responsible for the issue and then giving them room to work without my interference. Everyone within an organization has a role and a responsibility. The role of a business manager is to provide guidance and direction to their employees. It is up to the employees to determine the best way to address the opportunity. To excel as a leader, you must be comfortable delegating, trust others, ask tough questions, and allow employees to take action without micromanaging. Employees need the opportunity to try, learn, fail, and succeed on their terms. This is the only way that they reach their full potential. This requires leaders to better evaluate risk, define objectives, establish trust, and create open lines of communication. Employees need to understand their leader is there to support them in accomplishing their goals.

Summary

Working with an executive coach can help you perform at a higher level regardless of your professional development phase. A trained executive coach is taught to

• Listen to their client and help them with self-discovery

• Challenge their client to identify limiting thoughts

• Engage their clients in thinking more deeply and from different perspectives

• Understand the role that emotions play in interactions with others

• Recognize stress and the impact that it has on decision making

• Develop strategies to help facilitate personal growth

• Identify values and the role they play in motivation

Business leaders seek out coaches because coaches can help them grow. This growth can be related to a new job, a performance challenge, or any other growth opportunity. If you are looking to grow as a professional, you should work with a coach.

The Umbrella Principle: How to influence employees to execute company strategy

A company’s success is dependent on two things. One, the company’s strategy. Two the company’s execution. When it comes to the latter, many times companies struggle because they are unable to get their employees to align and commit to the strategy. When it comes to leadership, one of your key roles is to define the company’s strategy and to gain buy-in around executing of that strategy. Over the last 15 years I have taught business leaders the umbrella principle which provides employees with a metaphor that demonstrates the benefits of executing within the company's strategy.

The umbrella represents the company strategy. If you stay under the umbrella, meaning inside of the company’s strategy you will have a different experience than you would by going out from under the umbrella. The umbrella provides both shade and protection. By being under the umbrella your movements might be more restricted, but you know rain or shine that you have something between you and the elements. If you decide to venture beyond the parameters of the umbrella, you may enjoy the benefits of sunshine (positive results) but you also open yourself up for the risk of being rained on (failure). When the weather is good, the need for an umbrella is lower. Delivering great results can provide its own layer of protection which will afford you some forgiveness if you are not strictly adhering to the strategy. But if your results no longer are meeting expectations, you are going to be in a lot better situation if you are under the umbrella of the company's strategy when question start raining in.

What I love about this analogy is the visualization of risk and reward. Going a little outside of the umbrella carries some risk, but not as much risk as leaving the umbrella at home. In addition, having a little sprinkle of rain fall on your head (having a small failure) is significantly different than a major down pouring (a big failure). In reality, there are scenarios that are similar to hurricanes where your adherence to the strategy will matter little because of the severity of the event. Things can be so bad that being under the umbrella (executing the company's strategy) will not make a difference to how you are treated. But in most cases if you are executing the company's strategy, and results are not coming, you will be in a better situation than if you had poor results and are also off strategy. By exploring this analogy with employees, you can help them to think more globally about the benefits and risk associated with going off strategy.

If your employees have never been in a board room, they likely are not aware of how much time and energy goes into debating a company’s strategy. Literally hours are spent by CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, senior executives and their direct reports, reviewing data, analyzing trends, and studying marketing conditions all with the goal of defining what is the “right” path for the company to pursue. Because so much time is spent developing strategy, those involved are typically deeply invested. For this reason, the company’s strategy is worth being followed provided that it is ethical and legal. It is important to help employees to understand that they were specifically hired with the purpose of executing the plans that leadership has developed. Everyone

within an organization has a role. Leadership generally defines what needs to be done, and they expect managers and employees to figure out the how to do it. If employees have significant objections to the company's strategy, they should voice their concerns. Great organizations excel at listening to the voices that are closest to the customer and leveraging their insights to inform strategy. But once a decision is made around what needs to be done, it is expected for employees to execute the strategy. If your employees are unable or unwilling to do so, they should consider finding a company to work for that has a strategy they can get behind. People do their best work when their values and principles align with their employer. Many times, employees stay in a job they do not enjoy out of comfort or fear of the unknown, not realizing that their life would improve if they found a place to work that better aligned with the work that they want to do. If they are consistently at odds with the company's leadership, they should ask whether their time and energy would be better served someplace else.

When an employee decides to pursue an action that does not align with the company strategy, they dilute the organizations focus and resources. Most companies hire highly compensated executives, MBAs and consultants to help them to identify ways to get the most out of the company’s resources. When your employees deviate from the strategy, they are basically telling leadership that they know better than leadership what should be done. In some situations, they are correct, but they should evaluate how to manage these situations. Leadership is not always right, and being highly compensated or highly educated does not automatically mean that you have all of the answers. But what it does mean is that a lot of money and trust has been invested into you, and the expectation is that you set the direction for the company and take responsibility for any successes or failure. It is important for employees to consider the different roles and responsibilities within the organization. The role of leadership is to define the strategy, and the role of the workforce is to execute the strategy. This is similar to the relationship between a head coach and a team. One is responsible for drawling up the plays, the other is responsible for executing the plays. Once the play is called, members of the team have the ability to innovate and do what they need to do to be successful, but the expectation is that the play that is called is run. Organizations work best when each member plays their role. It is important to help employees to understand that there can be multiple correct answers to the same question, but organizations are stronger when everyone is aligned and pursuing the same answer.

Early in my career I struggled with professional maturity. I frequently struggled with aligning myself around company strategy. I ran stores within an urban environment, and frequently pushed back on the company strategy because I believed that individuals within headquarters did not under the complexities of running stores in the inner city and asked us to do things that would result in lower operating earnings. For example, we were required to keep items on the sales floor that were frequently stolen such as health and beauty aid products. Instead of working with leadership to find creative solutions to the theft issues, I would direct stores to keep these items behind the counter. Keeping products like these behind the counter is inconvenient for customers and generally leads to lower sales. The impact of my decision to go against strategy resulted in lower sales within those categories.

In my mind, what I was doing was the right thing because my actions were leading to overall increase in profitability because fewer items were being stolen. From leadership’s vantage point, I was taking actions that reduced sales. This was especially troublesome to leadership because part of our strategy was to be a convenient alternative to pharmacies and grocery stores that also sold these products. What felt right to me, and the stores I supported was not what was right for the organization at large. When the topic of lower sales came up, because I was not executing the strategy, I was rained on. The organization had called a play, and they needed me to run it. My failure to execute the strategy left leadership with uncertainty around the type of sales that would be generated if I had just done what they asked.

How could I have handled the situation differently? First, I could have recognized that growing center of store sales was a key part of our company’s strategy. That revenue goals were set based off all stores following the recommended merchandising schematics. Leadership understood that some stores would have elevated theft as a result of this strategy and that they were taking a calculated risk that there was more benefit to having everyone execute the same strategy versus having a different approach in every store.

In fact, by individuals like me not following the recommended strategy an illusion was being created. Stores in urban areas did not experience elevated theft because they were not putting products on the sales floor. As a result, there was no data to confirm our statements that putting those items on the sales floor would result in higher theft. My failure to ask the right questions resulted in me taking action at the store level, that was ultimately hurt the company's ability to collect good information, and make informed decisions based off of facts. My thinking was short-term and local, while leadership was thinking long-term and global. In the end I was the loser because I was delivering the desired result that leadership wanted. The good thing is that I learned from the experience and got better about following strategy.

Fast forward five years. Through hard won wisdom, I learned that sticking to the company’s strategy gave me the opportunity to increase my level of influence within the organization. When employees execute the company's strategy at a high level, leadership pays attention. With this attention, employees can gain greater access which they can leverage to influence future strategic initiatives. It is a big counter intuitive, but the best way to fight against a strategy you disagree with is to execute it at a high level, and then to provide feedback on how it could be improved. This is because leaders tend to care more about facts than feelings. When employees say they feel that something might not work, there is always room for leadership say they are wrong. When an employee can present facts that a strategy does not work, they are in a better place to champion for change. One key call out here is that employees must execute the strategy to the best of their ability. Halfhearted execution will not give you the creditability needed to influence leadership.

The purpose of an organization is to bring a group of people together to accomplish a shared goal. There are multiple paths to accomplish any goal. Organizations function best when there is alignment around their strategies. The higher you are within an organization, the more influence you have on the organization's strategy. During the early stages of employee's careers, it is important to help them to understand that their primary role within the organization is to execute the task that they are asked to do, and to provide feedback

on what they learned from executing those tasks. As they move up the career ladder, and prove their ability to execute, they will gain more influence on the overall strategy. Over the course of this journey, they will learn how important it is as to a leader to have employees that they can trust to execute strategies. They will learn about the burden of leadership. How no one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes, and that good intentions sometimes lead to bad result. When results are weak, it is a lot easier to learn, grow and course correct if there is clarity on what is causing the poor performance. Employee adherence to executing a company's strategy helps leaders to have clarity. With this clarity, leaders are better positioned to execute their role which is to set direction and ensure that the organization is moving closer to its overall vision.

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4 Tips for Creating a Culture of Recognition

In 2021 the Pew Research Center surveyed over 6000 workers and identified low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement and feeling disrespected as the top 3 reasons for employee turnover. As a middle manager, you do not have autonomy to address the first two reasons for turnover in the short-term, but you do have the ability to have influence with the third. A desire for respect is a universal human need. Every day employees show up to work and do their jobs and as a leader you play a key role in showing your employees that you appreciate what they do.

Showing employees that you appreciate them is easy to do, but you must be purposeful. It is well documented that individuals are more likely to acquire new behaviors when they establish them as goals. If you want to show your employees you appreciate them, review the four actions below and set a goal for yourself to practice these over the next 21 days.

1. Write a note to your employee. Most communication is either verbal or digital. It is rare for us to receive or give positive written communication outside of performance review cycles. As a leader your words matter to you employees. By taking the time to write a thank you note to your employees, it shows them that you genuinely appreciate what they are doing. In addition, it gives them something that they can keep as a reminder of the excellent work they have completed. Make sure the note is specific, add the date and your signature. Pro Tip- develop branded thank you notes with your name on it. Just having these at your desk or in your work bag will encourage you to use them.

2. Praise your employee on social media. LinkedIn and other social media platforms are a great forum to show your employees appreciation. With more workers being remote, shifting to virtual recognition is a great way to provide public praise. By praising your employee in a social media post, you can recognize them in front of their peers, which makes a profound impact especially with extroverts. Pro Tip- connect with your employees and co-workers on social media platforms to maximize the reach of recognition post.

3. Give them a small token of appreciation. Little things matter especially when they are a surprise. Something as simple as a recognition pin, a gift card for coffee, or a candy bar can go a long way in showing someone that you appreciate what they do. The key here is to give the employee something they will appreciate. Take some time over the next week to poll your team on what types of recognition they feel would be impactful. Pro Tip- if the individual you are showing appreciation to has a family, the gift could be for them. Families of employees make sacrifices to support their career, showing them appreciation goes a long way to make the entire family feel valued and respected.

4. Surprise thank you call. Making an unexpected call to an employee to thank them for the work they are doing can go a long way to showing appreciation. An unprompted recognition call gives you an opportunity outside of one on ones, and performance reviews to energize an employee and let them know that their work matters. Pro Tip- if you are a manager of managers, ask your direct reports to provide you with the name, phone number, and reason for recognition of their direct reports. Skip level recognition can be impactful because the employee does not interact with you frequently, and likely see you as a powerful and influential person.

Leaders have a direct influence over the culture of their team. By role modeling recognition, you help to develop a culture that shows respect and appreciations. All businesses have limits on employee compensation, and advancement opportunities but there are fewer constraints on the amount of recognition you can give employees. By providing your employees with better and more frequent recognition, you demonstrated that you appreciate and respect the contribution they provide to the organization.

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Dorian Cunion is an Executive Business Coach with your Path Coaching and Consulting. He specializes in coaching service for managers, executives and small business owner.

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If you are interested in working with me as a coach, contact me at

• Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

• Phone: 804-220-5771