Getting Buy-in for Your Excecutive Coaching Program

It has been my dream to coach executive leaders in organizations across the United States.  From my experience working with such clients, there seems to be a common thread that runs throughout the executive world and that is that people in high status, high paying leadership roles need development too.  Never think that because a person is considered a CEO or makes six figures in his/her field, that they are automatically capable to assume leadership responsibilities of managing people or that their teams are engaged and willing to follow them to the ends of the earth.  Sometimes, it is just the opposite.  Due to the fact that some successful professions require many hours of dedication to whatever cause they are advocating each day, the teams executive leaders manage may be left to figure out problems for themselves more often than not.  In addition, if the executive has not experienced good leadership from their superiors in the present or their past business relationships, most likely, their style of leadership will follow the same tactics used by their previous or present bosses.

In today’s business world, self-managed teams are becoming more accepted; however, there is still a need for executive leaders to provide some quality interaction with their teams to assure things are getting done in a timely, cost effective and cohesive manner.  When a person achieves top status in a position, along with the many perks come additional requirements to effectively interact with cross-functional teams including those that may be virtual.  So, how is it possible to keep these types of employees engaged and willing to put in the extra (often unpaid time) should it become necessary?  The leader must motivate their team AND know how to do it effectively!

One of the hottest topics that Organizational Psychologists are writing about today is ‘Employee Engagement‘.  This term now dominates many books and is a very interesting topic many people are exploring!  But, are executives and leaders able to handle the motivation of 200 employees, daily?  What about their ability to motivate themselves in the face of having to do more with less resources? These are questions that can only be answered by the individual who is first willing to acknowledge that he/she may have a deficiency in these areas. After the discovery points to the fact that assistance is needed, the next step would be understanding exactly what should be done to change the deficit and the cost associated with fixing the problem.  The word cost not only refers to financial costs, but also the leader’s time, willingness to invest in self and others, and the benefit.  These are important aspects to consider because if, for example, financial costs are invested in executive coaching services (whether internal or external), the cost goes beyond money. 

The leader must spend time evaluating their situation, map out a strategic plan in how to best tackle it, and then work daily to obtain maximum results.  For example:  Let’s say that an organization has conducted a corporate-wide employee engagement or 360 survey to find out the overall satisfaction of employees towards work and management.  Let’s state further that the results from the survey come back that most employees are dissatisfied with their immediate supervisor and the  upper management of the organization; however, people are satisfied that the work they perform is important, .  Based on the outcomes of the survey, the CEO decides to enlist the services of an external coach for its top executives for the purposes of helping them drive employee engagement up within their teams.  The CEO hopes this strategy will also drive up annual profits.  I’ll call this concept “Happy employees produce higher quality work, which leads to higher profit margins.”  The external coach contract states that coaching sessions to each of the top executives will cost $3000.00 per day for 6 weeks.  This means that the coach will come in, interview the top corporate executives, assist each person to put a strategically developed plan in place that will help drive up employee motivation and profits.  Total compensation for the 1 coach for 6 weeks is $18,000.00 not including other expenses such as travel, lodging, etc.  The contractual agreement also states that once the coach begins, all executives must make time to commit to the ‘employee engagement’ cause that the CEO believes is needed.  However, at what cost will the CEO’s engagement plan be successful?

Think about this for a moment and ask yourself the following questions:

1.  Did the CEO get the buy in of the executives or employees before making this decision?

2.  Will the cost of commitment to this idea cause other important projects to slack?

3.   Will it mean that management staff will have to stop or start activities related to the engagement that he/she has never done and really don’t want to do or see the benefit of doing?

What are your thoughts?