Customized 
Strategic Results-Oriented
In 2007, Damien had an opportunity to coach a leader who was “the CEO in waiting.” That engagement was unlike any of his other coaching engagements and that experience would help shape his view that coaching at the CEO and c-suite level requires a unique approach. Over the years, he has determined that c-suite coaching requires the following three areas of focus.
Customized
Every leader is unique and leads in unique circumstances. Damien approaches customization in two ways. First, he honors the fact that humans are complex; a cookie-cutter approach to supporting individual leaders is unhelpful. Second, leadership is situational—what a leader needs to do depends on what’s happening at the company: the unique business context.
With these two considerations in mind, Damien quickly focuses on these questions:
- What is the business context? (e.g. growth, turnaround, new strategy)
- What is expected of the leader in this business context?
- How is the leader uniquely qualified to deliver what is expected of her/him?
At the c-suite level, coaching needs to be heavily customized to the specific leader who is working in a particular business context.
Strategic
Senior leaders often have a handful of development opportunities. An effective coaching engagement should prioritize those development opportunities so that the work has a significant, strategic impact.
Further, in fifteen years of coaching c-suite leaders, Damien has discovered it’s not uncommon for a leader to have some blind spots about what is required to be successful in their new role. Quite often it’s a case of “what got you here, won’t keep you here.” When new in a senior role, a leader’s development needs fall into one or more of three categories: issues with leadership style, underdeveloped management skills, and/or business-experience gaps. Damien takes pride in supporting a leader in minimizing learning through trial and error.
Damien works to create clarity for the leader about how they might (a) need to adjust their leadership style and (b) address some of the standard challenges of leading from the c-suite (e.g. how to effectively work with a board or create strategic clarity).
In conversation with clients, a plan is developed that addresses these questions:
- What are two or three development areas for the leader that will have the biggest impact on the leader’s effectiveness?
- What is there about leading from the c-suite that the leader might need to learn?
This strategic calibration is required to ensure that the coaching/advisory work has maximum impact.
Results-Oriented
Coaching goals can’t be vague or aspirational. Translating what the leader needs to do into practical plans is critical, so Damien focuses on helping clients identify specific actions to take and habits to build. This ensures that results are observable. The work the leader wants to do should be crystal clear, as should the value and impact of that work.
In terms of results, the leader should notice changes in their leadership style, and those around the leader (stakeholders) should report that they are noticing the changes.
This approach to producing results honors the reality that c-suite leaders don’t have unlimited time to devote to coaching, so the coaching work needs to translate into clear results. It also assures the engagement sponsor that the investment has produced an expected return.
Finally, any leader who chooses to work with Damien must be willing to invest in a full-day meeting at the beginning of the engagement to ensure a “fast start” to the work. To learn about what this day entails, please click here.
In addition to these unique aspects to Damien’s coaching approach, he also adheres to a common set of Best Practices and Principles for leadership coaching.
These include the following steps:
- First: Build self-awareness. This step helps the leader understand both their strengths and their gaps or development areas.
- Second: Build other-awareness. This step helps the leader understand what they are expected to do in their role (what success looks like) and how colleagues view them. Typically, this involves securing 360 Feedback. Damien speaks with the leader’s colleagues to understand more about the leader’s style, the business context, and what is expected of the leader.
- Third: Develop a set of coaching/development goals. These allow the leader to leverage strengths and address gaps. This creates clarity and focus for the coaching work.
- Fourth: Build a feedback loop. A leader should not have to wait for a 360 process to hear what they need to do differently. Damien engages stakeholders (e.g. board, CEO, directs, peers) in providing real-time feedback to the leader. This serves a number of purposes:
- It creates transparency about the coaching,
- It creates accountability, and
- It creates an even more positive view of the leader.
- Fifth: Deepen leadership impact. Ongoing coaching work focuses on creating insight, awareness, self-belief, and the courage to try some atypical approaches. Damien meets with clients once every 4–6 weeks in person and speaks with them by phone between in-person visits (every 2–3 weeks). This ongoing work should noticeably improve the leader’s impact.
- Finally: Focus on results. Damien conducts a midpoint and end-point engagement review to gauge progress and course-correct as appropriate.
Given that this is a highly customized offering, Damien’s coaching approach is heavily focused on providing support and guidance. The goal is to ensure that the leader is executing on the development plan while ensuring that key stakeholders provide quarterly feedback to the leader about their progress.
Engagements range from 6–12 months in duration and Damien has a long and strong track record of accomplishing results. Sometimes, those results are also life-changing.
