How I work
One size fits one.
Every engagement starts with your goals: what you, your team and your organization need to achieve, and what kind of leadership will get you there. I design our work together around that.
The approach is pragmatic and grounded in results. You will see the difference in how you lead.
What guides the work
Five guiding principles
- 01
Clear line of sight to business results
What we discuss relates directly to what you, your team and your organization are accountable for.
- 02
Holistic approach
Our professional goals exist in the context of our personal goals. While the focus is the former, the latter remain relevant.
- 03
Emotional intelligence
A whole set of skills and abilities above and beyond academic acumen determines how effective we are as leaders.
- 04
Leverage strengths
We start with what you're good at and build from there, but ensure you don't overplay those strengths.
- 05
The inside shows on the outside
How leaders see themselves shapes how others experience them. We work on the internal and external together.
Where I help
Three levels of work
Organizations
A strategy is only as good as the leaders who carry it out. I help organizations answer a key question: Do we have the leaders in place that we need, now and into the future, to realize our strategy? That means assessing leadership bench strength, preparing candidates for expanded roles and planning for succession, including presenting succession plans to boards.
Teams
Senior teams are often a group of strong individuals who work together rather than a team. I help them build explicit alignment and a shared understanding of how each member works, so that the team makes better decisions together, faster. Some of that work happens off-site. I've taken teams to the Gettysburg battlefield and the beaches of Normandy to study leadership where it was tested.
Individuals
I coach executives to be as effective as they aspire to be. That often means stepping into an expanded role, strengthening executive presence or leading through change. See Executive Coaching for how an engagement works.
Common situations
What I'm asked to help with
- Preparing a high-potential leader for an expanded role
- Designing the leadership structure after a merger or acquisition
- Turning a group of strong individuals into an effective team
- Leadership problems that have resisted every other fix
- Communication that has broken down between leaders and the people they lead
The work is practical, real-time, intellectually challenging and, yes, enjoyable. My clients learn to see and do things differently.