Coaching for Newly Appointed Executives

Recruiting people into senior executive positions can be a costly business; organisations spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on head-hunters, advertising and assessment centres. Once the appointment is made and a start date agreed, you can almost feel the sense of relief from some organisations; they have done their bit and it’s now up to the new recruit to pick up the baton and run.

Of course, the reality is that effective recruitment is the first part of a two phase process; the second part being to effectively integrate the new executive into the organisation. Unfortunately this second part is often totally neglected, as there is an expectation that the new boy or girl will just get on with it.

As many of us will know from experience, joining a new organisation can be likened to skiing through a “white out”; you thought that you were good but now you feel like a beginner again!

In your new senior executive role, everyone wants your time, everyone wants your decisions, you don’t really know what’s important and what isn’t, you don’t know who you should listen to and who you shouldn’t, there’s so much to learn and take in. Then, there are those things that come in from left field; perhaps, your boss micro manages, perhaps, you are not made welcome, perhaps, the organisation is far from the rosy picture that was painted to be.

Thus, for the appointment to be successful in the long term, it would seem sensible that the new recruit has some level of support over the transition period. While the support required will vary from person to person, the new executive could:

• Prepare an action plan for the transition period and monitor progress against it

• Find a mentor within the organisation

• Work with a coach over the first six months

While any one of these will be productive, probably, the most effective solution will be a combination of all three.

Where a coaching programme is provided, executives gain enormous benefit from having those regular periods of “time out”. They can look in the mirror and see how effectively they are using their time and energy; they can reflect on what’s working and what’s not and revise their action plans accordingly. They, also, have that protected space to think through the views that they are forming and to consider the unforeseen challenges which have emerged

I have now been working in this area, more frequently called On Boarding, for the last four years and have found it useful to provide my clients with some background reading prior to the coaching programme. There are a number of books offering guidance for the first 90 or 100 days but the one I find most useful is “Right from the Start: Taking Charge in a New Role” by Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins. They have, also, published a condensed version of the book as an article in the Harvard Business Review (February, 2000) and it is this article that I recommend to my clients

The authors identify a number of traps that newly appointed executives can fall into and then, they propose a checklist of 7 activities which should underpin the initial period of the executive’s tenure:

• Use the time wisely before you join the organisation
• Organise yourself to learn all the key things you need to know
• Secure early wins
• Lay a foundation for major improvements
• Create a personal vision
• Build winning coalitions
• Manage yourself

I invite clients to explore how they might use this framework as part of the coaching programme; for example, some clients will use the seven principles as part of their goal setting process. However we use it, I find that combining this framework with my standard coaching approach has been particularly useful. Not only do clients get the value associated with coaching, but they also have a series of benchmarks against which they can compare their progress at any point over the transition period.

In summary, there is a strong business case for supplementing the recruitment process with a coaching programme for new executives over their first six months. The additional investment will pay dividends for the organisation as it helps individuals to do the right things over that transition period, so that they are best placed to maximise their contribution for the remainder of his tenure.

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Ted Campbell is an Executive Coach, who works primarily with Chief Executives, Directors and Senior Managers. He specialises in Leadership, On Boarding and Executive Team coaching; he can be contacted at ted.campbell@executive21.co.uk.