CEO MONTHLY / FEBRUARY 2025 16 Executive Coaching: A Key to C-Suite Growth and Development - Shannon Who is next in the C-Suite, after you? It all comes down to your leadership bench. My client Jason* came to me for advice on how to successfully develop his rising stars. “I need your magic. I know that several of my senior leaders are talented and I want to promote them, but I just can’t seem to get them there. For example, Stephanie* is right on target when it comes to analyzing numbers, but her ability to lead and influence misses the mark. She’s very transactional and people don’t want to go along with her. What should I do?” Jason knew he needed help with how to get his upcoming leaders in the best position to succeed, but didn’t know where to start or how to tell them what they needed to know. He also realized he couldn’t achieve the change and leadership performance he wanted by himself. Jason needed someone who wasn’t his Mom or Dad to help him. He needed to bring in an executive coach to help him assess and develop his future C-Suite leaders, extract the talent he knew his team had and guide them to lead the way. If this sounds familiar, ask yourself these two questions first: • Who is next, after you? • How are you building your 2025 Leadership Bench? Here’s the critical issue:Time is ticking away. You know your company has a leadership talent gap and you also know you need to fill it with the right leaders, pronto. You’ve been relying on promoting managers who’ve been with your company for a while because they know their stuff and they know the company. Because your managers have been in place for a while, you feel they can figure it out for themselves. But they don’t always know how to figure it out for themselves. Even more critical, it’s unfair to expect them to figure it out on their own. Do they really know how to make the transition from manager to leader? Not always. This is where an executive coach can make the difference. Here’s how an executive coach can help them (and you): Assess whether you have the right people in the right places. Don’t put this off any longer as it will inevitably cause more problems in the long run if left for too long. If you know that the wrong people are in the wrong positions then you need to do something about it before it negatively impacts performance as this will eventually impact revenue and staff turnover. You need to decide which leadership competencies are critical to your company. A coach can work with you to determine what your best leaders look like and assess Who and what you have in place and what else you need. Global organization consulting firm KornFerry estimates that a mere 10% of leaders surveyed actually evaluate new recruits for their future leadership potential. Often, hiring teams don’t think about this early enough in the recruitment process, or they believe they have time to train them and mold them into the perfect candidate. Waiting carries a risk. If you wait on offering those future leaders the professional development they crave, there is a greater chance they will leave and find the leadership and C-Suite roles they want at another company. One that can either hire them into that specific role straight away, or at the very least create a leadership development plan that shows what they need to implement before they’re ready for promotion. You will miss out. Implement a roadmap to nurture your future leaders. Do you have a senior leadership program? When it comes to leadership development, KornFerry tells us that nearly half of organizations don’t have a program in place at all. Worse yet, the programs that are in place may be old and outdated, they don’t fit the future of work in today’s hybrid environment and they aren’t suited to the next leaders you want to put in place. When I work with clients on executive coaching, I like to start the process by reviewing a company’s organization chart and looking at the roles, not the people in those roles. Next, I break out the whiteboard and identify exactly what’s needed in each role and then help you find the right people for that role. Pay close attention to the “soft” skills. It isn’t your grandpa’s workplace anymore! Skills such as communication, executive presence, emotional intelligence and relationship building aren’t simply a “nice-to-have” option in the workplace today. If you want to hire and keep top talent, then soft skills are a necessity. As an executive coach and consultant, I’m obsessed with helping C-Suite leaders succeed. The ability to communicate clearly and build key relationships is critical. Let’s go back to our leader Stephanie* who I introduced in the scenario above. Her boss, Jason*, relayed that she was very transactional, reluctant to converse with her team and others and often more interested in telling her employees what they had done wrong rather than championing what they did right. This is a case where practice can make all the difference. When we worked together on connecting and building those relationships that count, I scheduled a series of coaching sessions with Stephanie so that she could practice with me, both in-person and via Zoom. We worked on improving her executive presence, creating warmth, genuine conversation and interest. Consulting firm Gallup tells us that several behaviors directly affect leadership performance, including the ability to build relationships, connect and further develop employees. Why C-Suite leadership development planning matters Business often moves so quickly that you don’t stop to consider when and how to implement your leadership succession plan. You assume that your best employees will want to stay with you and that they can learn everything they need to know on the fly. Sometimes that works….until it doesn’t. Leaving it up to chance isn’t enough anymore. You need to get your leadership bench in gear if you want to grow or scale your business in 2025. Give some deep thought to these three questions: Does your company culture truly support leadership development? If not, the risk is huge. When top management invests in its potential C-Suite leaders up front it makes a huge difference to the performance of your business. Plus, your employees
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