Services

C-Suite Coaching

I believe that coaching should the most powerful and profound development experience of your career.  My aim is that coaching should be insightful, practical and based on a partnership of deep trust.

I think most are now familiar with the role of the coach, holding up the mirror to build awareness of performance, and support the practice of new habits to accelerate learning. The most effective way I have found to do this with C-Suite leaders is to work with them ‘on the job’ shadowing key meetings and activities. By practicing joint reflection, and supporting experimentation of different practices, the coach can support new habits in real life situations. By working with a coach that has real C-Suite experience, the process of learning and improvement can be both achievable and sustainable.

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Every coaching relationship is different, and is based on your context and your needs. However, some of the most common elements I work on are:

  • Developing strategies to deliver change, performance and transformation
  • Developing, articulating and owning the company story, vision and mission.
  • Developing culture and talent
  • Leading and aligning the Executive Team
  • Working positively with the Board and external stakeholders
  • Building a leadership shadow that shapes the culture of your team and organisation
  • Building prioritisation habits which focus the organisation on the things that really matter
  • Managing yourself, balancing the many priorities in your leadership

I believe that your role is context specific, and the benefit of coaching is that it is entirely bespoke to your needs. In our first sessions we agree what you want to see as outcomes. Achieving change can feel daunting, especially when you are looking to impact hundreds or thousands of people through your leadership shadow.

My approach is based on helping you to gain insight into your current strengths, your current practice and impact, and to help you design and practice habits that build your leadership shadow to influence the culture of your leadership team and your business.

Often with business leaders the challenges are to develop the strategy and narrative for the business, lead the executive team, manage relationships with board members and other stakeholders and to manage yourself and your legacy.

Read Every C-Suite Leader Should Have a Coach to find out more.

Transforming Leadership Teams

According to a 2018 Harvard Business Review study, CEOs of large companies attended 37 meetings per week and spent 72% of their total work time in meetings.

In my experience, many of these meetings lack purpose, structure, outcomes and leave participants frustrated and key decisions unmade.

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One of the roles that I enjoy most as a Leadership Coach is working with CEOs or Chairs to improve Executive Meetings. It is also an opportunity to also shape team dynamics, role model new habits and work on policy deployment. It can be an effective and practical vehicle to change team and business performance, as well as building corporate culture that works.

After working with you to agree what you are looking to change, I will then typically attend several of your regular leadership meetings, observing, feeding back and then agreeing new habits for forthcoming meetings. At first, this is something that is mostly done with the Team Leader, but as the team builds trust ownership of improvement moves to the team, leaving a self-sustaining improvement habit.

I believe that working with a coach to observe and improve executive meetings is one of the most powerful ways to improve executive team efficiency and effectiveness. By observing, feeding back and soliciting ideas to improve, team dynamics and engagement improve and over time executive decision making becomes a competitive advantage.

Read Effective C-Suite Meetings to find out more.

Shifting Organisational Culture

I partner with businesses to build or shift organisational culture to enable and accelerate a change in strategy or context.

Whether this is about gripping operational performance, becoming world class in customer service or embedding engagement habits, I believe there is a consistent approach that can deliver enterprise-wide cultural change generally much quicker than you think.

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Although each companies’ context is different, I generally recommend several steps to shift organisational culture:

  • Be clear what you want to move to and why
  • Be clear what cultural habits are key to deliver the new strategy
  • Align and coach the leadership team to role model these habits
  • Work with middle managers to give them the will and skill to consistently apply new habits themselves.
  • Reinforce these changed behaviours in your people management systems (recruitment, development, reward, performance management etc.)

If you would like to discuss a programme of work to achieve a cultural change, I am happy to work with you to build a programme, and to support you through the steps outlined above.

Read The Importance of Culture Change to find out more.

Partnering with Fast Growth SMEs

Having started, scaled and ultimately sold a business, I now coach SME leaders to navigate some of the typical leadership challenges that come with achieving sustainable growth.

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Partnering with Fast Growth SMEs

I have worked with many fast growth SMEs who have great initial success because of an inspiring founder and a great product or solution.

In my experience, the businesses that go on to make it and grow into long-term success stories do so because of developing great foundations, systems, leadership and organisational capability. Whilst there are many ‘playbooks’ that will explain the steps, every growth story is unique, and each plan and decision must be tailored to meet your vision. The key foundation stones tend to include:

  • Translating your vision into clear goals and strategies which provide direction for your growth plan and your value proposition
  • The development of your leadership approach to move from founder to leader of leaders
  • Developing your role model to establish the business culture you want
  • Developing your organisation so that you build the business capability at the right time and in the right way.

The first conversation I have with SME leaders is often many months after these steps could have been started and their growth is beginning to fade.  Don’t leave it too late; reach out and we can discuss how to propel your organisation to the next step.

Read Achieving Sustainable Growth to find out more.

Alex Lewis Coaching