Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mary Beth O’Neill is an executive coach, leadership consultant, author, and leader of the Executive Coach Training Seminar Series. She can be reached at www.mboExecutiveCoaching.com.

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Coaching high-powered executives requires something extra. Executive coaches must become partners whose emotional investment in business outcomes equals that of their clients. They must have the strength and courage to face an organizational leader in a time of crisis and speak the unvarnished truth. They must be a force to be reckoned with. They have to have backbone and heart.

When it was first published in 2000, Mary Beth O’Neill’s book Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart helped to define the field of coaching at the senior and executive level. This second edition of O’Neill’s groundbreaking book shares the secrets of O’Neill’s success and details the techniques she’s developed and refined over the course of her exceptional career. This edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded to include

• THREE KEY FACTORS METHODOLOGY FOR SETTING UP CLIENT GOALS AND THE MEASURES FOR THOSE GOALS
• INFORMATION ABOUT HOW TO INVOLVE THE CLIENT’S BOSS IN THE COACHING CONTRACT
• MORE EXTENSIVE MATERIAL ON LIVE ACTION COACHING
• COMMENTARY ON THE USE OF ASSESSMENT TOOLS AND INSTRUMENTS
• A METHOD TO WORK WITH CLIENTS ON THE SYSTEMIC PATTERNS THEY WANT TO CHANGE
• AN ENTIRELY NEW CHAPTER DEVOTED SOLELY TO CALCULATING THE ROI OF COACHING WORK WITH THE CLIENT
• AND MORE ILLUSTRATIVE STORIES

O’Neill teaches coaches how to deal with clients in terms of the “force fields” they create and react to, that is, the political and emotional climates within organizations that can ensnare both executive and coach and make for faulty decision making. O’Neill reinforces her observations on coach self-management and her systems perspective with a sound four-phase methodology for implementing both, a methodology that covers contracting, planning, live action intervening, and debriefing.

Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart is written for anyone, no matter what their discipline or background, who is interested in helping leaders work through their dilemmas so they can transform their learning directly into results for their organizations.

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Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart

Coaching high-powered executives requires something extra. Executive coaches must become partners whose emotional investment in business outcomes equals that of their clients. They must have the strength and courage to face

an organizational leader in a time of crisis and speak the unvarnished truth. They must be a force to be reckoned with. They have to have backbone and heart.

When it was first published in 2000, Mary Beth O'Neill's book Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart helped to define the field of coaching at the senior and executive level. This second edition of O'Neill's groundbreaking book shares the secrets of O'Neill's success and details the techniques she's developed and refined over the course of her exceptional career. This edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded to include

• Three Key Factors methodology for setting up client goals and the measures for those goals

• Iinformation about how to involve the client's boss in the coaching contract

• More extensive material on live action coaching

• Commentary on the use of assessment tools and instruments

• A method to work with clients on the systemic patterns they want to change

• An entirely new chapter devoted solely?to calculating the ROI of coaching work with the client

• And more illustrative stories

O'Neill teaches coaches how to deal with clients in terms of the "force fields" they create and react to, that is, the political and emotional climates within organizations that can ensnare both executive and coach and make for faulty decision making. O'Neill reinforces her observations on coach self-management and her systems perspective with a sound four-phase methodology for implementing both, a methodology that covers contracting, planning, live action intervening, and debriefing.

Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart is written for anyone, no matter what their discipline or background, who is interested in helping leaders work through their dilemmas so they can transform their learning directly into results for their organizations.

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Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Coach: What are the most pressing business challenges you face?

Leader: We've got to get our division out of the cellar. Consistently we perform behind the other four divisions, and the CEO's patience with us is wearing thin. I don't think he's going to put up with it much longer.

Coach: How much time have you got?

Leader: At the outside, maybe twelve months.

Coach: What obstacles prevent you from getting the results that you want?

Leader: My executive team isn't operating as a unit. They're pursuing their own business goals, not coordinating overlapping interests with other departments. In our meetings, when I ask for their opinions, they address issues only in their functional area. We're not doing any creative problem solving.

Coach: What impacts do these disappointing results have on you personally?

Leader: I have to work two jobs: my own and the vacancy on my team. In my first year as senior vice president, I had three positions in a row vacated, and it's taken too long to fill each one. It's like trying to drive a car with one wheel constantly missing: it prevents me from looking at the big picture.

Coach: This sounds like a great setup for self-perpetuating burnout, for both you and your team. You'll never get the results you need to succeed if you don't carve out the space to lead your team.

Leader: So tell me how to do it when I'm fighting fires!

Coach: You may, by default, be managing only what you know how to do rather than doing what is needed. You may need to go beyond your own leadership strengths to achieve significantly different, breakthrough results. What is challenging for you about this situation in the face of these disappointing results?

Leader: Leading this effort is a big challenge for me. It's the first time I've ever managed multiple functions. I've never spent energy on managing as a discipline in itself. I achieve success through technical know-how. I could use some help figuring out where to start.

Coach: Let's start by defining more specifically which actions on the part of your team would directly lead to the results you need. Then we can look at how you will achieve those results with your team.

Leaders hold a special position in the landscape of change. A leader's clarity of purpose and her ability to connect the people in her organization to that purpose go a long way toward mobilizing the necessary forces for change. Sometimes executives need help to fulfill the responsibilities of their special position. Executive coaches, who understand the demands and requirements of the change process, can help these leaders.

What would you do if the leader from the preceding dialogue were referred to you for coaching? What would be your goal with him? What would you want to accomplish? How would you determine if you were being effective?

These are the questions that effective coaches ask themselves every time they enter a new coaching relationship. They are also the questions that keep coaches, even experienced ones, up at night when the client or the situation reaches a particularly dicey phase.

A well-managed coaching relationship, along with an adequate period of time and a motivated executive, can lead to impressive results. That was the case for this leader, whose division became the top performer in the company within eight months.

This book explores how to think and act in ways that empower the executives you coach. It will help you become a valued resource to the leaders who need you most.

What Is Executive Coaching?

The coaching partnership begins when the leader faces a dilemma and feels stymied. The essence of executive coaching is helping leaders work through challenges so they can transform their learning into results for the organization.

Coaches possess the trained yet natural curiosity of a journalist or an anthropologist to the client's work situation. In addition, coaches typically:

Share conceptual frameworks, images, and metaphors with executives.

Encourage rigor in the ways that clients organize their thinking, visioning, planning, and expectations.

Challenge executives to expand their learning edge and go beyond their current level of competence.

Build clients' capacities to manage their own anxiety in tough situations.

By "executive," I mean leaders who are in the top and upper levels of their organizations: the CEOs, senior vice presidents, plant managers, and executive directors of organizations. I define the executive's job in three broad areas:

1. Communicating the territory, that is, the purpose, the vision, and goals of the organization to key constituencies, as well as outlining opportunities and challenges.

2. Building commitment, building relationships, and facilitating interactions that result in outstanding team performance.

3. Producing results and outcomes through the direct efforts of others as well as the executive's own efforts.

Executive coaching is the process of increasing the client's effectiveness in meeting these three responsibilities. For example, in the opening story, the executive was clear about the third responsibility: the results. He even had a sense about what was missing in the second area: the interactions he needed from his team. But he had yet to act on that knowledge: he was not defining the expectations he had for his team. Neither was he communicating to his team, with any conviction, the territory ahead and his vision for where they needed to go.

Some of you coach one-to-one with leaders exclusively. Others, myself included, use coaching as one tool in the toolbox used for larger organizational change projects with leaders (see Appendix D). Although my practice encompasses larger change efforts, this book focuses largely on the one-to-one executive coach work relationship because it is so critical.

It is easy to assume that this coaching relationship happens in isolation from the dynamics of the executive's team. Of course, it does not, even when you coach only the leader. Whether coaching the executive happens with the team or independently, that relationship must take into account the team and the organization. One of the purposes of executive coaching is to turn the leader toward his team so he can lead them more effectively. This approach can enhance the contributions of both the leader and the team.

I do wish to acknowledge the special concerns of executives at the very top of their organizations. Top executives deal with issues of stockholders, owners or partners, succession, loyalty, strategic alliances, and positioning in the marketplace. Many believe that they should not ask for help, which exacerbates their "lonely at the top" experience.

The biggest difference I find in coaching top executives as opposed to middle executives is one of tone and pace. Top executives require more toughness...