Executive Coaching
Leading a New Organization
Situation: A new CEO replaced a long-tenured executive who “grew up in the business”
Actions: We coached a new CEO from outside the organization through all stages of her onboarding and first year at the helm. We conducted interviews of her executive team and provided coaching and a sounding board regarding her own effectiveness, engagement strategies with the board and her executive team, and an overall approach for replacing a well-regarded but flawed previous executive, including making needed changes in a way that generated buy-in.
Result: The new CEO’s first year was met with wide acclaim, including acknowledgement from her board and achievement of the organization’s business targets, which were viewed originally as a “stretch”. She was able to begin to drive changes, including improving executive team capability, creating succession planning and increasing transparency and efficiency in decision-making.
Building Followers
Situation: A senior executive needed to regain the support of his regional leaders and office teams
Actions: Leveraging the results of an assessment and a 360 interview process, we coached the executive to deepen his self-awareness and sharpen his ability to recognize how he was coming across to others. With support, the leader expanded his range of leadership styles and behaviors and designed an action plan to regain buy-in and employee engagement, including leveraging his strengths and previous experience.
Result: The leader’s change in behaviors lead to improved morale, followership and support for his direction, and organization efficiency. These improvements enabled him to successfully convince the CEO and board to allow his organization to pursue new opportunities that resulted in a 50% increase in new business the following year.
Vision and Strategy
Situation: A leader wanted to transform his organization and improve delivery of business unit services
Actions: We coached a leader and his team through an organization transformation. Leveraging feedback from key leaders, stakeholders and customers, we supported the leader and his team to create a unit vision and mission, redesign service delivery strategy, establish target metrics, and plan deployment. Follow-up engagement resulted focused on process standardization as well as the development of an organization capability model.
Result: Leader adjustment yielded greater collaboration with key stakeholders and cross-department partners, achieving target metric in service delivery, quality and satisfaction. Coaching was acknowledged as highly valuable to the leader’s personal development and responsible for greater team alignment.
Succeeding to C-Level
Situation: Growing leadership effectiveness to prepare for the C-suite
Actions: We coached a CAO to grow his self-awareness and ultimately, deepen his effectiveness as a leader. Key focus areas included increasing his ability to express vulnerability, mange uncertainty, build cross-functional relationships and broaden his influence. After he moved to rapidly-growing consumer products company, the CAO retained The Carabiner Group to help him quickly adapt to the challenges of his new company, including meeting needs of cross-functional partners’ needs and expanding his visibility within the C-suite.
Result: As a result of his success, the leader was included in a C-level succession plan and ultimately, was named CFO. He has continued to engage The Carabiner Group to support him and key team members.
Growing Influence
Situation: A female leader sought to expand her influence in a male-dominated organization
Actions: We coached the leader to increase her self-awareness, sharpen her understanding of others’ needs and perceptions in the moment, and more skillfully adjust her delivery. Coaching also focused on helping the leader identify and build key relationships across the company and intentionally expand her visibility, which deepened her credibility and expanded her means of influence.
Result: The leader’s improvements in her ability to influence others were recognized by her Supervisor and other key leaders. Her success in this area, plus other work contributions, enabled her to receive two promotions during her coaching engagement with The Carabiner Group over a 15-month period. Finally, the leader also acknowledged greater ease and comfort in partnering with others as well as an increase in her own confidence and work satisfaction.
Scaling Leadership and Productivity
Situation: A CEO needed to scale his leadership and productivity to meet the demands of his growing organization
Actions: Initially, coaching supported the leader to clarify and manage to critical priorities, including building his leadership team’s capability, focusing on the strategic needs of the business, and managing personal productivity. Also, he leveraged The Carabiner Group as a sounding board for key decisions. As coaching progressed, Jon worked at a deeper level as well, helping the CEO address beliefs, thought patterns and the leader’s way of being that impacted his effectiveness, including developing a long-term vision for his own leadership.
Result: The leader was able to make immediate progress, leading to both improved business performance and greater attention to strategic priorities. In addition, he noticed improved productivity and an ability to lead with greater ease and satisfaction. Finally, coaching enabled the leader to identify and take strides towards his long-term vision.
Coaching Technical Leaders, Engineers and Scientists
Situation: The Carabiner Group’s experience coaching technical leaders, including engineers, scientists and IT executives
Experience: The Carabiner Group has deep experience supporting technical, scientific, and engineering leaders from across a range of industries, including technology, biotech and life sciences, consulting services, energy, and academic medicine, as well as technology leaders within consumer products and retail. We have helped leaders leverage strong thinking and technical skills while expanding of other capabilities and areas of awareness. Areas of coaching have included expanding leadership styles and versatility, deepening emotional intelligence, building team capability, including delivering difficult feedback, growing executive presence and influence, and building or repairing cross-functional and other stakeholder relationships.
For example, we coached an engineering leader to grow his influence and ability to collaborate with others, including those with strongly different opinions, resulting in greater personal effectiveness and improved delivery of a cross-functional initiative.
