What i do:
I help company management teams and individual executives achieve the results they want but have found hard to come by. If the business team client seeks my answers to problems I provide consultative advice. But I prefer engagements in which the client recognizes the generative power in making their own discoveries, spurred by my coaching methods. For individual clients, self-discovery is the only viable approach. The goal in either case is to leave my client more enabled and empowered to face future challenges after our work is done.
How i do it:
I use the same set of coaching skills for both types of clients. But I draw on experiences that uniquely serve each group. As a coach in service to business owners and their teams I draw on having managed every function within a commercial enterprise. And having done so in a highly disciplined, established Fortune 100 firm, as well as a fast growing Inc 500 startup – both domestic and international. In performing this business coaching service I emphasize the pursuit of clarity and alignment – in attaining what I refer to as the Business Triority: Differentiated market Value (DV), an internal Culture of Communications (CC), and Cash Flow (CF) that reflects rewarding results and good commercial health for the client business.
Who i do it for:
My business clients, for whom I have thus far tallied more than 12,000 hours of service, have principally been middle market industrial firms, all family owned and operated. The engagements have ranged from 9 months to several years. My individual executive clients hail from companies of all sizes. The three company presidents I am currently coaching (6 to 12 month engagements) lead companies that generate in the hundreds of millions in annual sales.
Why i do it:
At this point in my working life, the wide range of issues I confront in coaching are far more stimulating than running the mission of a single enterprise. The business issues that surface are common to both situations, of course, but the people with whom I work as a coach, in overcoming business issues, are an infinitely varied, interesting, & enriching group of people.
What i have done before:
With a long and varied professional working trail leading up to it, I served as President & CEO for an international, mid-sized industry leader until 2012. Since then, I have coached and consulted for US & British company management teams, as well as individual executives.
What i also do:
I develop & teach Leadership MBA courses; teach consulting methods; coach international MBA students in solving real client business issues; and write on family business & leadership topics.
How does my executive experience serve my business coaching:
When coaching a business team, discovery doesn’t happen for all team members at the same time. And unlike coaching for individual executives, there often isn’t enough time to wait for discovery. New action is sometimes needed to spur new observations. Clients need to know that the Coach’s suggested actions come from deep experience, and that you are familiar with what they are trying to do, to achieve the results they seek.
Where do problems occur, and persist:
SOPE: When problems confront any one of us, we assess our situation, and set an objective for what we want to do about it. With a new direction in mind, we develop a plan to get where we want to go. We then take action.
But because most of us are in a rush to ‘fix things’, we fail to engage others in defining the problem in front of us. We come up with a solution – often in isolation, and often not much different than what was done before. The planning task then gets handed off to someone who has not participated in the discussion, and is missing the context with which to properly plan. Out of this phase actions do get assigned, yes, but often with little in the way of specific conditions to satisfy them. Results inevitably disappoint. And without the right kind of intervention to improve client observational power and add structured team conversations, this unsatisfactory cycle repeats.
What is an example of a Business Coaching Method:
Cycle P16: To generate a fresh perspective of the Situation we find ourselves in, or to gain new clarity about our objectives and strategy, it helps to look at the business as an inter-connected cycle of activities.
Each of the 16 P activity points in the cycle has stocks & flows within them: Characters, Culture, Customers (stocks), and Cash & Conversations (flows).
At the onset of an engagement we explore the Situation, identify 3 immediate Objectives, and co-author a Plan by which to achieve the results that have eluded the team to this point. Together we assess, track and modify the ongoing Execution of resolved actions.
How to learn more about my coaching perspective:
LinkedIn author page: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/ceocoachbillc