An Executive Coach – Your ROI

What’s the Return On Investment of working with an Executive Coach? This is such a juicy question. Ten years and over 1000 clients ago, as I tentatively opened my doors to my first incarnation of being an executive coach. I had very little understanding of the value I was bringing to my market. I charged accordingly at £50 to 100 an hour – where I could get that fee and I worked with some middle managers, some junior executives and many small business owners most of whom hired me out of their own salaries.

What happened? My clients thrived. There’s no other way to say it. They were already good at what they did and since most of them had genuinely never had an agenda-free, them-focussed, you-define-your-own-success kind of conversation in their lives, the executive coaching conversations worked to massive effect. My clients were promoted, they got salary increases, some moved to dream jobs, others made huge personal changes and all of them thought thoughts and took actions that they wouldn’t otherwise have known were within their sphere of choices.

How did I measure these results? It just couldn’t be done on monetary terms. How do you measure clarity, reduced anxiety, increased courage, richer conversations and raised awareness? It could only be measured through lives lived out and success stories shared.

After about 50 clients and repeatedly seeing their huge shifts, I had to put my fees up. I continued to work for individuals – authors, publishers, editors, film producers – and then increasingly I go taken on by small then large corporates. I was seeing 2 – 6 clients a day and loving every conversation and every little light-bulb moment – of which there were many.

At this time – about 2004 – I was adding to my executive coach skillset with some further study around metaphysics. Thoughts become things. What we believe is what we see. Limited thinking produces limited results; courageous thinking creates extraordinary & fast-tracked outcomes.

How did I measure the success of this extra service? Again, it couldn’t be done on monetary terms. My clients were loving it though – doubling their sales numbers, launching (and closing) new brands and some even starting families where they’d previously given up hope.

Every year I reviewed my fees and reviewed my client results until I was working with MDs, senior directors and international business owners. At this level the fact that I charged £400 an hour and £2500 a day really wasn’t that relevant to an individual or a company. If a finance president had a breakthrough realisation, his company was the 7-figure beneficiary of that. If a marketing director left a coaching session with a richer strategy, her CEO and shareholders would celebrate those results and bank the bonus.

The money and the sales were never the point – they were the measurable outcomes. The point was (and still is) that a progressive professional could hire an executive coach to expose more of their potential and make their life easier, more meaningful and more successful.

When you hire an executive coach you believe your work life and your personal choices will change for the better. If you pick an experienced executive coach this will undoubtedly be the case. Your results can be measured by the improvements in your own life then and also in the lives of your colleagues, your family & friends, and those you’ll never even know that you’ve touched and change.

A worthwhile return on investment is not just about what’s released in your own experiences, it’s ultimately about what you give back –  your ultimate life’s legacy.

About Author: 

Jennifer Broadley is one of the UK's leading executive coaches. She works with corporate leaders, business directors and successful entrepreneurs. She specialises in CEO coaching, prosperity coaching and providing the most cutting-edge and intuitive leadership and personal success programs in the UK. Jennifer is passionate about the ongoing self improvement of the world's future business leaders – the way-showers for our precious next generation. She coaches, speaks, writes and runs workshops on 'The 7 Steps to Personal & Professional Freedom'®. You can buy her book of the same name from www.Amazon.co.uk You can call, email or message Jennifer from www.JenniferBroadley.com.

Executive Leadership Coaching – Busting the Myths

Over the last fortnight, in the process of building an ‘extension’ onto my present business activities, I’ve met an extraordinary range of diverse leaders – some corporate, some entrepreneurial, most a bit of both. Here’s what’s been interesting to me – they have each been successful in their own way, achieving well (from my limited exposure to their work & home lives) and motivated – but not a single one of them had considered engaging an executive coach, a mentor, or an independent  leadership partner to speed up the process of living their vision?

Here’s what I also noticed, when given the opportunity to talk one-to-one, every single one of them – after 30 minutes of me listening, asking some key questions and feeding back to them what I’d heard – said they felt clearer, more motivated and more confident in their ability to achieve the vision they’d been holding in their minds. They all said that they’d invest in regular coaching conversations if they were sure to achieve ‘twice the success in half the time’. That means that the expectations they might been holding for 4 years are achieved in one. Imagine the reality of what that means for work life, home life, family, fitness, finances … it’s got to be worth exploring.

Here’re the 5 questions I get asked most when a new executive leader is working out the value of coaching:

1. What if I don’t have any issues to talk to you about

Great, because I don’t work with clients who have issues, I work with clients who have unreleased potential. They’re already successful at what they do. What they want from me is perspective, clarity and someone to hold them accountable as they stretch their abilities beyond what they’d do alone.

2. How can you teach me if you haven’t done what I’m doing

I’m not a teacher or a consultant – I don’t have your answers. I’m a coach, I have the questions – you’ve got your answers. It’s a huge myth – perpetuated by trainers, consultants and mentors (none of whom are coach trained) – that executive coaches will offer up solutions. We won’t. I equip you to explore, get clear and expand. Your executive coach should be executive coach trained and preferably have 1000s of hours worth of relevant experience and quality client testimonials.

3. How can you help me get ahead in medicine (or construction, media, IT, retail, oil & gas) if you’re not a medic

Great leadership is about developing the courage and skill set to know yourself deeply. You can only engage, inspire and stretch your teams and collaborators to the point at which you’ve experienced that engagement, inspiration and stretching yourself.

4. Most of the directors and CEOs I know don’t use a coach

Don’t be too sure about that. And ask yourself, of the leaders I have access to, are most of them true innovators, creatives and ground breakers? Because if they are, you can be sure they’re smart enough to be investing in all the development available to them to be clear of their motives, to multiply their skill set and to drive their business forward at speed. You’d be surprised at how many stand-out leaders are quietly partnering with a great executive coach.

5. How do I know it’s going to be worth the investment

You don’t. But here’s the thing – if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to get the results you’ve always had. Expanding your thinking and your skill set is the quickest way possible to start to play a bigger game. To stretch your vision, your action taking, your confidence, your influence and your overall results. Do what you do with a new restaurant, a new sport, a new relationship – book in a date and have the experience.

About Author: 

Jennifer Broadley is one of the UK's leading executive coaches. She works with corporate leaders, business directors and successful entrepreneurs. She specialises in CEO coaching, prosperity coaching and providing the most cutting-edge and intuitive leadership and personal success programs in the UK. Jennifer is passionate about the ongoing self improvement of the world's future business leaders – the way-showers for our precious next generation. She coaches, speaks, writes and runs workshops on 'The 7 Steps to Personal & Professional Freedom'®. You can buy her book of the same name from www.Amazon.co.uk You can call, email or message Jennifer from www.JenniferBroadley.com.

A CEO’s legacy

Leaders define success in any number of ways – increasing turnover, launching innovative products, hiring world-class teams, going global, changing lives.
 
Some CEOs are credentialed and experienced to the hilt; others are risk takers and their own best PR machine. Some step in to lead a share-held company; others start from the ground up turning millions into billions in a single decade. Whatever their style and character, every CEO holds the intention that they leave a company and its people – employees and clients – healthier, happier and richer for them having been involved.

How do you train for leadership though? What are the lessons? Can anyone make it to the top of a medium or large company? Is it about qualifications, contacts, networking, character, good-fortune, divine-interventions? Who knows … in reality a heady mix of all of it probably.
The skills of a good CEO include:

• awareness – what attracts a customer to their brand and how do we provide more of that
• advanced people skills – spotting talent and influencing and motivating with sincerity
• a vision for the future of the organisation – its products & services, its people and its customers & clients

Exceptional skills would be:

• servant leadership – a proactive empathy with each person involved in the business cycle and an full-time investment in empowering their greater expression personally & professionally
• active life-long learning – where personal development is ongoing and equally sought out in times of challenge and of success
• collaborative mindset – where it’s not about ‘more for us’ it’s about ‘more for all’ – where knowledge, resources and route-to-market are shared in order that financial and environmental benefits further reward the customer  as well as the companies’ involved

And those leaders who move forward the fastest and surest:

• have an exceptional leadership team supporting the shared company vision
• actively expand their ceiling of understanding – intellectually (where are the next technical and people innovations coming from), inspirationally (how do I manage this newest team dynamic to continue to sustain high performance in my directors), intuitively (how do we best respond to the rapidly changing market place, purchasing styles and global clientelle) – and put in place stimulus that keep them thinking at the edge of their comfort zones (mentors, executive coaches, what-if hubs, mastermind groups)
• cultivate a culture of creativity, diversity, authenticity and integrity – which cascades from the CEO through the leadership team to the mangers, teams, collaborating companies and out to a market which responds in kind by repeatedly investing in the products and services of that brand.

More for all and less to none – that’s an overall winning CEO legacy!

About Author:
Jennifer Broadley is one of the UK's leading executive coaches. She works with corporate leaders, business directors and successful entrepreneurs. She specialises in CEO coaching, prosperity coaching and providing the most cutting-edge and intuitive leadership and personal success programs in the UK. Jennifer is passionate about the ongoing self improvement of the world's future business leaders – the way-showers for our precious next generation. She coaches, speaks, writes and runs workshops on 'The 7 Steps to Personal & Professional Freedom'®. You can buy her book of the same name from www.Amazon.co.uk You can call, email or message Jennifer from www.JenniferBroadley.com. 

Your Ceiling of Success

You know how sometimes it takes an intensity of the same thing to occur multiple times before the penny drops? Like 5 super-valuable executives leave the company within a 3 month period before a CEO recognises that they’ve all been reporting to the same undeveloped senior director. Or targets go unmet over 6 terms in a sales department although the training’s great, before the issue is pinpointed that the client relationship management software has glitches and requires an investment and update.

Recently I had an influx of  senior executives, from a range of companies and backgrounds but who had all excelled in their roles early in their careers. It took me a while to recognise the pattern –   each of them was in his or her early 40s; they were directing their business sectors, if not MDing the entire company; they were effective in their role and respected within the company; each was happy personally, in a committed partnership with children; and crucially … each had come to a point where their apparent personal & professional success was no longer fully satisfying.

There’s a program that I work on with senior executives called The 7 Steps to Personal & Professional Freedom (you can get the simple version in my book of the same title – available on Amazon.co.uk), and the first step is always Clear & Courageous Thinking. It’s what we do, consciously or otherwise, when we imagine the outcome we want for our lives. Many people picture a version of what they’ve seen their parents achieve (so doctor’s children become doctors, teacher’s children go into teaching)  and expand on it a little. Others have dreams as children with no model present in their family or social groups (the daughter of a miner becomes a entrepreneur, or the son of a plumber becomes a lawyer).

Wherever I see high achievement in executives in their late 30s and early 40s, there’s been a clear thinking process since childhood, which has often involved bigger-than-average risk and action taking to get there – that’s the courageous part –  (so they might have moved country with small children whilst in their 30s in order to say ‘yes’ to the next corporate step up; or they might have taken a temporary salary cut at a key point in their career in order to shift from an creative path to a commercial path because it looked as though there might be more longevity and opportunity there in the long run).

Here’s the challenge though – those who have held a clear and courageous vision since childhood often achieve the outcome within 10-15 years of their post-university career. And that doesn’t fit with the historic story of ‘work until your 60, then retire rich and happy’. They’re already rich and happy and they’re only 42 years old! These executive are managing a ceiling of success because they had no clue to imaging bigger, brighter or more purposeful.

Breaking through the ceiling is where a successful director will ask ‘so what does ‘more’ look like?’, or ‘how do I add meaning to my ambition?’, or ‘what if I took all my transferable skills and knowledge and started again from ground up?’. It’s a beautiful piece of new, clear and courageous thinking; the next step of expansion. And, similar to when they were children, the adventure’s just beginning and the sky’s no limit!

About Author:

Jennifer Broadley is one of the UK's leading executive coaches. She works with corporate leaders, business directors and successful entrepreneurs. She specialises in CEO coaching, prosperity coaching and providing the most cutting-edge and intuitive leadership and personal success programs in the UK. Jennifer is passionate about the ongoing self improvement of the world's future business leaders – the way-showers for our precious next generation. She coaches, speaks, writes and runs workshops on 'The 7 Steps to Personal & Professional Freedom'®. You can buy her book of the same name from www.Amazon.co.uk You can call, email or message Jennifer from www.JenniferBroadley.com.

Coaching conscious leaders

It takes an aware and bold leader to continue to step into areas of discomfort as they stretch themselves in the name of personal & professional development. They know already the link between self development and higher results – and they make conscious decisions to commit the time and effort to the ongoing refinement of thoughts, words, actions, skills.

Most leaders I’ve worked with are:

• Clear thinkers – the conversations they’re having in the moment have a ‘how is this contributing to the biggest future’ slant on them
• Resilient – they don’t take knock-backs personally. They learn, adjust, get up and approach again from a different angle
• Risk takers – the next steps are calculated and when the key people are in the position they’re going

Beyond this awareness are servant leaders who in addition:

• Engage their heart – they consider the individuals, they go beyond ‘biggest future’ to ‘legacy’
• Emit authenticity – they’re healthy, disciplined, inspired and conscious that ‘all of it’ (people, attitude, ethos, standards, respect …) contributes to ultimate success and results
• Live accountably – there’s no blaming; just the highest personal standards of clarity, impeccable speech & motivation and they ‘be the change they want to see’

In a recent conversation I heard this: ‘most of the adults I work with use the same emotional strategies they were using in their teens’. Thankfully that’s not my own experience with my clients, but I get what he meant in saying that.

If you take 100% responsibility for evolving into the sort of person who can be, do, have and achieve the things you dream about, you can experience the freedom that goes with it; because then everything’s something you can do something about.

Coaching conscious leadership is tough head, heart & soul work. Persistence in strengthening those skill-sets though brings with it unparalleled results, extraordinary rewards and individuals who literally become beacons in their lifetime.

Jennifer Broadley is one of the UK's leading executive coaches. She works with corporate leaders, business directors and successful entrepreneurs. She specialises in CEO coaching, prosperity coaching and providing the most cutting-edge and intuitive leadership and personal success programs in the UK. Jennifer is passionate about the ongoing self improvement of the world's future business leaders – the way-showers for our precious next generation. She coaches, speaks, writes and runs workshops on 'The 7 Steps to Personal & Professional Freedom'®.You can call, email or message Jennifer from www.JenniferBroadley.com.

When enough’s enough: business leaders going AWOL!

Absent Without Leave (AWOL) is a military term used when a soldier is absent from where he/she should be but without intent to desert.

I started this week with a list of ‘must do’s’ deadlined for the end of this month. Program development, video re-records, radio show interviews, updates from my team … all this amongst doing the one thing I love most in my business executive coaching with my amazing leadership, business owner and professionals clients!

I looked at the list on Monday morning, looked at the spaces in my schedule this week and you know what I did? – I scrumpled the list up tightly and binned it. ’I'm only going to do what I love this week’ I said.

So, in the gaps on Monday I finished reading ‘The Bond’ by Lynne McTaggart. In the gaps on Tuesday I started reading my first Marshall Goldsmith book (hmmm – me likey!). Wednesday followed pattern and was rounded off with an hours drive south to have supper with an inspiring friend I hadn’t seen in nearly a year.

On my drive back north through the Fife fields & farmland I just had this massive sense of gratefulness. The sun was shining on the half-harvested barley fields, I was tapping back into a sense of creativity that’s been the catalyst for up-levelling my business on more than one occasion over the past decade, and my calmness quotient was overflowing because I CAN go AWOL once in a while and everything won’t come crashing down around me.

But what if you don’t work for yourself and you’re not the boss? What if you’re in a corporate role, directing a team, with projects to complete and accountable for meeting targets and the company depends on your results? Is AWOL an option?

It’s a tough one to answer. In my 10 years of prosperity coach I haven’t met a single professional who hasn’t at some point considered jumping ship or initiating an ‘extreme career change’. Some, have been on the edge of quitting, are disillusioned, or just down-right exhausted from a no-respite, limited-appreciation corporate culture.

Question is … where does the responsibility lie for the intellectual, emotional and spiritual health of a workforce? Is it with a business to ensure all it’s leaders remain engaged and motivated? Or with the individual to manage their ongoing career goals within their overall life expectations? A bit of both, however, my experience would encourage the latter – it can only be YOU who decides what works best for you and only you can know fully the elements of your life that impact your decision to stay, go or re-design your position.

Here’s what I also know to be true:

• Getting clear about what you want – hours, pay, projects, team make up, opportunities to progress, increase or decrease in responsibilities, reporting lines, work-life balance – is the key to being able to communicate that over time to your business. If you don’t know, they can’t help you.
• Negotiating regular professional changes inside your company – preferably while you’re calm enough to be factual and highlight the benefits on all sides – keeps you and your company fresh and constantly looking for a collaborative and positive future.
• Extending flexibility as individually required within your team enhances their motivation to work and, by extension, your satisfaction because more is achieved in less time.

The lesson here: AWOL in corporate cultures is for extreme cases only. And WAY before you reach that stage … get thinking, get talking, get feeling; take responsibility, and take action … and get an independent professional involved.Best uk sucess coach are here to support leaders each step until they’re entirely living their Personal & Professional Freedom!