Executive Coaching Philosophy

A Boulden Executive Coaching assignment typically consists of six sessions, each held about one month apart. The key features are:

Chemistry Check

There is an initial ‘chemistry check’ between the coach and the coachee to ensure that they will feel comfortable working with each other.

Internal Sponsor

We ask that an internal Sponsor be “signed up” so that (i) the coachee has someone of influence within the company that they can access for help with overcoming obstacles (if that should become necessary) and (ii) at least one key stakeholder can see that the coachee is making changes and developing their capabilities. The coachee can do this directly,or we can approach potential sponsors on their behalf; whatever seems most appropriate given the specific situation. In some organisations (where there is not an established coaching culture) we sometimes omit this aspect of the programme, though we do recommend its implementation.

Coaching Contract

We agree a ‘Coaching Contract’ in which the roles and responsibilities of the parties (the coach, the coachee and the sponsor) are spelled out.

Sessions

There are six sessions (usually face to face), the first session of which focuses on developing a “well formed outcome” so the goals for the coaching are clear, compelling and concrete. During the following sessions we do whatever is necessary to help the coachee to achieve their outcome.

Contact

The coachee can call or email the coach at any time in between the face-to-face sessions if there is anything that that want to discuss, review or talk through. We write a short coaching report after each session that goes to the sponsor and the coachee, so that everyone knows what progress is being made and a clear Return on Investment can be shown (of course no sensitive or personal information will go in the report and the coachee approves it before it goes to anyone else.)

Supervision

We supervise the coach to make sure that they are working along the right lines (this takes the form of a phone call between the coach and another Boulden Coach after each session to monitor progress).

Leadership Profiling

We can also carry out a detailed individual needs analysis (which we call ‘leadership profiling’) based on a combination of one or more psychometrics or diagnostics (e.g. 360 feedback, Hogan, MBTTI, TK conflict inventory, BARON EQi etc.) the specific mix of instruments is, of course, agreed on a case by case basis.