In today’s fast paced world of work, where change feels like one of the only constants, supporting your leaders in your organization is the greatest. Every day, leaders are not only navigating change but are doing so in the midst of also delivering quick turnarounds and results, all while performing in dynamic work and communication environments, and often managing dispersed or varied work style teams and personalities. It’s a lot. Not to mention, ideally, our leaders are also staying current on skills and industry related insights that make them effective, relevant and valuable while also investing time to develop their team members to both retain and grow their organizations!
Complexities of Leading
Many if not all of these leadership demands can be complex and require the ability to:
- Focus amidst the chaos of an everchanging business and economic landscape. The work still needs to get done. Their teams need them to lead.
- Plan and organize their approach to competing priorities, interests, and future needs both professionally and personally. When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Additionally, the tyranny of the urgent can be distracting and suck valuable time away from short-, mid- and long-term goals that carry big impact.
- Be accountable. Results are expected no matter what the circumstances are. Having lived through an unexpected global pandemic made that increasingly more clear.
- Operate with high emotional intelligence to both have the necessary awareness to regulate socially, appropriately, and effectively with other people, and within themselves. People are complex and leading teams across varied work styles (remote and virtual, in office, hybrid), varied behavioral styles and varied motivating drivers, requires a deep commitment to knowing and understanding the unique wiring of their people.
- Be resilient through change. Leadership is hard and they and their teams won’t always get it right the first time.
Unique Needs of Support
The leaders that make up your organization are as unique as the complexities within the world they are leading. Each one is at a different place in their journey. Whether they are seasoned executives, transitioning into a new role, navigating a new or stretch project, or just a rising star about to embark on this new space of leadership, coaching support needs to deliver targeted support to meet their unique needs and expand their capabilities to help them continue to grow and thrive. The demands of their job, their personal wiring and skill sets, their team, and life circumstances all make up the unique space they are in right now and require support that fits where they are at and where they hope to get in the future.
Moving away from “one size fits all” coaching programs
Traditionally, many organizations engage with coaching programs that use the same approach and philosophy every time. We are even seeing a trend toward “group coaching” as a way to contain costs. It may be that your organization deploys coaches to only address specific performance related issues. Or, it may be that your organization deploys coaches for project specific related support. Generic investment in the growth of leaders is another common approach in organizations, amongst others. Organizations are finding, however, that when they deploy a one-size fits all approach to coaching, they are missing key opportunities to support multiple leaders in meaningful ways and missing the opportunity to provide consistent, meaningful support to leaders for what they uniquely need.
Coaching Subscriptions support the unique needs of your organization
So how does an organization provide customized coaching without the generic approach of group coaching and not blow up their budgets? Moving your organization to coaching subscriptions allows you to provide consistent support to your leaders that can meet their unique needs all while leveraging services that create a consistent line item in your budget annually. So, what does this look like? It’s buying blocks of coaching hours on an annual basis and allowing those hours to be used for any and all types of coaching needed. This allows you to support:
- Yearlong, multi-touchpoint, coaching engagements for individual leaders and/or rising stars to improve leadership skills or ready them for a future transition.
- Targeted and focused project support to help challenge, stretch and grow their thinking in a specific area.
- Short (a few sessions)-Mid-term( 3-6months) multi-touchpoint coaching engagements to address concerns of leadership behaviors, or address productivity and accountability concerns or opportunities of individual leaders/rising stars.
- Targeted skill coaching like EQ (emotional intelligence) or working through other leadership curriculum with individual leaders/rising stars.
Coaching subscriptions give your organization the flexibility to offer what is needed, what is meaningful to your leaders unique needs, while maintaining a controlled expense through a budgeted line item that operates much like a retainer.
What benefits can you plan to see from any form of coaching engagements?
There are many when coaching is done right. A few but not all of them are:
- Improved leadership skills and performance to increase impact and influence
- Successful transitions to a new company or roles
- Enhanced productivity and interactions within a team(s)
- Increased self-awareness and emotional intelligence
- A greater commitment to accountability in order to help achieve results more quickly and communicate more effectively
- Address behaviors that stand in the way of their or their team members advancement.
Coaching is one of the best investments you can make in the growth and advancement of your organization. When talent is at a premium and the issues of attraction and retention cannot be ignored, investing in the type of support that allows you to meet the unique needs of many all within one program and budget line item is the solution.
The Vantage Group Way
Coaching has long been a part of the services we provide at The Vantage Group. With the dynamic and ever-changing business environment that was just discussed above and our clients are working to navigate, we found that there is a significant need to provide a flexible and multi-faceted approach to coaching support. One that meets multiple unique needs across their leaders and rising stars in an agile way, while also creating consistency in their budget for leadership development and support. This has led us to offering annual coaching subscriptions in addition to the traditional approach to coaching.
If you would like more information on pursuing coaching subscriptions for your organization, reach out today at info@vantagegroupinc.com