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Executive Coaching is a confidential one-on-one, mutually designed relationship between a leader and an executive coach. As a leader, coaching helps you address and resolve issues that limit your success, prepares you for additional responsibilities, or helps you jump-start your acclimation to a new position or culture.

During the coaching process, you explore skills and knowledge needed to get you where you want to go – important areas such as leadership, management, communication, political savvy, career decisions, executive presence, social acumen, executive image, work/life balance, and others. You can examine your strengths, blind spots, and perceptions of others while getting a clearer view of how different adapted behaviors result in greater effectiveness.

You may need to adjust to a different culture and a new team or quickly get a handle on a larger sphere of influence. Coaching can help you advance your skills and minimize the overwhelming feelings of added responsibilities. In today’s sensitive and fast-paced workplace, coaching allows you to explore ways of dealing with “politically sensitive” hurdles or get back on track after losing focus. It may simply provide you with an objective viewpoint that is not encumbered by the executive coach being a part of your company and feeling pressured to say the “right” thing.

Executive Coaching | Leadership Development | Kansas City | Kansas | KS | Missouri

Executive coaching process involves five steps:

Step I – Aware
Understanding your world and your organization is the first step in the executive coaching process. In particular, knowing your key initiatives, business priorities, and leadership challenges ensure that your needs remain top priority. It is also important to get an insight into the individuals that play a significant role in your world including direct reports, peers, and senior managers.

Once your individual work environment is clearly understood, the issues you want to address are identified. These may involve leadership style, management techniques, communication insights, career advancement, social acumen, executive image, and work/life balance.

Step II – Assess
Formal and informal assessments constitute this step. A battery of web-based instruments is administered and customized interviews are conducted with selected individuals. You will also be asked to describe your strengths and areas for improvement as well as leadership and communication styles.

Step III – Design
With the groundwork complete, you and your executive coach develop a plan during the design phase. It becomes your roadmap. In detail, you outline your desired outcomes, action steps for the long term, initial steps for the short term, measurements, needed resources, anticipated obstacles, and strategies to overcome them. As the coaching progresses, if new circumstances arise that need to be addressed changes are made to the plan.

Step IV – Implement & Measure
During this phase, you put your plan into action. You and your executive coach meet regularly to discuss various situations and to maintain focus on the objectives of the development plan. After each working session, you write action steps to integrate your growing knowledge and skills.

Measuring progress helps maintain momentum throughout the entire process. Established benchmarks ensure you are moving toward your goals. If the goals are not being achieved within a reasonable amount of time, new strategies will be discussed and the executive coaching process will be re-evaluated.

Step V – Celebrate & Follow-up
It’s time to celebrate! You’ve learned a lot during your executive coaching. You’ll leave with techniques for maintaining your progress. Part of this process involves a follow-up plan for scheduled telephone calls or face-to-face meetings with your executive coach, periodic reviews with senior management, and/or feedback from a select group of integral individuals. Your executive coach will make additional suggestions.

Executive coaching projects range from six months to one year. The length of time involved depends on the scope and depth of the issues being addressed. Meetings are typically a blend of face-to-face and scheduled telephone calls. One possibility is to have face-to-face meetings every other week for two hours each. If travel is involved half-day sessions are scheduled once a month. In between meetings telephone calls are scheduled to maintain the momentum. An alternative to meeting face-to-face is a virtual coaching model. This involves telephone calls each week or bi-monthly for a specific period of time.

The confidential, candid, politically safe process targets specific, practical, work-related behaviors. Coaching focuses on your development and requirements of your role in business resulting in:

• Increased success
• Higher productivity with a clearer focus
• Increased ability to deal with rapid change
• Minimized potential for getting off track
• Improved conflict management
• Refined communication style appealing to a broad array of audiences
• Reduced stress level and better work/life balance

Here’s what it takes. You must:

• Be perceived as a valuable employee with potential.
• Have a reason to change, accept the need to do so, and possess the determination to make necessary changes
• Believe a productive working relationship can be developed between you and your executive coach – and your coach must agree
• Share trust and respect with your executive coach
• Honor the confidentiality of the process

We provide coaches who bring experience that provides value to the relationship and a process that is clearly defined as well as results oriented. Our coaches provide a…

• Firm grounding in business knowledge
• Thorough understanding of a leader’s world
• Library of models and processes to share
• Policy of confidentiality applicable to all individuals involved
• High standard of personal and professional ethics
• Dedication to your success

Who Is S. C. Gatton?

Susan’s background includes being the Southwest Area Manager for The Forum Corporation, an international leader in management and sales training. In this position, she managed the southwest sales team and support staff, established the Forum Corporation as an industry leader in the region, and successfully built relationships with major corporations including: Conoco/Dupont, Ingersoll Rand, Texas Instruments, and others.

Susan served on the advisory board of the Charles Tandy American Enterprise Center, a part of the Neely Business School at Texas Christian University. The Charles Tandy American Enterprise Center (CTAEC) is a comprehensive executive resource organization that offers non-degreed executive training, education, and development to key companies in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, including Bell Helicopter, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Cook’s Children’s Hospital and others.

Due to Susan's experience and expertise she has appeared on television, KRLD radio talk show, and was featured on “Our American Workplace,” KFNX 1100 AM out of Phoenix, Arizona. She has been the subject of articles in major metropolitan newspapers across the U.S.A. including Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, and Dallas.

She is a past president of the North Texas Speakers Association and recipient of the Joseph Charbonneau award for her leadership in the speaking profession.

We have many clients in the Kansas City area and throughout the USA. They include:

American Century Investments	Verizon
JPMorgan Retirement Services	GlaxoSmithKline
Hallmark Cards	Texas Christian University
H & R Block	CitiCapital
Pembroke Hill School	FreddieMac
Johnson & Johnson	Fujitsu-ICL
Marriott International	INVESCO Real Estate
Bell Helicopter Textron	KPMG
Baker McKenzie LLP	Manulife Financial
Northern Trust Bank	Southern Methodist University
Texas Industries	Wells Fargo Bank
And many others...