What Clients Have Used Coaching For
Executive Learning and Development Plan

Whether or not you have a formal executive learning and development plan, you may have some of the same goals as our clients. Over a period of six months we closely tracked what clients addressed during their coaching engagement. What follows is a basic synopsis of that study.

1. Improving the Organization. Leaders were focused on introducing organization-wide improvements. The same held true where the executive held responsibility for only sections of the organization.

2. Improving and Leveraging the Way They Used Their Time. Leaders wanted to learn how to set and reach for their highest priorities. Most worked on improving their planning abilities and how they allocated and protected their time for achieving priorities throughout the day.

3. Improving People Skills. Executives consistently worked on improving how they related to others around them. They were serious about becoming even better listeners, making greater use of questions and communicating with greater clarity, reducing the opportunity for misunderstanding and inaction.

4. Teasing Out New and Incubating Ideas. Our coaching calls have consistently been the playground to work on, clarify and further develop ideas and insights that can move the aims of the organization forward.

5. Addressing Potential Blind Spots. Even where clients have experienced considerable success, they realized that there were career or success limiting behaviors that need to be addressed. Coaching was a safe place to explore possible blind spots in behavior, work and leadership practices.

6. Work More Effectively with Their Leadership Teams. Leaders worked on improving team presentations, improving the flow of information and generally working on anything that could enhance their team's success. They were intent on developing future leaders within the organization and guiding the executive learning and development plans of high potentials.

7. Determine and Articulate Vision and Strategy. Most leaders wanted to inspire and not simply require of their team and workforce. Many worked on improving clarity of language in writing or speaking about future vision and strategic execution.

8. Expressing Frustration and Then Moving Forward. Every leader knows there are and will continue to be people and process problems. Some days it can grind you down and executives need a safe place to vent. Leaders used coaching time to express and examine frustrations, shift thinking and positively focus on moving forward.

9. Using Non-judgmental Feedback for Personal and Professional Growth. Leaders used coaching as a sounding board to think through situations, concerns and questions out loud. Leaders spent time using us to ask the right questions, gain clarity and design actions.

10. Improving Their Capacity to Harness Stress and Reduce the Possibility of Burnout. Since we believe stress is an important tool to build leadership capacity, clients spent time learning from their stress and taking that insight and applying it to new and developing situations, personally, professionally and organizationally.

11. Integrating Spiritual Beliefs into Executive Responsibilities. Christian leaders with a God-centered worldview and work ethic worked intentionally on building character qualities and behaviors they felt were reflective of their beliefs.

If you would like to see what clients have worked on since we began tracking in 1998, read this.

If required, we can help you turn this into a more formal Executive Learning and Development Plan.


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