NextGen. Coaching™ What is it and are you worth the investment?

Specialist coaching support (often an external coach, brought in from outside the organisation), only ever used to be made available to very senior people in the organisation; the ‘C’ Suite.

Those higher echelons of people who have ‘chief’ in their job titles; Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Information Officer, (CIO).

These are the Board members responsible for the direction and strategy of the organisation and this is the level that ambitious leaders are meant to aspire to.

However, these roles are few and far between. Realistically, most organisations of a reasonable size will have around 30 ‘C Suite’ roles at most (more if they are US companies and also have Vice Presidents (VPs) as well), and around 100 ‘D Suite’ executives. The D Suite are also senior personnel with a lot of operational responsibility who work long hours and arguably, don’t always receive the support they need. Sure, they may get to attend standard internal or external leadership development events occasionally, but that’s not the same thing as personalised coaching or mentoring support. This is why we’ve created a new concept in Executive Coaching; NextGen Coaching™

NextGen. Coaching™ is:

• Specifically designed for the D Suite to take them to the next level of thinking and performance.
• Both an operational and strategic perspective, focused on developing the coachee’s own Authentic Leadership style and creating a culture of teamwork that will drive real-time operational results. These results have a real £value and will create a greater return on investment (ROI) than the cost of the coaching programme.
• Designed around applied psychology. Three embedded themes run throughout the whole programme and link the modules together:
  Authentic Leadership – developing your own leadership style
  Cognitive Fitness – thinking in the right ways at the right time
  Creating Culture – “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” (Peter Drucker)
• A new and innovative hybrid model. Unique in the offerings for senior level coaching programmes, NextGen. Coaching™ includes some pre-coaching input. Each module is put into context and includes a small amount of focused pre-reading with signposting to additional relevant and useful information. The subsequent coaching session then builds on the coachee’s knowledge, integrating new learning into their leadership toolbox and creating small but significant actions that support the three themes; thereby adding to their leadership skills and capability.
• A flexible model. The four Core Modules of Self- Awareness, Leading and Managing Teams, Leading and Managing Change, and Leading and Managing Productivity and Performance, are supported by two Optional Modules that the leader chooses for themselves depending on their needs and their organisational priorities.
• A holistic model. More than ever, it’s important that when considering leadership development, we put it into the context of the whole person and their whole lives. Work issues effect our personal relationships and our personal relationships influence our effectiveness at work. The most personal relationship that we have is with ourselves, which is why the first Core Module is Self-Awareness. The NextGen. Coaching™ programme is designed with psychology to make leaders better partners, better parents, better friends and better colleagues as well as more effective and authentic leaders.

Are you worth the investment?

Every person in your organisation is worth investing in. Every person, at every level and in every role has something to bring to the table; their own unique combination of strengths that will add value. Every person in your organisation is already being invested in; wages are paid not just for the daily value that we bring to our role and the results we have already delivered, retrospective wages also include an element of payment for the potential that we bring to an organisation.

At a more pragmatic and concrete level, every training course someone attends and every project someone becomes involved with, is also an investment in their learning. However, to accelerate their learning and the results they influence, leaders often need more focused and personal, tailored support. Mentoring helps, but it’s not enough. NextGen. Coaching™, because it includes a focus on translating a leader’s learning into real value and real team results, will generate greater £value than its £investment cost.

Think of yourselves like a football team, where every player has a buy-in and transfer value. In short, not only are you worth the investment, by implication, so is every member of your team. As a leader, your learning is going to be your team’s learning and adding value to you will add value to them.