Achieving Excellence through Executive Coaching

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1 Achieving Excellence through Executive Coaching

2 Good Leaders Accelerate with Good Coaching At White Water, we love to work with successful executives we always marvel at how well they respond to good coaching: they bring their skills and motivation, we bring the latest research and our experience with hundreds of their peers across different industries. We are with you when you prepare for your first big job, or when you face mid-career challenges, or simply when you want to become a better leader and bounce ideas in confidence with a trusted expert. Executive Coaching The First 100 Days Beyond Success Coaching Women to Lead Resilience & Stress Management

3 Executive Coaching Who is Executive Coaching for? For existing and emerging leaders who want to accelerate their development or find themselves in a position of solitude. For example: You are on the fast track to the top but are missing something: from influencing and people management skills, to gravitas and personal impact. Perhaps your company has promoted you quickly and expects you to pick up these new skills out of thin air. You want to clarify your vision for the business and how to build the right team including developing yourself Because you have been successful quickly, you have lost your peer group and your role models and need to bounce ideas off somebody neutral Your career seems to have hit the pause button : either because you are no longer motivated or because you seem to be hitting some sort of glass ceiling You have never taken the time to reflect on your personal progress and how you want to flourish and consider the broader context beyond business One-to-one Executive Coaching is the bedrock of personal development. White Water Leaders is unique in offering you not only a very experienced coach, but also a team of experts who can work with you on specific topics as needed. How does one-to-one Executive Coaching work? All coaching relationships start with a discussion of your specific objectives and an assessment of the starting point (e.g. psychometrics or 360 degree feedback). From there we develop a tailored programme. The role of the coach varies between that of facilitator and expert as appropriate. Each intervention starts with agreement on objectives and some homework is carried out between meetings. Our preference is to work intensely at the beginning with 2-3 hour face-to-face sessions, augmented by telephone and e-coaching as appropriate. How do you choose the best Executive Coach for you? If you work for a large organisation, you are likely to be asked to choose between proposed coaches. How do you tell a coach who helps clients to get their results from somebody simply sharing their experience? How can you find somebody who is psychologically competent and who has a deep understanding of business issues? Our coaches offer the perfect blend of business credibilty and psychological insight. Contact us to find out more: info@whitewaterleaders.eu

4 The First 100 Days Specialist coaching for special moments in your career In most cases, we work with you as generalist Executive Coaches. In some cases however, a more structured programme is called for, to answer a specific challenge. The first of these challenges is the first 100 days: The busiest time of your life So you have been appointed to the Big Job. What do you do tomorrow morning? All of a sudden everybody wants your attention, and everybody is watching your every move. But there is no-one to talk to any more. And the clock is ticking. If you don t do it in the first 100 days, you will never do it If you have been recently appointed to your first major leadership position, we provide neutral, experienced support at a time when you need to play many new roles under great time pressure and visibility. We help you to project-manage the complex set of analysis and decisions that you face, acting as sounding board, communication experts, financial analysts, business modellers or any other skill required while you adjust to the overwhelming amount of questions thrown at you daily. We help you prioritise what is really important and push back on unrealistic expectations. We also help you validate and build your team as well as manage internal and external stakeholders, including Non Executive Directors or higher level boards. Equally importantly, we also coach you to grow in confidence in your new role

5 Beyond Success Middle-age crisis, what middle-age crisis? You are a senior executive or an entrepreneur with one or more major successes behind you. Or you are developing senior people for a forward-looking organisation. You realise that we spend half of our early life training for success and the other half working hard to get it. But what do we do once we have reached the top, whatever that might be? Sometimes the next bonus, deal or promotion are met with So what? This is a time when random or extreme changes may be made and later regretted. Companies risk losing their best people when they are at their most valuable and you risk losing delight in what you do. Going beyond success Successful people need a sanity check to ensure they are still pursuing their dreams with their customary effectiveness. Taking time-out from a demanding existence to refresh ideas and goals is essential once a certain level of success has been reached. Our one-to-one executive coaching focused on going beyond success does just that: coaching for meaning and developing practical solutions. Preparing for your next success The same approach can also be used when your organisation and you decide to part company, perhaps through early retirement. In this case we work with you to identify your next area of success, as well as ensuring your legacy in the current business is preserved.

6 Coaching Women to Lead We originally resisted the idea of a different coaching approach for women: first we don t like to entrench differentiation if it is not necessary and second, any women-specific issue can be approached with traditional Executive Coaching methods and adapted for context. However, we also realised that we could play a part in helping accelerate the accession of women to the boardroom, creating financial value for our clients. Research on the business case, and how to engage both the organisation and women themselves is available in our latest book: Coaching Women To Lead (Routledge). We work with women leaders, just as we work with senior men, but we know which themes are likely to be important, which issues have to be confronted and which decisions have to be made at each life and career stage. In short, every senior woman should be coached, for reasons which are obvious from our interviews of 25 successful corporate women summarised in the book. More junior women can also benefit from coaching, dedicated programmes and peer networking. For them we have created a separate offering through our sister business: White Water Women (

7 Resilience and Stress Management Every single one of our clients works hard. Issues such as coping with a demanding workload can usually be managed through regular Executive Coaching but sometimes continuous stress can make you feel helpless. In other cases it is the whole team that has been working too hard for too long and is becoming dysfunctional. We can t change the economic climate, but we can work with individuals or your team to help them deal with long-term overwork, increase their ability to bounce back and absorb shocks as well as engage and look after their own teams. Executives can rid themselves of wasteful anxiety, anger and depression without psychiatric intervention or lengthy sick leave for burnout. Specific benefits of our approach include: Revitalised people and broadened thinking styles Higher levels of engagement and greater innovation More effective, timely decision making Better health and well-being Performance under pressure is a corporate expectation not always backed by the requisite support and development. The walking wounded are manning our corporations with high risk implications. Decisions are slowed down or avoided. Thinking becomes narrow and innovation dies just as we need new ideas to get us out of economic trouble. What is equally worrying is that this affects staff sitting at their desks right now. Do you know who they are or how this is impacting their performance? Retention of excellent people Anxiety levels go down and people are calmer and more confident as a result Depression is reduced as people regain a sense of control and overcome feelings of helplessness that paralyse them and the organisation People bounce back faster from failures and knock-backs

8 Working with

9 Look and Feel We offer two levels of Executive Coaching based on seniority and the complexity of the challenges at hand. We match you with the best coach in terms of fit and experience Boundaries and confidentiality are key. Our coaches are professionally supervised so that we know you are on the right track and that the relationship between you, the organisation and the coach is clear Serious doesn't mean boring! We do the heavy lifting in terms of research so you don't have to. Some clients like to know more about the background of interventions, others don't. In all cases our approach is warm and sessions are something to look forward to Progress depends on playing the game. Good habits take time to install, perceptions take time to change, but you can make a tremendous difference by fully engaging in trying new behaviours

10 Testimonials Coaching and feedback are challenging but supportive; I feel that the team at WW are genuinely interested in my long term development and attainment It has been hugely valuable to understand how my behaviour and reaction to certain situations can affect the whole team's morale and way of working A clear willingness to listen and not preach. The advice is based not only on long years of experience in our industry, but on a deep knowledge of human psychology Without WW support, like most women, I would have just worked harder to a great personal detriment. Instead I adapted to cope with the challenges and kept a healthy approach WW people demonstrate a refreshing combination of deep subject expertise underpinned by superb delivery WW has been working with our emerging leaders for years... they provide resilience and equip them with the skills, attitudes and confidence they need to progress in their careers

11 Clients

12 Give us a shout! To discuss Executive Coaching in general, or any of the specialist coaching topics above, give us a call on +44 (0) ask for Averil Leimon or François Moscovici. We are always happy to meet you informally and in confidence. You can also write to us: info@whitewaterleaders.eu We look forward to hearing from you! White Water Leaders is a trading name of White Water Strategies Group Ltd - July 2014