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STRATEGY COACHING FOR BUSINESS & TEAMS
Create powerful change within your organisation based on trust and commitment of your leadership team.
Executive Ascent Coaching Program
Helping New Executives Build Their Leadership Skills
“What got you here won’t get you there.”
—Marshall Goldsmith
Leaders rising to an executive position need to extend their skillset and comfort zone considerably. They must master an increase in complexity and accountability while handling a greater number of stakeholders and high-impact decisions under uncertainty.
Executive coaching can help leaders tackle this new role with greater confidence, empathy, and self-awareness. This allows them to build their presence and authenticity in the new role, which will also increase acceptance from peers and former colleagues.
Think of a coach as a personal, trustful partner that will challenge your thinking and support your individual growth to a greater degree and more sustainably than any classroom leadership training ever could.
Simple Steps to Success
You Really Decide to Improve Yourself
Book an Appointment
Engage in Coaching
Voilà! Meet with new you!
Executive Ascent Program FAQs
What is strategy development?
Strategy development is the process of researching and identifying strategic options, selecting the most promising and deciding how resources will be allocated across the organisation to achieve objectives.
Why is strategy development important?
Having a basic understanding of what a strategy is and how to develop one is an important asset for every professional. A strategy provides guidance in turbulent times; it is the starting point of all goal-setting activities and ensures that individual actions are well-aligned.
What is a strategy development course?
In this strategic planning course, you will learn the strategic thinking concepts, skills and knowledge required to define the vision and mission for an organisation. You will learn how to make the critical decisions required to establish the strategic objectives and set the strategic direction for your organisation.
What do you learn in strategy class?
In Strategic Management, you’ll learn how you can manage businesses and projects proactively with a focus on long-term strategy,
Case Study
In one coaching engagement with a new managing director hired from outside the company, it became clear that his biggest struggle was to delegate effectively. This required gaining trust with new colleagues quickly, as well as efficiently identifying talent and people requiring closer leadership.
In our coaching engagement, we created a plan to build these capabilities. Instead of devising solutions on his own, our strategy was to let the executive have experts on his team propose solutions, which he then challenged respectfully where required. Thus, the executive was able to achieve ideal outcomes with a lower workload, while building better relationships with his employees. In turn, this allowed him to feel less overwhelmed and more in control. In the end, everyone benefitted from better decisions, more accountability and autonomy for talents, a better atmosphere, and lower stress levels for everyone involved.
Helping to Formulate & Implement Bold Strategies
Bold strategies: start-ups have them; incumbents need them. With the current pace of technological development, incremental innovation is not enough; instead, companies need to transform their business model to remain successful in the long run. To formulate bold strategies, leaders need the right mindset and psychological safety to explore all options. Bold strategies initially sound daunting. Gaining sustainable competitive advantage requires courage to take risks and confidence to be able to overcome future hurdles. Even efficiency measures need management buy-in, since they may result in disadvantages for some of the management staff (e.g. fewer executive positions after a merger).
Case Study
Dealing with these issues sounds more straightforward than it is. Take one company that is committed to improving collaboration between its technical departments. Three years and multi-million dollar projects later, the results were scrapped because parts of the leadership team were not ready to accept the negative personal implications of giving up local responsibility and power. As you can imagine, the official statement blamed IT, inadequate project results, and even legislation. Bold moves happen only when leaders leave their comfort zone to serve a larger purpose, even if they may have short-term concerns for their careers.
“If your why is strong enough, you will figure out the how.” —Bill Walsh
Transformative Executive Coaching helps to define the joint purpose (the executive team’s why) that provides the determination to overcome all business and personal obstacles that leaders will face. A good executive coach will unearth the motivation that lays beneath the numbers as well as the compelling story that leaders can share with their team. Great coaches will also observe contradictions and bring friction points out in the open, so they will not hamper future team efforts.
Many will think at this point that strategy definition is best left to the large established strategy consulting firms. I invite you to rethink this approach. A consulting approach requires a lot of time (and money) to acquire the knowledge that is deeply embedded in your organization, feed it into their a priori frameworks, perform data analysis to then feed you much of what you already know back to you. This approach has a few downsides:
- information can be misinterpreted
- people feel that the options have been formulated by “them” not “us”, which can lower the buy-in of key stakeholders
- your team does not go through the transformative shift and bonding process that happens on your journey from why you need to change, via what you will do, and how you will do it
- Finally, the presented solutions may not even be the best fit for your company
As a result, implementation often requires continuous consulting support (more money) or even worse, stagnates or stalls completely.
To be clear: I am not saying that consulting cannot support the strategy process; indeed, it has many helpful applications and consultants can provide a wealth of experience and knowledge. Good coaches will also share methods, expertise, and current research with you just as a consultant would. However, I believe that you are the expert in your industry and a truly bold strategy needs to come from within.
Helping Executives to Uncover Blind Spots
Research shows that most people are not able to see themselves clearly. For senior leaders, this phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that the higher you climb on the leadership ladder, the less likely it is that you will get candid feedback from your employees. It is lonely at the top. As a result, it is almost inevitable to develop blind spots of individual strengths and weaknesses. However, CEO self-awareness is a driver of company performance: leaders with high self-awareness can capitalize on their strengths and grow in areas that offer room for improvement.
Executive coaching can give you greater awareness of your skills and thinking patterns, revealing these blind spots by gathering feedback and 1:1 growth sessions:
- Gathering feedback from peers: good coaches will offer methods such as the discovery questionnaire or the 360° Feedback to collect information about strengths, weaknesses, and leadership styles of the executive. Employed at the beginning of an engagement, the coach and executive can compare their own perception with the perception of others.
- 1:1 growth sessions: the coach acts as a sounding board for the executive to reflect upon situations where they face difficulties, their thoughts, and reactions and uncover these blind spots. Often, the executive even identifies existing strengths that are seen as nothing extraordinary and are hence not leveraged sufficiently.
A coaching relationship builds on absolute confidentiality, respect, and honesty; it is free of corporate politics or any self-interest of the coach. It is this atmosphere of openness that allows execs to increase their self-awareness and uncover white spots in their feeling, thinking, and doing. Then, the coach will create accountability structures to work with you on these “soft topics” that otherwise easily fall under the table in the busy day-to-day. For example, starting a little trial to delegate an important task or giving one of the key experts greater autonomy.
Executive Career Coaching Services Switzerland
Do you feel unmotivated in your current job? Do you often ponder how it would be like to change? How high is your energy level to go into the office or start-up teams/zoom? How much of that energy level is fueled by coffee and your favorite colleagues? Are you making an impact? Or, have you not found the energy and time to look for something more motivating? Or maybe you are being held back because you are afraid to switch industries and lose your network? Possibly, you are also no longer working at your former company and now are looking for new challenges?
Working on something meaningful and inspiring matters for your life quality. Getting up with energy every morning to make an impact will not only help your satisfaction but also your career. Being in flow and showing up as a leader is also more fun than dragging on with what you are currently doing. Our careers are one of the most important cornerstones for extraordinary quality of life. Why wait to make a courageous change?
In Switzerland, we are lucky to have abundant possibilities. Diverse industries, start-ups to corporates, living and working in the city or close to the mountains. You have the choice. Personal Career Coaching is highly effective in supporting you to find the next step in your career.
Setting the focus of my ASCENT program on your career helps you to identify WHAT you want to work in, WHY, and HOW to get there. The result:
- Finding a new career that you’ll love and that you’re good at
- More confidence in yourself, your strengths, and the process
- Accountability to perform the necessary steps week-by-week
- A review of your documents (application letter, CV) to make sure your message comes across and maximize your chances
Executive Career Consulting Costs
As a leader or executive, you are naturally weighing the return on investment for career coaching. Costs for career consulting and coaching depend on the type of individual agreement and format, however, you can expect approximately 250 CHF per hour.
Considering the improvement of your valuable time spent, faster access to a new career, and higher chances of success for your next challenge, this investment is typically a no-brainer.
If you have doubts, enquire how your company can support you or our financing options. If you are not happy, we offer a 100% money-back guarantee for our services.
Executive Development Courses Benefits
There’s no doubt that our minds are the most powerful tools we have to create an extraordinary life for ourselves. However, in our busy day-to-day lives, we are happy to fit a session to train our bodies into our hectic schedule. Think about it: how much time have you spent in the last week training your body? How much have you spent training your mind?
Many leaders choose personal development courses to create the time to clarify their vision, develop their strengths, and realize more of their potential.
The ASCENT program blends certified transformative coaching, personal strategy, and alpinism to help you to become very clear on your vision for your future self, the “peaks” you want to climb in your life, your WHY, and your personal strategy on HOW to get there. It helps your personal development to become a better leader in your life and create a brighter future for yourself.
Self-Improvement Coaching For Self Transformation
As humans, we are wired to aim higher, run faster, fly higher, or dive deeper. In short: we want to push the limits of what is possible for us. Consequently, we find self-improvement is at the core of all areas of our lives:
- Run your first marathon
- Reach the next career level
- Spend more time with our spouse and kids
I know because I have pushed my personal limits in rock climbing and paragliding for years beyond what I thought was possible for me. Reaching a personal best, an achievement, or a new level of mastery simply feels good and allows me to be more confident on the next ventures.
However, aiming for more in all areas of your life can get overwhelming. Moreover, without proper focus and prioritization, some areas may fall off the radar and we are prone to losing balance.
Self-improvement coaching can help your personal transformation to reach your personal goals faster, with more clarity, and more confidence. It can also help you to keep the balance between all the areas of your busy life and set clear priorities.
The ASCENT program helps your self-improvement transformation by;
- Weekly video training & reflection exercises (the “theory” and useful concepts behind personal transformation)
- Bi-weekly 1:1 coaching calls (the “practice” in which we will clarify your personal situation, goals, what is holding you back, and how you can move forward most effectively)
This unique combination of “Theory” and “Practice” is more effective than any other concept that uses only one of those elements. For example, you can read a couple of books about self-improvement. But: will you ever start implementing what is most effective for you? Or, you can choose a classical coaching program without training. This will most likely help your self-improvement transformation. However, will you know and remember the life-changing concepts behind it? The ASCENT program provides you with both theory + practice for a maximum positive impact on your life.