We are not going to go into the age-old question of leaders being made or born. The award winning book, Good to Great, talks about 5 levels of leadership with Level 5 being at the top. Level 5 leaders are humble but relentless in their pursuit of the organization’s success. They accept blame for failures but deflect praise towards others. Are these traits innate or learned? Clearly, some are an inherent part of the leader’s personality. But other key aspects of exceptional leadership can be learned through professional development programs.

Measuring the results, which in the business environment usually means return on investment (ROI), for executive coaching and leadership development programs can sometimes be elusive. Our clients will tell us that they are extremely pleased with the results of our work, but they can’t quite put their finger on how the hard business numbers have benefited. That is when we help them to see the tremendous benfits of professional executive coaching.

We start this process by exploring benchmarks that we had taken at the beginning of our programs. These benchmarks measure how well teams are meeting their objectives in both time and deliverables. We then explore the productivity of these teams after their leaders, and sometimes the entire team, have participated in our leadership development programs. In the vast majority of cases, the hard numbers (return on investment) immediately become clear. Teams that are well led, perform better against the bottom line in these ways:

• They meet their deadlines and often beat them. An added advantage is that they often do this while working LESS overtime than they did in the past.
• Their attrition rates are lower – meaning less valuable experience is lost and the cost in time and money of training new talent is drastically reduced.
• The quality of their deliverables in terms of meeting requirements is improved. Expectations management is vastly improved meaning they work to understand expectations in more clear terms and work to deliver against them.

There are other measures but those listed above usually result in thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars of improvement against the bottom line when compared to the same performance before executive coaching and leadership developing programs were in place.

Speaking strictly from a program perspective, Jerry Kleinhaus of Oakley Advisors says that leadership development for women should not differ between male and female executives. The qualities, behaviors, tools, and training for exemplary leadership is blind to gender. Indeed, man and women both respond to the same elements of strong leadership. That having been said,, Jerry Kleinhaus goes on to say that women executives continue to face challenges that can be both unfair and harmful to the business. The demand for women to “act more like a man” not only places unfair obligations on women executives, but also prevents them from maximizing their contribution. Companies that continue to allow this disparity to exist are only robbing themselves of better performance in all categories, including growth and financial performance.

The professional executive coaches at Oakley Advisors provide Executive Leadership Development, Talent Management, and Executive Coaching that focus especially on leadership development for women executives and help to create corporate cultures that maximize the contribution of all managers.

In the thousands of years before the 20th century, compensation was probably the only element deciding what work one would do. People did not have the luxury provided our high standard of living to choose work that is not always the most lucrative. Today we have the choice to do work which may pay less in exchange for the satisfaction of the work or lesser time commitments. That having been said, compensation remains the must dominant element for most people in making career choices.

We encourage our clients to examine compensation first because it often shortcuts the entire decision process. If you find that you simply cannot afford to take make the career change, then the decision process is over. As much as you may hate your current job or dislike the imbalance it causes in your life, you will have to work out an economic solution before gong any further. This sometimes involves developing a plan to reduce a client’s economic dependency on their current position. These plans may involve years, but many of our clients find that it is worth it in order to change their lives.

We often see our clients struggling with the decision as to whether to leave their current job to take another. Sometimes the new position offers more money and better benefits. Sometimes it is just the opposite – less money but it is better fit for our client’s skills or what they really want to do. Making the decision to take one job for another is easier if it is broken down into 3 core elements – compensation, satisfaction, and balance. Over the next few entries we will talk about each of these separately

Executive coaching, like any other service, follows the basic market mechanics of supply and demand. And there has been a lot of demand! And the supply follows. With rapid growth, that supply is not all of the same quality. Today’s executive coaching market is filled with everything from psychologists, to former HR people, to people who bought an executive coaching franchise received only a few hours of training.

Executive coaching certification programs are quickly being established, maturing, and setting standards for professional executive coaching. Certifications from major universities that endorsed by professional organizations are becoming the key to recognizing professional, competent executive coaches. A lack of a rigorous certification is a big warning alarm as to the coach’s qualification and ability. Bad or improper coaching can do more harm than good.

In yesterday’s entry we talked about the relationship between leadership and motivation. One of my readers mentioned that fear can be a great motivator. So, is someone who motivates by instilling fear a great leader? Wow. We could debate that one for quite some time. There are endless examples of leaders who have used fear extensively (Kahn, Hitler, Stalin, Hussein). Many of these leaders accomplished impressive results. But were they great leaders.?

I think the short answer is that, by some standards they were great leaders, but they were not GOOD leaders. And I do not mean morally good, which they clearly were not. What I mean is that leadership and motivation through fear can be effective but it will never be optimal.

People who react due to fear will never aspire to achieve more, to make a greater contribution. They will never learn the finest elements leadership. And, perhaps most importantly, they will never teach the elements of exceptional leadership to those who come behind them. And for all that, I say leadership and motivation by fear is not good leadership at all.

That is a great question. If you think carefully about it, the primary purpose of leadership is to motivate others. But there is more to great leadership than motivation. Leaders inspire long after the initial motivation. And, just as importantly, they teach others the elements of great leadership. Passing on the legacy of leadership is what elevates good leaders to great leaders.

It may seem like just semantics. But there is a reason that we make a separate reference to leadership development. Executive coaching can concentrate on improving a wide variety of management behaviors, only one of which is leadership. But leadership is so lacking in so many American businesses that we feel it merits special attention. We are not alone. One of the most fabled executives in America business history, Lee Iacocca, has just published his newest book, “Where Have All the Leaders Gone?” Mr. Iacocca’s work makes a strong case for what professional executive coaches have recognized for the past decade. American business’s lack of strong leadership has reached epidemic proportions.

There are times when executives know they are not acting with accountability. But still, they are driven by the obsession to be number one. Rather than blaming, they deny. This takes the form of stonewalling and bunker mentality. Often they delude themselves into thinking they are acting strongly by “holding their position”.

The biggest problem with this behavior is that it leads directly to…. NOTHING! The organization becomes paralyzed. No one can address the issue or begin to move forward because the executive will not admit there is a problem. Because it freezes the organization in a bad position, this can be one of the worst by products of the number one society.