43 Berkeley Square, London, W1J 5FJ
+44 (0)20 7112 6750

EXECUTIVE COACHING

The essence of Clive’s approach to executive coaching is about helping clients to discover and mobilise the full range of their personal motivations, talents and interests and maximise their colleagues’ contributions, in the service of their individual and organisational goals.

Coaching for better leadership

Executive coaching is a great opportunity to work on all aspects of leadership. The following three core areas of leadership come up in every one of Clive’s coaching assignments:

  • Individual leadership
  • Relationships up, down and across the organisation
  • Future career plan

In the following interview from the 2009 Ridler Report, one of Clive’s CEO clients talks about how working with Clive helped them.

Download interview
(page 12)

 

Outcomes of working with Clive

Clive’s clients report the following outcomes from their executive coaching engagements:

  • Increased ability to motivate their teams and manage challenging work relationships
  • Greater congruence between how they see themselves as a leader and how others see them
  • Better sense of their own career direction and how this aligns with their organisation’s strategy
  • Clearer focus on what really matters to drive their organisations forward
  • Improved clarity and balance between their work drivers, values, motivations, and their personal life

 

The Bespoke 360 Process

Clients frequently commission Clive to carry out a ‘Bespoke 360’ exercise as part of their coaching assignment. This is a quite unique opportunity for clients to find out what their colleagues really think of them (but would not normally be able to tell them directly).

When individuals occupy senior leadership roles, their access to accurate feedback in their everyday work invariably dries up. However their colleagues will typically be willing to give honest feedback in a telephone interview with Clive where they know the feedback will not be attributed to them.

Feedback from a Bespoke 360 typically surfaces some previously unknown (to the client) perspectives and may well precipitate a change in coaching objectives and a focus on some new areas of leadership which need work.

In the following interview a FTSE 250 Executive Committee member talks about how their Bespoke 360 exercise helped them understand more about their interpersonal impact and improve their leadership.

Download Interview
(page 10)

In the following published article, Clive explains how his approach to Bespoke 360 exercises can lead to powerful change.

Download Article

 

How we work with clients

Clive does not ‘tell’ or ‘instruct’ but instead ‘listens’ and ‘advises’. He uses his business strategy background to understand, at the outset, what his clients’ organisations are seeking to achieve commercially. And he uses his psychological expertise to ask probing and challenging questions, bringing to the surface areas which may be holding clients back, highlighting practical opportunities to enhance their leadership.

To find out more about the process, please keep reading below.

 

Clive’s professional coaching work is based on quickly developing trust with his clients and on providing a supportive and confidential space where clients feel safe and motivated to share whatever personal and professional material is relevant to the development of their leadership.

 

The early part of the coaching assignment involves clients working on increasing their awareness of leadership strengths and development areas. With Clive’s guidance, clients review their underlying motivations (conscious and unconscious), personal values and how these things determine the kind of leader they wish to be.

 

At the same time as supporting and facilitating his clients’ increased self-knowledge, Clive challenges and encourages his clients to adapt their leadership style to the needs of their role, their career objectives and their organisations’ strategies. Clive always starts with his client’s individual situation and also draws from over two decades of experience of observing what has worked with a multitude of senior leader clients in similar situations.

 

Clive works with his clients to write down their objectives from the coaching assignment at an early stage. Clients may (at their discretion) wish to share their objectives with their line manager, in a specially designed ‘three-way meeting’, thereby gaining input and support from their organisation for the changes they are targeting.

 

Some of Clive’s clients respond to Clive’s invitation to review their personal early history. In the tradition of psychoanalytic investigation, this can be a very useful opportunity to gain insight into the links between clients’ patterns of relating to people at work and the ways they learned to relate to others earlier in their lives. Clients often observe at the end of coaching assignments that this was the most insightful and useful (if initially daunting) part of the coaching work. Clive’s professional psychological training equips him in a distinctive way to bring insights to his clients. His first-hand experience of the business world enables him to make these insights useful and relevant to his clients’ business context.

 

All the above work takes place within a well-defined structure of coaching sessions and interventions in which a dynamic, wide-ranging dialogue between Clive and his client gives the opportunity to reflect on, and implement new and better leadership approaches.

 

Receiving input and advice on leadership from an external specialist such as Clive is an unusual and valuable opportunity for clients. At the same time as adopting an independent and objective position, Clive takes a great interest in his clients’ progress. Clients simply could not access the same quality of impartial advice, in a carefully framed confidential setting, from a mentor, a work colleague, a friend or a family member.

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