If you have ever made the move from an operational, management role to a more strategic, leadership one, or know someone who has, you'll know that this can be a challenging and stressful time. Not least because the context and expectations are new and there is a strong desire to be successful. 

One of the most common challenges involves getting to grips with the new role (and everything that entails) with a lack of resources and time. These two factors are commonly cited as key pinch points and they frequently result in heightened stress and poor work-home balance. A senior executive recently promoted to a Board level position described the feeling as being like trying to cling onto a bucking bronco without falling off. It's not a fun position to be in and when the situation continues for some time it starts to take its toll on health, family and general performance.

One senior leader told me that he was seriously starting to question whether he should even be in the role as he felt so out of control, and another said that she was thinking of resigning before others started to realise she wasn't up to the job. Confidence takes a severe knock when this starts to happen and can be slow to rebuild. 

In the examples given all three leaders were aware that they were stressed and struggling and this had led to their request for coaching. Sometimes leaders lack that self-awareness but their behaviour  indicates to others that an intervention would be helpful. Unfortunately these behaviours are sometimes self-destructive and/or harmful to others. 

Stress is considered to come from the interaction between the person's environment or situation and their response to it, and usually results in a feeling of an inability to cope.  ​As coaching psychologists and coaches with appropriate psychological training, we are able to apply a sound assessment of executive stress using established protocols. This quickly enables the coach and executive to understand the degree and nature of stress being experienced and to assess its change over time. If you, or someone you know, is in this situation you might, for example, experience changes in sleep or eating patterns, changes in concentration and memory, feeling flat or over-emotional, or becoming detached from people around you. Assessing these signs can provide a good baseline from which to begin steps to address the situation.

Coaching to address executive (and other forms of) stress will seek to explore both the situation (what is going on) and the person's response to, or perception of, it. This helps them make changes to their situation, adjust their responses to it, and usually do both. The wider goal, to regain a reasonable sense of control and perspective of the situation, helps to alleviate stress and rebuild confidence.

​Lack of resources and limited time are, unfortunately, increasingly common features of organisational life. Yet interestingly, on average, levels of stress decrease the more senior you are. This is thought to be largely because these more senior positions involve greater control, which is associated with reduced stress. So a key part of the transition into a more senior role is getting the right perspective and skills in appraising your situation and responding to it.  This might include looking at skills and attitudes to work and workload, managing time, planning and prioritisation, assertiveness, structured thinking skills, and so on.

​Anticipating and preparing for that promotion might be the best time to acquire the skills and insights to avoid these traps ahead. For example those whose previous careers have been defined by working very long hours can quickly find that they've reached the limit of hours available; those who have prospered by being willing and saying yes to every opportunity now find that that overwhelming desire to please is unsustainable; those who have enjoyed firefighting and reacting quickly to events now find that they need to delegate those bits of the job they enjoyed most. These features are often tied in with core values such as working hard, a need to be liked and fear of failure. An effective coaching programme will often involve exploring these values and core beliefs and identifying where they are now outdated or unhelpful and in need of updating.

Changing perspectives in this way can be a difficult but valuable component of the work involved in developing a clear and successful leader identity. Developing our own strategies to mitigate stress can be hugely valuable in creating a flourishing and sustainable career.

Whilst it is clear that workplace ​coaching is effective, the features that make it so have proved incredibly difficult to assess.

Studies tend to involve very few people, tend not to have meaningful control groups (i.e. a replica group of people subject to the same conditions who don't get coaching, for comparison purposes), don't account for differences in coach style, approach and quality, or find companies willing to fund it. Added to this, coaching is still a relatively new area so there is limited solid information on effectiveness available (although many coach training programmes suggest otherwise by reporting on coaching studies most of which are not robust or authoritative).

​​So, it was good  to see a new analysis of 117 studies carried out in 2018 (by Bozer and Jones*) to identify those aspects that make a difference to coaching effectiveness. They found that coachee characteristics count enormously. Effective outcomes were linked to coachees:

• being interested in learning and improving (i.e. they did not have a fixed mindset and were not over-confident)
• having good levels of self-efficacy (i.e. had confidence in their ability to develop)
• being well motivated to take part
• trusting the coach and being comfortable to speak openly

​This supports the findings from other studies. In our one-to-one coaching programmes, coachees are invited to take a self-assessment to check their readiness for coaching. Our coaches all undertake a 'willingness and readiness for coaching' assessment as part of the initial engagement.

External coaching is usually favoured for leaders and senior managers. Survey respondents gave their principal reasons for choosing external coaches as: ​

One of the principal benefits of coaching programmes is the provision of space and time for the coachee in which to learn and reflect. This can be particularly valuable during periods of change.

There is strong evidence that executive coaching is valuable in helping people deal with the uncertainty and challenges of change - whether organisational change, career change, life transitions, etc. Such change is the "new normal" and there is a growing expectation that people should possess the flexibility and resilience to cope with such change. For this reason, enhancing resilience and well-being in organisations is increasingly important.   ​

​For both providers and consumers of executive coaching, keeping abreast of market trends can help to benchmark services and understand the market.

The Sherpa Executive Coaching Survey published earlier this year provides some summary headlines on the global demand for executive coaching. These report on findings from 65 countries across all continents. Key findings include:

​The global leadership selection and consultancy firm Borderless has just published its global survey of 1,000 senior executives on leadership development.

Using the respondents' definition of leadership ("the act of taking ownership for business results delivered by people"), the report "supports a call for a more balanced approach to leadership development, which stands on two pillars: the development of skills to visualize, plan and monitor business results, and the development of interpersonal (‘people’) skills to deliver them".  

​Accordingly the survey asks respondents to assess the effectiveness with which these skills and attributes are developed in organisations. The findings present a mixed, and in parts troubling, picture.

Respondents were asked to list their top three leadership challenges of 2016. The most common were:

1. Managing change and innovation (31%)
2. Ensuring people take personal accountability and ownership (27%)
3. Addressing a silo mentality (17%)

In response to these, the top 6 leadership skills they considered to be required to lead organisations and meet these challenges effectively were:

1. Strategic thinking (53%)
2. Communication (49%)
3. Decision-making (36%)
4. Motivating others (33%)
5. Emotional intelligence (32%)
6. Coaching and mentoring (25%)

These are all, so-called, soft skills.

They all relate to inter-personal effectiveness and the balance required to be struck between these soft skills and business acumen. To be effective leaders, these skills need to be developed and given the opportunity to be practiced and fine-tuned.

However, many respondents considered that their organisations lacked a focus on leadership development and considered it merely as "nice to have" rather than a strategic imperative. They reported that their organisations tended to hire in leadership skills in senior executives from outside rather than growing and advancing these skills from within the organisation. This over reliance on 'hiring in' can be significantly demotivating to those with leadership potential who may see the lack of promotion opportunity as compounding the lack of development provision. 

Of those organisations providing leadership development, two-thirds of leadership development participation is optional. In few other professions would it be considered acceptable that people may occupy senior positions in organisations - responsible for profitability, growth and jobs - without the skills development that accompany them. 

​So what do these senior executives consider is necessary for effective leadership development?

In the first place, and consistent with other surveys of this type in recent years, the majority (56%) consider that support from top management is a critical success factor in effective leadership development in organisations. Importantly they comment that this should not just be "parked in HR". Supporting this they consider that there should be an organisational focus on people and talent management in the organisation and sufficient resources allocated to it. 

80% of those surveyed report that coaching is effective in leadership development but that there is room for improvement. Nearly a third of organisations had no coaching or mentoring support in place at all for leadership development and surprisingly only 36% used external coaches or a mix of internal and external coaches for this work. The need to use better qualified and more experienced coaches was identified. In particular, in order to enhance the quality of tomorrow's leaders, leadership development programmes should be grounded in real-life work (and should not just comprise additional tasks for busy executives to complete). 
​
The Borderless report, 2016 Survey of Leadership Development, is available in full here.

The world of leadership development is the subject of so many fads and fashions that many prefer to reject it entirely than be swept up in the latest trend or buzzword. It is therefore refreshing when a leadership theory emerges that is actually based on research and evidence.

A series of corporate scandals over the last fifteen years (Lehman's and RBS spring quickly to mind, and these are now joined by Volkswagen) have created the requirement and context for the theory of Authentic Leadership. This has been studied and written about for the last decade but until recently there had been no research looking at how leaders develop either authenticity or authentic leadership. [In the US, over $10bn is spent on leadership development each year despite, to date, little theoretical or empirical evidence to support it.]

What is authentic leadership? Authentic leadership is considered to encompass four key components:

For a number of years now the importance of effective employee engagement has been linked to high performance. Research by Towers Watson back in 2010 showed that highly-engaged employees who also had high levels of well-being were the most productive and happy employees.

The recent Research Insight report by Rachel Lewis and colleagues emphasises that bringing these together sustainably is essential in order to achieve the benefits of high performance. Addressing one or the other in isolation can result in highly engaged people burning out and leaving, or healthy, dis-engaged people staying and performing at a lower level.

​See here for the full CIPD report on this research. To discuss engagement and well-being in your organisation do get in touch - email me sarah.jaggers@managingchange.org.uk or phone 01223 655667.