What does it mean to be an exceptional executive coach and what does it take? A study of the practices and personal attributes of exceptional executive coaches provides valuable information both for purchasers of executive coaching services and executive coaches themselves.

Gavin R. Dagley’s study sought to understand what the typical purchasers of executive coaches (human resources professionals) considered to be the outcomes of exceptional executive coaching and what the underlying factors to these outcomes were.

His study found that the single most important outcome was “behaviour change” measured both by the executives themselves and by their colleagues. Critically, such change was not about compliance but was profound and sustained. These changes manifested themselves in:

• Personal outcomes (eg increased self-confidence, motivation, etc)
• Realisation of potential (eg career development, retention, etc)

So what did these coaches do that weaker executive coaches did not? Capabilities included:

• Credibility
• Empathy and respect
• Holding the professional self
• Diagnostic skill and insight
• Approach flexibility and range
• Working to the business context
• A philosophy of personal responsibility
• Skilful challenging

Dagley’s findings indicate that these capabilities are not necessarily absent in weaker coaches but that exceptional executive coaches “are able to deliver against all and any of these quite basic characteristics and deliver at an observably superior level of expertise”.

​As a consequence, executives typically experienced:

• Engagement
• Deeper conversations
• Insight and responsibility

​In comparing exceptional coaches with weaker coaches, comments included “the weaker coach just plays out what is in front of him, and then drags out one of his tools or techniques…” while exceptional coaches are “able to get to deeper conversations more quickly, and motivate people to take personal responsibility for their own development and growth”.
Dagley concludes that exceptional coaches display “exquisite expertise” and that they are differentiated from other coaches by “the essentially human and personal qualities that underpin such expertise”.

To learn more about our exceptional coaches and the profound and sustained change we can develop in your people, contact us.

​To read the full study, see Exceptional executive coaches: Practices and attributes – International Coaching Psychology Review Volume 5 No. 1 March 2010.

If you’re in the process of writing or updating your CV, chances are you’re finding it difficult, tedious or both. What format should I use? Is this too long? How much detail should I go into? and so on. It may certainly be tempting to accept offers of help from CV writing services to do the job for you. Many of these companies will provide you with a good looking, professional CV which is couched in “recruitment speak” (you know, the kind of ubiquitous “a great team player who works well on his own…” kind of thing). Unfortunately these are mostly a cosmetic compromise which will not help you to get the right job and will not help you to prepare optimally for the subsequent stages such as interview.

At Managing Change we purposefully don’t provide CV writing services and this very much reflects our coaching based approach to job-seeking and career management. As a sometime interviewer and someone who is asked to review and critique hundreds of CVs, I find that these CVs usually fail to express the candidate’s strengths, skills and character sufficiently to give me a good idea of the person represented. At worse they present a bland, composite picture of the candidate. These are very likely then to be filtered out of the shortlisting process.

A good CV not only looks professional, clear and easy to read, critically, it also provides content that effectively and accurately describes you, your achievements, skills, attributes, values and style. In other words, it does you justice. A quick rule of thumb I advise is to “test” your re-drafted CV on a few people who know you very well from different perspectives eg., a colleague, partner and friend. Give them two minutes to quickly read the CV through and ask them – “is this me?” “Does it accurately and positively reflect the ‘me’ you know?” If they are hesitant or still pondering their response you might reasonably conclude that you have more work to do. However if you can see and hear a more energised and positive response, you might conclude that you have done a good job

So, how do you ensure that your content is good? Start with a thorough self-assessment of your skills, strengths, achievements, values, attributes, and so on. A career coach will help you do this effectively. Couple this with an assessment of what you are targeting (ie., the type of role, sector and employer) and be sure you have a clear proposition for your identified job market(s). Your CV should then be developed for use in each identified job market (and that may mean you have different versions of your CV). Most CV writing services cannot do this to anything like the same extent or depth, as they don’t know you as well as you know yourself. Additionally, by undertaking this critical self assessment process (which is essential to developing a good CV), you are thoroughly preparing yourself for subsequent interviews and to starting in your new role. In other words providing you with the clear knowledge about who you are, what you do, and the confidence that goes with that self-knowledge.

Should you really “outsource” such a key exercise in managing your career?

​Contact us to see how we can help you develop your CV or to discuss job-seeking or career management.

If you are currently writing a new CV or updating an existing one, here’s a short note to ensure that you don’t fall prey to identity thieves. Fraudsters and ID thieves can very quickly make productive use of the information you include on your CV, including:

• full home address
• home (landline) telephone number
• date of birth
• place of birth
• marital status

These details are not necessary for your CV. Once released by email or onto the internet, they are readily found and picked up by criminals. They are also used in combination with other data sources (such as Facebook) to piece together a profile of your personal information. Identity thieves have been known to set up fake companies and to advertise fake jobs in a deliberate bid to acquire this information.

​When responding to on-line job advertisements take steps to verify the source. For example when responding to employment and recruitment agencies check that they are members of REC (The Recruitment and Employment Confederation, which is the professional body of recruitment companies). Remember that genuine employers will never ask you to provide protected information such as your passport number or NI number on-line. Your CV need only contain your name, the town in which you live, an email address and a mobile telephone number.

In the UK today, around 90% of UK organisations report using executive coaches. Despite this, until now, research on the effectiveness of coaching has been very limited. Many organisations and indeed, coaching businesses, struggle to find evidence to demonstrate the ROI of executive coaching. A Google search on the subject returns results as varied as ‘no benefit’ to over 5,000% ROI.
New research* from the University of Amsterdam published in August this year has thrown new light on the effectiveness of executive coaching in organisations based upon an extensive meta-analysis of existing research from a wide variety of published studies. The study looked from both a theoretical and a practical perspective at five outcome categories:
• Performance/skills
• Well-being
• Coping
• Work attitudes
• Goal directed ‘self regulation’
The results show that coaching has significant positive effects on all outcomes; the researchers conclude that executive coaching is “an effective intervention in organisations”.
As experienced coaching practitioners we always measure and review coaching outcomes and are confident as to the effectiveness of our work. As evidence-based coaches we love to see that view validated by good research. If you need to provide evidence to justify the use of coaching in your organisation this study would be worth a look.
*For the full study see Does Coaching Work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organisational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology (2013, Taylor & Francis) –– University of Amsterdam

If you’re in the market for a new job at the moment, whether through choice or necessity, the chances are you are looking for that new job using the following sources:

• Jobs websites
• Recruitment agencies
• Newspaper jobs pages

You may be quickly successful at finding your new job with these sources, after all, they are advertising real, current vacancies (usually!). However if you can find these job ads, so can thousands of other people, and these people will comprise your competition. So, are there ways to increase your chances of success?

In short, the answer is yes. Experts suggest that when we look for jobs we typically take one of two different approaches:

1. passive job searching (ie., one of the above methods), OR
2. active job searching
​
In a recent study, 1,000 job searchers were studied to understand the approach they took to job searching and their corresponding success rates. The study found that 25% of the sample adopted active job searching methods, the remaining 75% relied solely on traditional, passive sources. They found:

• Active job searchers were far more optimistic and proactive, typically using five or more sources for job searching. Passive job searchers used three or less.
• Active job searchers were very focused on what they were looking for; passive job searchers tended to browse.
• The average length of job search for active job searchers was 4 months; the average for passive job searchers was 7 months.
• Active job searchers were applying for 8 jobs a month and getting 2 interviews a month. 65% of them had applied directly to the employer.

So, what is active job searching?
Taking an active approach means adopting a different mindset or attitude to job searching, and being targeted and proactive in your activity. The following are typical active job search sources:

• Research companies within your defined job market and apply directly to them
• Use your contacts – let people know you’re in the job market and be clear to tell them what you’re looking for. Don’t ask them for a job – ask them to keep their ears and eyes open for you. Look for referrals and opportunities
• Network! Look out for networking opportunities within your targeted job market and attend them
• Use social networking media, particularly LinkedIn. Use these to let people know you’re out there, that you have expertise and to encourage contact

​Networking usually tops the list of activities people feel least comfortable doing and yet we know that it is the single most effective means of getting a new job when used effectively. Use of business media such as LinkedIn enables you to utilise similar benefit from networking if the face-to-face variety is not for you.

1. target your job search and create the opportunities – be proactive not reactive
2. use a variety of sources and regularly review their success rates
3. use your network – it is always larger than you may at first think and may very well include the link to your next role.

For both active and passive job searchers, networking was reported as the number one most effective source of securing their last job. In order of use, it was down at number 7!

No one method is 100% successful. It therefore makes sense to use a combination of passive and active sources for your job searching. Remember to keep your progress under regular review; if after a period of time you have not been successful, change your approach.

Using on-line, written reference material, questionnaires and worksheets our career transition programmes enable you to make effective progress while benefiting from the ongoing support and guidance of a career coach.

If you could do with help in job searching, get in touch to see how we can help.