4-Dimensional Executive Coaching
There is no magic wand, secret formula, or single omnipotent tome that can transform a manager or executive into an effective leader. The capacity to truly lead – to grow an organization, build competitive advantage, and mobilize others – involves a tapestry of talents. As more and more businesses are discovering, executive coaching can be the most effective path to leadership development.
Compared to conventional training and development programs for leaders, expert coaching can create change that is more profound, enduring and impactful for the organization. Frank Granek’s executive coaching process takes change to the next level by creating growth on four interrelated dimensions – Leadership Competencies, Leadership Performance, Leadership Brand, and Leadership Wellness – and by mining synergies among these forms of growth.
I. Leadership Competency Coaching
Leadership competencies are often the centerpiece of leadership development. Frank ensures that every coachee’s leadership competency development plan is aligned to both general best practices in leadership competency modeling and the existing leadership competency model of the organization. This up-front process ensures that competency-focused coaching delivers high ROI, can be properly evaluated, and facilitates the participation where appropriate of organizational sponsors and other seniors stakeholders.
Frank Granek’s competency-focused coaching is not only about changes in knowledge, skill and behavior. It involves changes in leadership mindset – refining mental models, clearing mental obstacles, and establishing empowering new attitudes.
Frank typically helps leaders develop high-level competencies in four broad areas:
- Intrapersonal Competencies, such as Creativity, Peak Learning, Systems Thinking, Goal Achievement and Strategic Focus
- Interpersonal Competencies, such Interpersonal Influence, Relationship Development, and Conflict Management
- Team Development Competencies, such as Smart Hiring, Team Cohesion, and Team Innovation
- Organizational Impact Competencies, such as Change Leadership, Leadership Program Development, and Organization-Wide Innovation
II. Leadership Performance Coaching
The executive coaching collaboration can greatly boost performance on multiple time frames.
Short-Term Performance. Through high-impact executive coaching leaders can become even more efficient and effective on a daily and weekly basis. Improving processes such as personal knowledge management, delegation and essentialism are part of this work.
Mid-Term Performance. Frank’s executive coaching helps leaders stretch and succeed on substantive projects and helps them exceed targets on a quarter-by-quarter basis. These are the lenses through which leaders are often most concretely evaluated.
Long-Term Performance. Frank also helps leaders establish or meaningfully contribute to organizational strategy and vision and navigate extended challenges and opportunities. These coaching partnerships can cement the leader’s differentiated value to the organization, and in some cases an industry.
Frank’s collaboration with leaders on their performance draws on his high level of expertise in “consultative coaching”, a process that marries senior-level coaching with subject matter consultative expertise. His support is at times on sweeping measures, such as leading change initiatives. At other times it is short-term and yet mission-critical, such as when partnering with a leader on important communications.
III. Leadership Brand Coaching
Leadership Brand Coaching focuses on how the leader is perceived by people throughout the organization, from reports to other leaders to the most senior decision makers. Key facets of the brand include views of the leader’s ability to navigate challenges and opportunities and the leader’s readiness to ascend to more senior positions within the company and global industry. Frank helps leaders refine their leadership brands through three proprietary processes.
Leadership Brand Evaluation begins with Frank Granek’s Leadership Brand Audit. This assessment helps the leader evaluate perceptions and misperceptions through a variety of tools, including interviews, leading psychometric instruments such as the Hogan Personality Inventory and Hogan Development Survey, audio-visual analysis, and customized 360 assessment.
Leadership Brand Development involves accelerated development of critical brand elements. These range from intellectual capital to professional impact to core identity and mindset. For details on Frank’s Five-Factor Leadership Brand Development Model, contact Frank Granek.
Leadership Brand Projection translates development into positive perceptions. This work is focused on improving networking, refining key communication vehicles (such as resumes, LinkedIn content, and other professional profiles), making the most of pivotal interactions, and shining in moments in the spotlight.
IV. Leadership Wellness Coaching
Leadership Wellness Coaching helps leaders flourish within the multiple branches of their lives. This coaching often includes deep work on optimization of mindset as well as change of ingrained habits and behavioral patterns within the leader’s whole life. Often the coaching is focused on one or more of these four areas:
Stress Management is a foundational process that reduces stress while increasing a sense of peace and flow. This work operates at the level of mood (including anxiety) and its behavioral expressions (including relational and performance contexts). This coaching strengthens four dimensions of the leader’s way of being: psychological processes, including cognitive behavioral self-coaching; practices of nutrition, exercise and movement; mind-body practices such as mindfulness; and a range of wider lifestyle factors.
Bolstering Positive Mindset builds on and moves beyond foundational stress management. This wellness coaching develops both the core qualities of Psychological Capital or PsyCap (hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism) and the attitudes of High-Impact Leadership Mindset, one of Frank’s proprietary models. The work includes application of powerful psychological change processes originally developed in the realm of therapy to the context of mentally healthy and peak-performing individuals.
Raising and Sustaining Energy embraces the premium placed not only on leaders’ physical energy but also on their mental focus and stamina throughout most days of their professional and personal lives. This work often involves improvement of sleep quality as well as exploration of recovery practices such as non-sleep deep rest (NSDR). Also frequently in focus are improvements in physical activity, nutrition, and other lifestyle medicine areas. Many leaders benefit as well from adoption of hour-by-hour energy management practices such as brief meditation.
Whole-Life Flourishing is about clarifying, integrating and pursuing important lifegoals throughout the entirety of the leader’s personal and professional life. In this process, a career is one branch of life to be valued alongside others such as health, family, learning, recreation, mentality and spirituality. Whole-Life Flourishing moves past simplistic clichés of balance to help leaders reconnect with their deepest values and find greater “PERMA” (positive emotions, engagement, rewarding relationships, meaning and accomplishment) throughout the whole gestalt of their lives.
