Leadership Coaching

Client Background
Carla is the Office Administrator at a large professional services firm. She is a highly talented and experienced Human Resources leader with deep expertise in all facets of Human Resources. She is also the mother of three children: two teenagers and a pre-teen. Carla loves her job and is proud of her career growth, but lately feels stretched too thin and finds it hard to set boundaries. She feels most satisfied when producing results and being given bigger opportunities and responsibilities at her firm. Although she doesn’t “need” positive feedback on a regular basis, Carla appreciates being noticed for the deliverables she and her team meet and sometimes exceed.

Carla’s boss, Harve, believes in Carla’s potential and would like to see Carla grow into an expanded and more senior role. He believes Carla can lead Practice Group Management, Attorney Onboarding, and Associate Training. Harve has received feedback from the executive leadership team that although Carla’s team produces, there is concern about her capacity to take on a larger role and her noticeable lack of executive presence. For Carla, being “stretched too thin” is showing up as curt responses to others, and what looks like a lack of strategy in nourishing relationships with senior leaders.

Loeb Leadership’s Coaching Process and Focus
Harve offered Carla the opportunity to work with one of Loeb Leadership’s executive coaches for six to nine months. Once Carla understood that a coaching engagement with Loeb Leadership was intended to support her skills and behavioral development to benefit her personal and professional growth, she was 100% committed to the Loeb Leadership coaching process.

To begin, Carla’s coach asked her a series of questions that required her to reflect on her career successes and challenges, and complete a few research-based assessments. The assessment tools measured Carla’s self-awareness and emotional intelligence and her willingness to grow in these areas, and identified her personality and communication preferences.

Loeb Leadership Coaching Results
With guidance from her coach, Carla was able to process the results and feedback of her assessments. Carla discovered she likes to complete assignments efficiently, sometimes at the risk of overlooking opportunities to listen deeply to others or asking probing questions in a respectful way, resulting in others feeling unheard or unseen. Carla also learned that her drive for quick results was reflected in her non-verbal communication, and others were reading her serious facial expressions and minimal eye contact as a lack of empathy or personal interest in their work or success in their roles.

Carla also shared with her coach that she was experiencing some personal demands that she felt she needed to prioritize as a working parent, and started to give herself permission to make her own wellness a priority.

Carla’s coach guided Carla through some intentional changes to her leadership behavior that completely changed the game. First, Carla decided to focus on her active listening skills, and to practice them with senior leaders as well as at home. In conversations, instead of listening to who was speaking to her, Carla would often get distracted about what she wanted to say next. Carla’s coach helped Carla focus on listening. She practiced actively focusing on and comprehending what her conversational partner was saying, and asking follow up questions when necessary. She also practiced her non-verbal communication by maintaining eye contact and smiling when appropriate, and demonstrated empathy more intentionally by acknowledging the emotions of others. She practiced not interrupting others when they were challenging her or presenting tough situations, and instead let them finish their points, allowing them to feel heard. All of this required self-regulation, a technique identified in her emotional intelligence assessment that she read and talked about with her Loeb Leadership coach.

Carla also chose to prioritize some “me” time. She found time to attend yoga classes twice a week. After her classes, Carla chose to listen to some of her favorite podcasts that inspired her and led to further innovative conversations with her team.

Over time, senior leaders noticed an increased confidence in Carla. In fact, they began to come to her as a sounding board. Some senior leaders told Harve how their trust in Carla rapidly grew, and they agreed that she seemed to “understand” them and the firm’s strategic vision. Everyone agreed that Carla’s coaching engagement with Loeb Leadership had made a huge impact, and they were eager for Carla to step into her next leadership role.

Carla took the role, and continues to add tremendous value to the firm. Carla continues to practice her active listening skills and makes her wellness a priority. Her smooth transition to her new role increased the firm’s ability to attract top talent, create the inclusive culture they aspire to, and have a leader on the senior leadership team that models the behaviors they expect of others.

Client Background

Matthew was a very successful Head of Sales for a technology company – he was handpicked by the CEO, who was proud of his highly talented and energetic new hire. Matthew was very intelligent and a risk taker. He seemed to require no sleep, prided himself on exceeding KPIs, and had experience leading teams for over 15 years. Unfortunately, Matthew’s immediate team of 8 people were exhausted. Although most of them had been excited to work for such a talented boss, they were finding the grueling hours, tremendously unrealistic expectations, and lack of feedback was causing them to head towards burnout. Matthew continued to brag about the results of his team as they reflected positively on his own personal success, but failed to give credit or acknowledgement to the individual members of his team or encourage their own career growth. His team’s morale tanked, and talent at the company began to resign. The CEO quickly noticed and thought a Loeb Leadership coach might help – even though Matthew’s ego wasn’t sure.

After contacting Loeb Leadership and learning about the Loeb Leadership coach matching process, the CEO was confident that Matthew could be matched with a Loeb Leadership coach who could help him maintain his high standards of performance for himself and others, while learning to lead with empathy and inspire his team members to increase their commitment and length of service to the company.

Loeb Leadership matched Matthew with a coach that was a straight shooter, just like Matthew. The coach “tested” Matthew’s understanding of leadership and challenged Matthew to describe his leadership philosophy. During this exercise, Matthew realized he didn’t have one. He expected that everyone on his team shared the same values and work style as he did. He saw all his team as high performers; just like him, so they must work in the same way.

Loeb Leadership Coaching Process and Focus

Matthew’s coach asked him to complete a work style assessment, which led to a discussion about different work styles. Matthew immediately noticed the other work styles of members of his team, and how some folks shared his work style while others didn’t. With this increased knowledge, Matthew started to realize that if others had different approaches to work, they also probably had different needs for feedback and mentoring. Matthew’s coach shared a variety of feedback models with Matthew and practiced having feedback conversations with him to prepare for having them with his team members.

Loeb Leadership Coaching Results

As Matthew’s confidence grew due to productive feedback conversations, his coach challenged him to insert some career development conversations into his individual conversations with his team. As Matthew started to do this, he noticed trust heightening between him and his team members. As his direct reports began to believe that Matthew had their best interests in mind and was willing to share his knowledge and expertise to help them be better performers, team morale steadily increased. Team members wanted to succeed in ways to make Matthew happy and the overall team highly productive. Eventually, Matthew selected two of his team members to grow into leadership roles that could oversee others. These team members were so successful that Matthew received approval for additional headcount and a larger sales team. The company’s client acquisition and profits soared.

After Matthew completed his six-month Loeb Leadership coaching engagement, he asked his CEO if he could continue to work with his coach once a month. With the ever-changing global market, Matthew found it useful to have time to reflect and have his assumptions challenged. It keeps him motivated and constantly growing as a Sales Leader.

Client Background

Toni, the CEO of a nonprofit, was a talented and seasoned leader. She had come up through the ranks at General Electric and had participated in a variety of management and leadership development programs. Toni was honored to be the CEO of this nonprofit, though she didn’t expect to have so many members of the Board of Directors who would challenge her competence. The Chairman of the Board was particularly condescending on a regular basis, and was sometimes overheard making inappropriate remarks about other board members. Toni was considering resigning from the board until she was notified the problematic Chairman was leaving and a new Chairman was already selected. This new Chairman had an excellent reputation as a thoughtful, empathic, and results-oriented leader. When the new Chairman arrived, he offered Toni a Loeb Leadership coach. He saw a need for Toni to increase her executive presence to handle some of the prickly board member behavior. The new Chairman saw the talent in Toni and was confident with some coaching, she could gain the skills and confidence to handle the remaining board members and continue to lead this highly reputable nonprofit. In addition, Toni had recently lost some seasoned senior leadership team members and added some less seasoned, yet enthusiastic members to the senior leadership team. Toni had to figure out a way to get this senior leadership team to collaborate in a highly functional way very soon. There was much to get done.

Loeb Leadership Coaching Process and Focus

Toni’s coaching engagement with Loeb Leadership started with a values exercise that would clearly identify her most important values. Toni found the exercise helped her recognize that some of her core values were being challenged by the board members which was why she was finding it particularly difficult to engage with them. Toni’s coach helped her recognize how she needed to hold onto her values yet be flexible when reporting back to or influencing the board.

Toni also talked through her ideas with her coach about how to properly bring in funds and distribute them throughout the organization. As a result of practicing having strategy conversations with her coach, Toni’s confidence grew and she changed the way she shared information with the board. Toni’s coach offered Toni an emotional intelligence assessment that emphasized Toni’s strengths and areas where she could develop. As Toni began to learn about her leadership presence, she started to take specific actions to address board members with confidence and competence. These new behaviors helped her to influence others in a way that allowed for her voice to be heard –and results followed. Toni’s confidence grew and by working with a Loeb Leadership coach, she was able to dismantle any unhelpful self-talk and false beliefs about herself and her abilities, and she achieved greater job satisfaction.

Toni used her heightened self-awareness to plan and lead some strategy and team-building sessions with her new leadership team. These sessions, although dicey at first, became extremely productive and led to innovative ideas, shared priorities, and effective collaboration amongst the new senior leadership team. During these sessions, Toni made the effort to share some of her newly acquired thinking and experiences with her new senior leadership team. The meetings allowed Toni to notice that some of her team suffered from a lack of confidence, so she decided to offer some growth and development professional development opportunities to her team, too. Senior leadership team members were offered a Loeb Leadership executive coach to help them set and achieve both personal and business objectives for the following 6-12 months.

Loeb Leadership Coaching Results

Toni’s increased confidence led to important and courageous conversations with board members and senior leadership team members. These conversations helped the board make beneficial strategic decisions to acquire additional funding for the organization. Toni’s coaching engagement with Loeb Leadership and her intentional practice of actively listening to her senior leadership team helped build trust, and as a result the performance of her senior leadership team increased. When Toni needed to take an unexpected personal leave, her team stepped in and handled the day-to-day activities successfully; something the new Chairman of the Board noticed. Toni now had the time to focus on strategic priorities and additional fundraising to ultimately serve those in need in their community. The leadership capabilities of Toni’s senior leadership team grew dramatically.

Client Background

Two co-executives, Jasmine and Andre, were struggling with a recent hire, Cora. Cora was extremely competent and talented, however, a lack of role clarity and confidence in herself led to her creating unnecessary gossip and drama with other members of the organization. The co-executives were looking for advice on how to handle the situation.

Working together with a Loeb Leadership Loeb Leadership coach, Andre and Jasmine identified that Cora needed one, clearly defined supervisor to set direct expectations and hold her accountable. They also determined this needed to be done in an empathic way, adjusting to the style Cora would respond best to. If either Jasmine or Andre adapted appropriately, the supervisor would be able to help Cora balance goals and tasks, and to intervene when a situation begins to escalate.

Loeb Leadership Coaching Process and Focus

The Loeb Leadership coach helped Jasmine and Andre understand how to think about their relationship with Cora which led to actions yielding success. Using intentional active listening skills, impulse control, and empathy skills, the co-executives found out that a mentor would help Cora. Cora identified an excellent mentor who worked with her and created a regular rhythm to meet with her, and at times, the leader’s supervisor, and other members of the organization. The consultant helped the leader to set goals and objectives which improved the quality and consistency of the leader’s work.  

Loeb Leadership Coaching Results

As a leadership team, Jasmine, Andre, and Cora are now speaking as one voice about how and when a problem will be addressed. This prevents any of Cora’s concerns from increasing unnecessarily and consuming valuable time. Expectations for Cora are clear and she has the support on how to achieve them. While the organization was concerned that they were at risk of not having Cora remain on board, she is committed to staying with the organization and performing in a way that contributes to the organization’s mission.

Client Background

Rafael is a Partner at a large law firm. He is a rainmaker, and excellent at business development, however, Rafael’s colleagues and administrative support are complaining about his abrupt and condescending tones when they are working with them. His unwillingness to show an interest in them and their work, combined with a lack of listening skills is making it very difficult to work with Rafael. Associates have been attracted to the firm due to Rafael’s success in building a premier practice group, however, when they get to work with Rafael on a matter, he delegates work without proper guidance and snaps at the associates when they don’t deliver exactly what he wants. Associates are starting to go around Rafael to other partners. And Rafael’s secretary has complained about Rafael numerous times to the Human Resources Manager. The firm is concerned they will lose recently hired, talented new associates. When these topics were raised with Rafael, he agreed to working with a Loeb Leadership coach from Loeb Leadership.

Loeb Leadership Coaching Process and Focus

Rafael’s Loeb Leadership coaching began by being matched with a Loeb Leadership coach who had the background and competence Rafael would respect. Rafael interviewed three Loeb Leadership coaches and selected the Loeb Leadership coach he wanted to work with. Having had deep experience working with lawyers, the Loeb Leadership coach appealed to Rafael’s intellect and provided an article for Rafael to read about leadership. Rafael’s response to the article demonstrated his lack of understanding of how he was seen not only as a lawyer at the firm but as a leader. This intrigued Rafael and his appetite to learn more about leadership grew. Starting with a foundational principle of leadership, the Loeb Leadership coach worked on increasing Rafael’s self-awareness. The Loeb Leadership coach challenged Rafael to reflect on how he behaves and the impact of those actions on others. The Loeb Leadership coach asked Rafael to complete a research based validated emotional intelligence assessment and reviewed the results with Rafael. Again, this appealed to Rafael’s intellect, and he willingly dove into learning more about the emotional intelligence competencies and how he could raise some of those competencies and adjust his behaviors. Rafael noticed he did this well with clients but not internally at the firm. The “aha” moment happened when Rafael realized his behaviors affect the development of associates as well as the retention of talent at the firm. Noticing Rafael’s continued eagerness to learn more about himself, the Loeb Leadership coach recommended conducting a 360-interview process for Rafael. Rafael agreed and the Loeb Leadership coach interviewed a combination of 8 colleagues, partners and administrative staff and provided confidential feedback to Rafael on his strengths and areas to improve.

Loeb Leadership Coaching Results:

Combining the data from the Loeb Leadership coaching sessions, the emotional intelligence assessment and the 360 summary, Rafael made several commitments to modify his behavior so he was modeling the behaviors he expected of himself. He also noted how the newly acquired behaviors were creating more productive conversations with associates and partners. He gained confidence in providing performance feedback to associates as well as offering praise when associate work deserved it. Associate performance improved dramatically along with the morale of his team. Rafael also noticed stronger relationships with partners. He was receiving invitations to sit on various committees and to represent the firm at various activities. Rafael chose to use his time where he received the most satisfaction and value for himself and the firm. Rafael’s commitment to his team and practice increased along with his reputation for being a great partner to work for.

Coaching isn’t just for folks working through something or focused on overcoming a challenge. Coaching is a wonderful tool to reach new levels of success no matter where you are starting. Discover the remarkable impact of coaching through an inspiring case study with Loeb Leadership. Follow Luz, a highly accomplished partner at a prestigious law firm, as she embarks on a transformative coaching journey. Witness how coaching enhances her leadership skills, time management, and work-life balance, while empowering her to navigate challenges and unlock her full potential. With emotional intelligence as her superpower, Luz exemplifies how coaching can elevate even the most accomplished individuals to new heights of success.

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