Advising on organizational development often brings us to into the landscape of Executive Coaching.

No organizational development can succeed without the growth - the development - of the team that is the organization. This is where the "people power" can find the growth to bear fruit for the organization.

Most under performing organizations have managers who will want to grow with the insights that come from coaching, mentoring and counseling.

We often find that executives have been so busy managing others that they have had little time or opportunity to focus on their own professional growth – and their direct supervisors often do not provide valuable mentoring and coaching. In fact, even the most highly performing organizations probably have a few managers who could benefit from targeted coaching.

Some of the things that we have learned – and questions that we ask – when our Executive Coaching skills are required by our clients include:

• Many people have been promoted – continually – but have never received proper training for their position.
• Many star, highly skilled employees have been promoted to managerial positions but are ineffective at managing people and processes. These are almost always highly skilled stars in their departments who just are not comfortable with the very different skill set of managing other team members who actually do the work. All the time, people are promoted beyond their skill set and talent level.
  

A successful organization does not promote key staff to positions where the skills and natural talents are not being fulfilled for either the staff person or the organization. It takes two to tango.

We help to ensure that people are in the right spots - that they are correctly "cast".

If they're not, then we provide alternatives to traditional promotion so as to keep star performers happy and productive. Tango.

• Does pure hard work guarantee success?
• What skills and talents can be learned and which are innate?
• How does one know if they are "miscast" in an organization?

Anecdote of What Happens When One Does Not Want To Grow & Learn:

We were asked to evaluate and mentor a hotel sales team. The team had not been meeting its goals and the owners felt that an organizational re-tool would be the best approach - as against simply taking the route of costly firing, recruiting, re-hiring, and training. After ten days it began to be clear that the team was being handicapped by senior leaders who had been promoted beyond their skill sets and were so insecure that they surrounded themselves with weak people. They also were so fearful that they were using many barricades to learning how to become effective managers.

The corporate owners of the hotel wanted to offer a full program of learning and mentoring and do so with a structured format of asking the 2 staff members to step back for a skilled leader from whom both people could learn, while maintaining their current salaries. But the employees elected to leave rather than learn and grow. All they had to do was say "Yes" and they would have been mentored and could have seen and learned what makes a sales department work, meet its goals, and, then, exceed them. They would have been positioned for future growth and success.

So that was the core problem - not being able to learn. Or not wanting to. Now that is unfortunate.

Then there were all the inadequacies that had slipped in under the watch of two people who didn't want to, couldn't learn.

With a mature, caring interim Director in place from Panetiere, the GM and the Panetiere advisor could search carefully for the new full time leader and do so with the luxury of time to find the right person rather than just "settle", as is too often done in our business.

Now, the GM had the advantage of the dispassionate judgment of an advisor to help find the right match to take the now functioning department to new heights.

Six months later, the sales team was exceeding its goals. And a new, motivated, mature director was in place to succeed.

Coaching and counseling does not admit failure but lays out a road map for learning and discovery of one's own potential. It's what a mentor should do but how many of us are so fortunate as to have found a mentor in business?

When those moments of doubt creep in as to what's happening and why, managers could ask the following types of questions and prompts of themselves and their colleagues.

You have had success in the past but can't explain why and now you are stuck and can't understand why.

You have a vision but can't communicate it – or nobody in your organization seems to be able to follow that vision.

Your staff seems lackluster and unmotivated – why?

You can't seem to generate respect among your staff.

You aren't enjoying work – are you stuck, in the wrong job, trying to hard, too stressed, lack the skills, knowledge or energy to dig your way out?

Have you hit a wall and can't seem to get promoted?

Do you have work groups or departments in your organization that are under-performing and you can't understand why – could it be their leader?

Your organization is unable to embrace change.

Your communication style is not effective.

You continue to hire the "wrong" people.

Your management style used to work, but you seem out of synch now with your staff.

You are unable to initiate and/or manage change.

The answers to these questions and prompts might lead to the suspicion that a dose of a consultant's reflections could have value in allowing personal and, therefore, organizational growth.

Sandy Heydt of Panetière Marketing Advisors combines her training as a Masters' level Counseling Psychologist with 15 years experience as an employee, manager, and small business owner to partner with her Executive Coaching clients and provide real insight and practical action steps to help her clients reach a higher level of functioning.