Case Study: Executive Coaching – Global High-Flyer

The Challenge
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A Global Managing Director recognised that one of his Directors — already considered a high-flyer — had the potential to deliver even more. He invitedGeorge Hosking to coach this Director with the goal of raising his performance from excellent to outstanding. He set several specific goals for their work together including:

1. Greater readiness to challenge fellow directors, appropriately, when he disagreed with their views.
2. To develop at least six high-performing subordinates, each able to represent the company in key meetings with producers.
3. To sustain standards of excellence while improving work-life balance.

Our Approach
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The work was delivered through a one-to-one executive coaching programme, with the Director also setting his own goals. These included:

• Further improving personal productivity (already exceptional),
• Becoming more inspiring with colleagues,
• Enhancing both work and home life.

We worked together on several key areas:

·     Goal setting and Achievement: A core focus of our programme is always helping the individual understand and succeed with his personal goals — and, where goals are not achieved, to explore why.However, this Director was atypical. He set more goals than most and usually achieved them all. Traditional issues explored in most of our coaching programmes — such as reasons for breakdowns or limiting behaviour patterns — simply didn’t arise.

·     Stretch Factors: We also conduct a deep dive into stretch factors with participants. A normal experience is that in the process of being coached by us, a manager not only improves his success rate in achieving his goals but does so while setting ever more stretching goals for himself. The combination of these two often drives improvements ineffectiveness of 50% or more typically found in HPM participants.

While this Director’s goals were extremely ambitious by normal standards, he initially rated them as low stretch. A conversation about the possibility that his need for consistent success was limiting his risk-taking unlocked a significant shift. His stretch factors rose sharply, leading to even more impactful results — including several breakthrough outcomes for the business.

• Time Management: The Director spent quite a bit of time on low impact but seemingly unavoidable activities (e.g. reactive email handling). Strategic proactive time was fragmented across multiple micro-tasks, which undermined its value. We introduced techniques such as “chunking” time to protect longer, uninterrupted focus periods — a change that yielded substantial gains.
• Quadrant Time Analysis: Using our four-quadrant model (Strategic Proactive, Strategic Reactive, Operational Proactive, Operational Reactive), the Director’s baseline showed an unusually good 68% Proactive time and 43% Strategic time. Still, we worked to shift this mix further — not by choosing to ignore the reactive/operational, but by empowering him to reduce time spent there through delegation, improved systems, and removal of non-essential activity.

·       OpportunityIdentification: To drive motivation for time-shift, we invite participants to identify the value of the opportunities which could be realised if much more time were available for the Strategic Proactive. Usually, this value is huge.Recognising this gives the ambitious individual a strong incentive to make the shift in time balance occur and persist. Our high-flyer identified four key benefits that could be unlocked with more Strategic Proactive time

• More time with staff, making them more proactive.
 
• Increased attention to financials and ROI.
 
• More focus on operational efficiency and effectiveness gains.
 
• Deeper engagement with customers and decision-makers.

These were translated into concrete programme goals.

·       Wellbeing: A core component of HPM is the well-being of the participant, because we find work performance and well-being support each other. If an executive is producing results in his job, but is unhappy in some personal area of life, such as health, friendships, sense of fulfilment, or a key relationship, this risks undermining his work performance and may even cause him to leave his job.Conversely when he is happy in all areas of his life, his work performance is more likely to be sustained and boosted.

This Director’s well-being was high to begin with (average score 72% in his first two assessments), but we monitored and supported further improvement throughout the programme.

The Outcome

• Time Shift: Proactive time rose from 68% to a quite exceptional 88%, and Strategic time from 43% to 68%.
• Business Results: Tangible business improvements followed — costs below plan, more accurate forecasting, stronger margins.
• Wellbeing: Personal wellbeing scores rose from an average of 72% to 88% in the final phase.
• Recognition: The Global MD - delighted with this upward shift in performance in an already recognised high-flyer – rewarded him with a promotion to an even more senior role.