The Leadership Development Practice

We have a contrarian point of view about leadership development and coaching. While most coaches believe that their job is to pull answers out of you, we believe our job is to create answers with you. We approach each coaching conversation with a sophisticated lens of context and emphasis on behavior. We believe our job as coaches is not to provide mere insight, but to create action. We believe we can’t change who people are, but we can change what they do in an authentic and impactful way.

We base our leadership development and coaching on these beliefs of Admired Leadership®, and we demonstrate our value by providing a safe venue for leaders to discuss challenging issues, for us to deliver honest feedback others are unwilling to provide—and most simply—to give great advice that works. While senior leaders engage us in a variety of ways, the four most common types of engagements are:

  • One-on-One Leadership Coaching
  • Admired Leadership Dialogues®
  • Executive Learning Programs
  • Developmental Review

One-on-One Leadership Coaching

Let’s face it: The cost of entry to becoming an executive coach is minimal. As a result, virtually anyone with organizational or academic experience can call themselves a “coach,” and many do. So what makes us better or different? For those who work within our practice, the difference is this: This is our life’s work. Our practitioners have been coaching executives for an average of 15 years. We have trained ourselves to be the best in the business. As a result, our experience is deep and our results are compelling. We have worked with:

  • More than 500 C-Suite Leaders
  • More than 1000 Executive Committee Members
  • More than 5,000 Senior leaders, running significant businesses

Our brand of coaching is best described as behavior based. Unlike psychologically-based coaching that relies heavily upon diagnostics and classification schemes to advance learning, we believe that behaviors and actions matter most. We teach senior leaders how to manage their own credibility, manage their boards, manage their teams, manage their critical relationships, manage through crisis and so forth by exploring behavioral choices that work.

Rather than offering theories, endless questions, frameworks, or academic perspectives, we provide practical advice grounded in deep experience. You don’t learn what we know in Business School, and senior leaders turn to us for counsel because we know what works and doesn’t work to address their toughest leadership problems.

Admired Leadership Dialogues®

There are leaders in every organization who are too good and too senior to participate in traditional training programs, yet not senior enough to warrant the investment of one-on-one leadership coaching. It’s for these emerging leaders that we will engage in peer coaching to accelerate their own development, and advance the collective success of their teams. Admired Leadership Dialogues® is a program that helps groups of leaders increase their own credibility and effectiveness, while raising the level of leadership they’re providing to their teams and the organization. It is a mix of feedback, individual coaching, and peer dialogue that helps accelerate the development process and build relationships across the organization. It’s based on the same behavioral approach to one-on-one leadership coaching, along with facilitated and compelling dialogue sessions among groups of peers. Most of the smart leaders who will typically do anything to get out of a training will do anything to not miss one of these team coaching sessions.

Executive Learning Programs

We are often asked to design a sophisticated learning experience for senior leaders who have seen it all. These leaders are looking for a new lens in which to view their leadership role, searching for new and unique behaviors they’ve never considered, and they’re interested in engaging in a peer-like dialogue that will challenge or change them. While we have worked with many of our clients to design programs close to home that fulfill that criteria, we’ve also created an untraditional and flagship executive learning program for our elite leaders called The Admired Leadership Institute®.

Developmental Review

Real feedback, especially about sweet spots, flat spots, and blind spots is a springboard to leadership development. We favor conducting qualitative interviews with those who surround leaders in all directions. We distill this data, debrief the leader, and work with them to create a blueprint for action. For senior leaders, this process requires skill and finesse to get it and give it “right.” Our executive coaches understand the true complexity and delicacy of this work, and excel at gaining the trust of senior leaders to begin this critical process.

 

Admired Leadership