CEO coaching
Faced with the competition, the shareholders and their own organisation, the CEO is a person standing
alone against the complexity of the challenges, the weight of their decisions, the perpetual evolution of
the environment, their doubts and questions – and forced to act on all fronts at once.
Many CEOs
live in a climate of permanent urgency in which they can no longer prioritise, grasp and implement the
changes necessary, manage risks, transmit their strategic vision, inspire a dynamic of movement or
motivate their teams and generally struggle to find meaning and added value in their actions.
CEO
coaching is highly specialised and seeks to create a space of liberty and reflection, a place for
questioning and benevolent confrontation that encourages perspective and openness in the quest for
meaning, efficiency and performance.
CEO coaching: for whom?
Unlike a manager, the CEO has the power and freedom to define their own objectives and strategy and the means to achieve them. Power and its immediate corollary, solitude. Coaching is addressed to CEOs who fall prey to doubts and questions about how to coordinate and align the strategic, organisational and behavioural components of their managerial approach and their relationships. In this context, our ambition is to offer our clients highly personalised support enabling them to better understand these grey areas, situate themselves in relation to the organisation's challenges, question their strategic behaviour, consider their added value, identify options and finally adjust the different components of their leadership approach for the benefit of their personal growth and the organisation's long-term performance.
CEO coaching: why?
Understanding solitude, doubts and questions
Interrogating the leader's strategic approach
Thinking about added value
Adjusting behaviour and communication
Being able to transmit the strategic vision
Practical methods
Thanks to their position outside the system, their approach and their questions, the coach opens up the client's frame of reference. The coach is not an advisor or an expert in the organisation's field of activity, and is not selling solutions. The coach is a specialist in the unknown, because they do not know the content of each session in advance. They are the sworn opponent of conventional thinking, certainties, obvious answers and preconceived solutions, which contribute to the stagnation of any system and to resistance to change.
The working method proposed for CEO coaching unfolds as follows :
The request comes from the CEO. There is no higher decision-maker and thus no three-way interview. This
demanding face-to-face interview takes place in four main stages (diagnostic/analysis of the
context/expression of the desired situation/understanding the system – forces and players
involved/issues/scenarios/action plans). Each session leads to specific work based on a situation chosen by
the client relating to their strategic, organisational, interpersonal and behavioural concerns and in line
with their managerial approach.
It involves ongoing work on the expressed needs (and hidden needs),
areas of vulnerability and relationships with stakeholders, individual issues, power games and rivalries.
Highly personalised, the CEO coaching service fulfils dual requirements for immediacy and flexibility – the
format of the support can be adapted depending on the objectives and issues and the client's constraints and
availability, alternating between face-to-face sessions and video conferences or telephone interviews.
We plan ten 90-minute working sessions at intervals of two or three weeks.
Depending on the subjects addressed, the coach may use strategic questioning techniques or the Socratic
method, explore systems of representation, play with paradoxes or set tasks. In general, sessions alternate
between listening and clarification, analysis and confrontation, interpretation grids, feedback and action
plans.
A flat-rate approach can be taken to our CEO coaching service: annual fee/number of hours – commitment to
call the client back within two hours (day and night) for a session on the same day.