Does Executive Coaching Actually Work?

After a good run and some remarkable growth we hit the wall.

This was 2017. I was CEO of TBWA\Chiat\Day NY. And after a skein of new business wins and some serious growth to the agency, we were suddenly stuck.

Our leadership team had grown, but we weren’t functioning as a unit. Instead we had our silos and we’d come together for our monthly management meeting to fill each other in. It was a glorified status meeting that would devolve into an inglorious bitch session about damn-near everything.

The truth of the matter was I wasn’t connecting effectively with our president. She wasn’t connecting with our head of strategy. He wasn’t connecting with our creative director. Our CD wasn’t connecting with our head of new business. And it seemed no one was connecting with our finance guy.

But then something happened.

Our head of people and talent saw the dysfunction and knew how to dismantle it and rebuild the team to be connected, creative and unstoppable.

Her solution? Coaching.

The coaches went to work swiftly.

They conducted individual interviews to understand the landscape. They gave personality tests to reveal who we all were and how we worked best. They started individual coaching sessions to work on our goals and discover what was holding us back.

The first few weeks there was broad awareness. Awareness about what kind of leaders we were. Awareness on how different people liked to work and communicate. Awareness on where we were completely missing each other and how we could start to fix things.

It was an incredible combination of human understanding and applying it to turn it into business acumen.

One of the powerful things for me was an exercise in metaphor identification.

My coach said I was operating like “an independent Hollywood producer” and I had to transform into “a NASA-style Mars mission commander.”

In other words I had to be way more more clear, more data-driven, less hands on, and way more systems-oriented.

This was a breakthrough. I got out of the weeds and started to operate at a different level with an eye on the horizon.

Each member of the team got a metaphor and seemed to adjust what was dysfunctioning.

Left brain folks learned to see the power of right-brained thinking.

Micro-managers backed off and gave space for their people to breathe and shine.

People operating at a “Me” level, saw the power of working at a “We” level.

Within a year, we would win a substantial global piece of business.

We’d then go on to win more consumer brands and even a technology brand.

Fortune was soon followed by fame as we created great work that made a significant impact at award shows, culminating in back-to-back AdAge A-List honors.

There is plenty of data on the power of coaching. Below is a quick overview from a variety of highly credible sources.

I will tell you personally coaching works.

I’ve seen it.

I’ve lived it.

I went to coaching school and became a coach.

Today, I’m seeing the folks I work with make incredible progress. And in some cases, they are truly transforming into the best version of themselves.

If you or your team is stuck, you might want to bring in a coach.

It works.

Image: Andela Jankovic

Chart: Claude AI