New Placement Coaching (On Boarding) – what is it, and how can it help me?

What is New Placement coaching?

New Placement coaching is coaching provided specifically for newly placed senior executives or their equivalents. It is designed to provide a sounding board and ongoing skills development for those undertaking new or more senior roles. The New Placement coaching relationship is a partnership between senior executive and coach, focusing both on the senior executive’s individual needs as well as business needs and goals.

A New Placement coach works with and supports newly placed senior executives to:

• Establish a strong base of relationships at the top of the business
• Design a strategy and plan of action
• Identify and solve problems
• Set and achieve goals
• Make good decisions

How does New Placement coaching contribute to business goals?

Our approach is based on a generic 5-stage change model which is applied both to business and individual development, and to strategic and tactical change. The 5 stages are:-

1. The business situation: the senior executive’s perspective on the current situation is described and clarified.
2. The senior executive’s interventions: the partnership of the coach and the new senior executive turns to the actions taken or contemplated by the senior executive.
3. The senior executive’s relationship to the business and its key players: the partnership focuses on the various interpersonal relationships, internal and external, upon which the senior executive depends. Options for moving some relationships on are identified and assessed.
4. The senior executive: in the course of assessing the various relationships, it is usual for some aspects of the senior executive’s own posture and behaviour to come into consideration. Here, the quality and completeness of earlier executive coaching work can be a strong determinant of the senior executive’s own room for manoeuvre in these critical relationships.
5. The wider context: the focus here is on the business, ethical, social, economic, cultural and contractual context.

How does New Placement coaching support the senior executive in their own development?

The New Placement coach ‘stays with’ and supports the senior executive to:-

• Create and implement a personal and business plan
• To create and maintain an integrity between personal and professional life
• Develop the skills they need to move the business forward
• Keep themselves "forward focused" to take advantage of opportunities
• Bring out the senior executive’s personal best and hold their vision for the future of the business

Having a skilled New Placement coach as a "still point" and confidant to whom a senior executive can regularly turn, during the early time of transition, is key to enabling them to establish themselves as a high performer who can develop the business in the way agreed.

What are the outcomes and benefits of New Placement coaching?

• The newly-placed senior executive achieves more sustainable results in less time
• New Placement coaching adds momentum and enables smarter, more effective actions to be taken with greater clarity
• New Placement coaching helps the senior executive to see clearly where they are, what the business needs, and what they want from their life and work, enabling them to align to their values
• Better decisions: New Placement coaching helps the senior executive see more of the options available, have new perspectives, think through the impact of decisions, and develop and sustain their commitment to the decisions they make.
• Stronger relationships: New Placement coaching improves senior executives’ relationships with others through helping them develop their interpersonal skills, discern others’ agendas more clearly and base their relationships on shared values. 

TCLJan 2010