Coaching built for technology leaders
My coaching is grounded in my extensive digital business experience and built specifically to help CTOs, CIOs, and technology leaders increase self-awareness, overcome limitations, and unlock their full leadership potential.
Self-awareness is the starting line for effective coaching
Professor Adam Grant says, “The biggest driver for career success (is) having the self-awareness of where you need to get better and being able to do something about it.”
The key questions include:
“Where are you now?” Where do you think you are in your leadership? And Where do others see you? Are these aligned?
“Where are you going?” Where do you want to go? And Where does your organisation say you need to go?
Most leaders start with low self-awareness. Whether they overestimate their capability (“overconfident”) or underestimate it (“imposter syndrome”), they perceive themselves very differently from how others see them.
The degree of difference is what defines your self-awareness. This is especially true in the case of leadership. Their perception of your leadership aligns almost perfectly with your leadership effectiveness.
“If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.”
Benjamin Hooks, civil rights leader
Leadership Circle Profile
Because leadership development starts with self-awareness, I generally start coaching with a deep, data-driven assessment called the Leadership Circle Profile (LCP). It’s like a “Leadership MRI” because it sees through you from many different angles.
Unlike a map with two dimensions (Latitude and Longitude), the LCP has 29 dimensions. You get a percentile score of 1 to 100 on each dimension.
The graphic shows the LCP’s 18 creative leadership competencies. These are all highly correlated to leadership effectiveness. I think of these as “the adjectives’ that you might apply to a leader who consistently achieves results by bringing out the best in others, leading with vision, enhancing team development, acting with integrity and courage, and improving organisational systems. You work hard but get energised. These are people you look forward to working for again.
The lower half of the circle describes a set of traits or behaviours that leaders can slide into when they react under pressure. In many ways, we are programmed for these and slip into the mode without knowing it. These limiting tendencies each hold assumptions about what works: gaining the approval of others, protecting my ideas or self-image, or winning results regardless of the cost. These traits are negatively correlated with leadership effectiveness.
Clients say the insight they gain from this data is a game changer.
The LCP provides a deep and granular view into what drives a person, their self-identity, and the current state of their leadership. It compares how they view themselves across these dimensions to how others see them. The profile compares our own perception with our boss’s (generally the CEO), the board, members of their peer group, direct reports, and stakeholders.
Developing a Coaching Plan
When we have firmly found where they are “on the map,” we work together to define their desired future state (“where they are going”) and then map an efficient route to get there. This defines the Coaching and Mentoring Plan.
We will meet regularly for 6 to 12 months. During this time, we build specific skills to help them overcome obstacles, increase leadership capacity, and unlock their potential as leaders.
Mentoring for Skills Acquisition
This is an old joke, “What’s the fastest way to get 30 years of experience in this job?” The punchline, and the truth, is “Show up every day for 30 years.”
Mentoring can be a shortcut for people who can’t wait that long. Whereas coaching is pretty domain-agnostic, mentoring requires highly relevant skills and experience. This is where the skills gained through 30 years of digital business leadership experience come to the fore.
My approach is to help clients quickly improve their job skills by lending them my experience to boost their own. We further develop and embed these skills through practice, repetition, and reinforcement.
Examples of specific mentoring discussions in recent client engagement include:
Navigating more effective board relationships,
What a CEO and executive team want and expect from a new CTO/CIO,
Developing effective engineering culture,
Aligning your technology with company strategy,
Aligned autonomy and autonomous teams,
Building a high-performance culture,
Fostering accountability,
Implementing disciplined commercial practices, and
Designing optimal teams, team structures, and organisational structures.
Typical Coaching Process
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1) When we start coaching technology leaders, we take time to triangulate coaching priorities with the CEO/boss to clarify and align coaching objectives. This is critical if the CEO or leadership team is not fully up to speed on technology and tech strategy.
2) Identify a feedback group for the Leadership Circle Profile
3) Explore the tech leader’s “leadership journey” to explore context and internal defaults/beliefs/values
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1) Gather evaluator feedback and produce an LCP profile report as input for the CTO coaching plan.
2) Debrief the profile report with the client.
3) Identify critical findings that will steer the coaching plan.
4) Identify key growth areas and reactive tendencies.
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Develop a coaching plan to clarify coaching objectives and success measures. This will outline key areas of focus and indicators of success.
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Coaching sessions begin at the kickoff and continue through the end of the engagement. In this phase, we move to working through the coaching plan. The nature of coaching technology leaders varies from client to client, depending on their needs.
We typically meet every 3 to 4 weeks for a 90-minute session - more early on. The topic of each session is driven by the client’s coaching priorities and needs.
There is homework between most sessions. This is typically not excessive and makes a significant positive impact.
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At the end of the engagement, typically six months, we meet jointly with the client’s boss to review progress and plan for future support.
I limit my practice to only six clients at a time, focusing on each person’s unique goals.
“Andy’s coaching helped me grow in my role as CIO, giving me valuable leadership techniques to apply to challenging situations… helping me to identify and prioritise the highest value activities”
Al, experienced CIO
