Developmental conversations are critical for short-term change, but when it comes to reaching long-term goals, traditional leadership development practices can come up short. To support an executive in their commitment to lasting, impactful change or the achievement of major, lifelong goals, coaches must dig deeper to examine the core drivers – usually subconscious – that have steered the client to their current path. Further, you must help your client uncover whether these deep-seeded drivers are helping or hindering their ability to achieve their goals, and support them in making any changes required of them. Such broad and deeply personal conversations can be challenging, but with the right tools, they can lead to your most impactful and rewarding engagements. In this 60-minute session, we will explore the concepts you must understand in order to take your coaching of senior executives to greater depths, including: - Strategies for achieving long-term goals rather than quick wins - Opening up the conversation to include an individual’s personal, as well as professional, motivations - The benefits of a directional approach in support of a developmental approach - Supporting the client as they challenge themselves, recognize internal contradictions, and question their own assumptions - Selecting and understanding the assessment tools available for exploring personal drivers Join MRG’s David Ringwood to explore how you can broaden the coaching conversation with senior executives to support them in making choices that will have a lasting, life-long impact.

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Coaching Senior Executives for
Lasting Change
David Ringwood
Vice President of Client Development, EMEA

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Staci Nisbett
Chief Sales & Solutions Officer

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Your Presenter
David Ringwood
Vice President of Client Development, EMEA
Management Research Group

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Our focus today will be on the following:
Coaching Senior Executives
• Longer term learning and insights
• Coaching methods and questions that add insight
• Self-observation and metacognitive awareness
• Using MRG research as part of the coaching conversation

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What topics you coach to
What coaching topic predominantly arises in your coaching
work with senior executives?
1. Their leadership effectiveness
2. Their own world and personal happiness
3. Their legacy to the organisation
4. Pre-retirement and retirement planning
Please feel free to type any alternatives into the question box.

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Challenges with senior executives
• The routine took over years ago and I never saw it
• Lack of longer term reflection. What have I learned over
the years? How does this inform my directional decisions?
When do I make time for this type of thinking?
• Understanding and breaking away from natural patterns
and orientation
• What are the biggest challenges for me, particularly
internally? What are the issues that I’ve never really
understood or gotten to grips with?

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Coaching Practices - senior executives
• Avoid the “data dump”
• Bring together and overarching and the underlying. In the
middle is the life we experience
• Focus on shorter, narrower and deeper conversations
• Create practices that support greater awareness and better
reflection – let the linkages come together at their own pace

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Coaching Practices - senior executives
What does MRG research
tell us about behaviours
associated with greater
self-awareness?

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18
16
13
11
8
7
6
5
5
4
3
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
0Delegation
Tactical
Conservative
Production
Feedback
Structuring
Authority
Control
Self
Persuasive
Outgoing
Innovative
Management Focus
Cooperation
Excitement
Technical
Restraint
Dominant
Communication
Consensual
Strategic
Empathy
0 5 10 15
Relative Importance Index
(Total variance explained = 43%)
Direction of
Relationship
positive
inverse
Relative Importance for Self-Awareness

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IDI Dimensions
AFFILIATING
Giving
Receiving
Belonging
Expressing
ATTRACTING
Gaining Stature
Entertaining
PERCEIVING
Creating
Interpreting
MASTERING
Excelling
Enduring
Structuring
CHALLENGING
Maneuvering
Winning
Controlling
MAINTAINING
Stability
Independence
Irreproachability

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Understanding our deeper drivers
As we think about motivation, bear in mind the following
considerations:
• Motivational factors originate from the formative years and evolve
slowly over time – while we may recognise our own behaviour quite
easily, some people are less in touch with these deeper underlying
drivers
• Many people will be surprised by a few of their IDI scores – it is truly
difficult to have a fully objective view of ourselves
• Motivation can conflict with itself – we often have mixed feelings or have
drivers which interfere with each other
• People with extreme scores are very likely to underestimate this
extremity or may have normalized it to the extent that it becomes less
evident to them

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Possible IDI Bias Effects – the next level of insight
Potential Mindset Effects with IDI Dimensions
Winning - Oppositional mindset (me versus you)
Gaining Stature – Comparative mindset
Excelling – “Never good enough” mindset
Potential Interpretative Biases with IDI Dimensions
Winning - Everything is a competition
Independence – Support equals Interference/Control
Potential Assumption-based thinking with IDI Dimensions
Gaining Stature (Low) – people don’t really need recognition
Maneuvering (High) – there’s always a hidden agenda
Giving – People actually want my help
Potential Estimation Errors with IDI Dimensions
Receiving (Low) – underestimation of the support needs of others
Winning (High) – underestimation of other people’s sensitivity to conflict

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Assessing our life journey and learning

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Achievement versus happiness
Achievement/success
Persona happiness

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Achievement versus happiness
?
Excelling?
Gaining Stature?
Creating, Independence?
Stability?

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A reflection on ourselves
What percentage of stress and anxiety during your
life has been largely self-inflicted?
1. More than 90%
2. 75 - 90%
3. 50 - 75%
4. Less than 50%

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What do you wish you had known about yourself when you were younger?
What difference might it have made?
Based on this, how might this influence future choices?
What is the best piece of advice you received during your career?
What is the most valuable piece of advice you could give to a younger
colleague?
If a friend had come to you with some of the same issues, what counsel would
you have given them?
Coaching questions
Themes: Leadership, future personal directional choices…..

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What is really important to me?
• My Career
• My Family
• My Health
Overarching objectives and life goals
Look at cycles or patterns of emotions, and develop our ability to observe
ourselves
To what extent do I understand and maintain perspective about my
drivers?
What behavioural choices do I make to reconcile my drivers with my
overarching objectives? Am I serious is my commitment?

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What are the elements that negatively influence or affect me?
What effect do they have on me in fact?
What have I found to be effective to dissipate these effects?
Coping mechanisms
IDI drivers might
provide some
significant clues
Watch for triggers
and patterns
Check natural
biases and ask
whether they
always work

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Addressing self-defeating patterns
Does my desire to have solitude always serve me well? What price to I
pay? How does it affect my family/social relationships?
Why am I less inclined to think about what’s around the corner? Does being
cautious need to equate to being boring?
Why do I keep pushing people away? How is this likely to make them feel?
Where will I end up if I keep doing this?

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Appraise Your World
Example 1:
Career change as an escape
Example 2:
A narrowing world
Example 3:
Christmas night

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Coaching Senior Executives for
Lasting Change
David Ringwood
Vice President of Client Development, EMEA

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Understanding our deeper drivers
Dissonant emotional association and sensitivities
• Belonging – sensitive to isolation and perceived rejection
• Gaining Stature – sensitive to negative feedback or public criticism
• Entertaining – sensitive to inattention or being left in the shade
• Excelling – feelings of frustration and impatience
• Independence – feeling controlled or contained
Consider using adjective list at the outset
• Winning (Low) – sensitive to conflict or disharmony
“I feel unhappy/dissatisfied”
Do I only understand my needs when they are unfulfilled?

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Questions from the webinar
With regards to the relative importance for Self-Awareness, what does this
mean in detail to our coaching approach? How do we apply that
knowledge?
Our research indicates that specific behavioural characteristics seem to work
effectively when it comes to self-awareness. In coaching, I would look at the
IDI profile (if available) to see whether that person has an authentic
orientation towards these areas, if not the it's worth asking whether they
might adopt these approaches even if there's less satisfaction involved for its
own sake.
If using the LEA, then it's a more straightforward task of asking the individual
whether they are demonstrating these behaviours, or when/where it might be
useful to do so if self-awareness is an important developmental theme.
If no psychometric is involved, then it's helpful just to narrate around the
subject and identify the types of behaviour that research suggests helps with
self awareness, and invite the coachee to observe themselves or to seek
feedback from others about these facets of their leadership.