DEER - Executive Coaching for Business Development
One of our prominent, successful programs is the DEER model that allows us to Diagnose the problem, Enable & Empower executives, mid-level managers, and senior leadership to produce positive Results both for themselves and the company.
DEER is a program formulated mainly for the Corporate Management levels. It includes leadership training, life coaching, corporate training and executive training. We can best explain this with a particular case that we handled about two years ago.
Our client was a large public company with a workforce of about 15,000 people and producing a broad range of consumer products, some of which were market leaders in their segment.
However, our observation was that the company lacked disciplined and effective leadership at the middle levels of management. As a result, while top-line growth was healthy, bottom line earnings were dismal. Stockholders were unhappy.
As soon as we, the executive coaching for business development providers, started interacting with and questioning the managers, we realized that many of them lacked the will and the skills to lead. The company’s product strategy required these managers to have an entrepreneurial out-of-the-box approach to problem-solving, but what they were getting was a bureaucratic hierarchy driven process. Being executive coaching for business development executives, we were able to scrutinize the working environment and what was lacking thereof.
Based on these in-depth conversations we identified a group of high potential business leaders that were valuable to the organization and focused our attention on them. Working with them on a one to one basis, we identified areas that required change. It was different for each manager. Some had unmet goals; some had low emotional quotients; some had home-related issues that were spilling over into the workplace. We realized they were just in need of a direction. And we being the executive coaching for business development executives thought that we could help them with coaching.
But throughout this engagement, our focus was not on changing the manager’s personality but to use his natural instincts to identify ways to marry his personal goals with that of the organization. We did not go about changing their vision but instead took the vision they had and sharpened it.
It is a part of good executive training to empathize with the coachee’s viewpoint and see things from their point of view – whether the coach agrees or doesn’t, is not vital. The idea is to place a new perspective in front of the coachee, such that better ideas get generated and exchanged.
Conversations that center around Questions push people to focus on what needs to be done. The approach and the questioning are based on the particular personalities of the coaches so that maximum comfort levels are maintained. All discussions are based on the realities that the coachee lives in, not any hypothetical situations.
Throughout the process of executive coaching for the business development program, the approach is one of facilitating and not of enforcing anything. Empowerment happens the minute an individual can put his realities in perspective and focus on clear, meaningful goals. Moreover, as coaches we recognize that the moment we guide and give direction to managers or business leaders, they use that empowerment to delegate to their teams and the net result is better coordination in the organization.
They, in fact, get trained to act as ‘coaches and trainers’ for the teams working under them. Rather than be dictatorial or ambiguous leaders, they learn to take responsibility for their actions and develop the management skills, leadership skills of those under them. This is what Leadership Training, Life Coaching, Corporate Coaching and Executive training entail.
Working with an open-minded and non-judgmental approach, the Life Coach can extract commitment, focus, and accountability of actions, specific goal setting, improved performances and enhanced growth of the organization.