CEO & Leadership Coaching Process

I was a CEO for 25 years. I’m going to make you more successful.

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Glenn Gow’s CEO Coaching Process

Many ask me about my executive coaching process for CEOs. Below I will provide you with everything you need to know about the steps we will take together in a structured coaching framework.

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Step 0:

Here’s the Best Part of My CEO Coaching Process. You Don’t Have to Prepare!

Some of my CEOs like to prepare, but most like to “come in hot” from whatever is going on in the moment.

What’s amazing about NOT preparing is that the issue emerges in language. What you talk about and how you talk about it defines the issues that YOU need to address.

For example, one CEO mentioned three different vendors that were not performing up to expectations. This description showed a pattern. Once the pattern of poor performance emerged, I focused on the reasons for that non-performance.

As you might imagine, the main reason had to do with how the CEO was managing the vendors, not the vendors themselves. Once the CEO acknowledged they were the cause, we dove in to understand how they thought about managing others and exactly how they were managing others.

We discovered the flaw in the CEO’s thinking about goal-setting and expectations around anyone’s performance. I had to explain that no one else in the world thinks like the CEO. That the CEO needs to create clarity around goals, that they need to ensure the other party understands those goals and that the CEO will not tolerate poor performance.

Through the initial discussion of what was happening with the vendors, it emerged that the CEO had a management style that wasn’t optimal for all people. We discovered that style and changed it on the spot.

This emergence of the issue happens all the time. When the CEO makes a minor comment about someone or something, their language reveals how they think about the situation. I listen to discover the underlying issues that need to be addressed, which is usually behavior change by the CEO.

If you want to prepare, I’ll add the following steps.

STEP 2:

If You Don’t Have a Mission, Vision, and Values, We’ll Develop Them Together.

Your mission, vision, and values create the foundation of your management philosophy. Once this foundation is in place, you can start building on it. I share my mission, vision, and values to help my CEOs get started.

Mission: What is the Company’s Purpose?

For example, here’s my mission: I help CEOs become even better CEOs

Vision: What Will We Have Accomplished X Years from Now

For example, here’s my vision: I helped 500 CEOs and leaders achieve peak performance for their companies and for themselves.

Values: What are Our Core Principles that Define Our Actions When No One is Looking?

Here are my values as a CEO Coach:

  • Add value to every interaction
  • Share what I see, even if it’s uncomfortable to discuss
  • Help clients grow as a CEO and as a person
  • Nudge clients into learning beyond their comfort zone
  • Help clients discover what is important
  • Hold clients accountable for what is most important
  • Continually provide tools to get the most important things done

STEP 3:

With My Executive Coaching Process, We’ll Develop Your Objectives and Next Steps for the Following 2 – 3 Years.

After we’ve done the foundational work above, it’s time to start narrowing our focus on what objectives we have in mind. This is an important step in your career and business development.

My favorite approach for this is OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), but I also work with many other approaches.

I will help you create 3 – 4 objectives for you and/or the company with a 2 – 3 year timeframe in mind. Interestingly, these objectives don’t have to be measurable. We’ll get to that later.

I’ll help you develop these to ensure you have the buy-in of your team as well.

STEP 4:

We’ll Define Your Key Results for the Next Quarter

We can call these rocks or goals or Key Results. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we get everyone focused on the most important things to focus on in the next 90 days.

A Key Result is something that will be owned by one person and one person only. That person will be responsible for achieving a measurable result by the end of the quarter.

That person doesn’t have to do the work; instead, they are responsible for ensuring the key result is achieved.

Usually, each member of the leadership team will have at least one Key Result, and no one will have more than three.

When you work to sign someone up for a Key Result, it should be a stretch to achieve but not impossible. They need to believe they have a chance of getting it done. They need to commit to the effort to make it happen.

STEP 5:

We’ll Review the Plans Provided by the Owners of Each Key Result

For each Key Result, you want the owner to develop a plan. It’s not enough for them to say they’ll get it done. They need to develop a plan with milestones that you approve. It’s not until you have that plan that you’ll have a sense of the likelihood of this Key Result getting done.

When we review the plans, certain things will emerge that we’ll highlight together. Some of your direct reports will have a clear understanding of how to achieve the Key Result. Others will struggle to develop a reasonable plan. That could be because they aren’t good at documenting their plan or because they actually don’t know how to get the job done.

We’ll determine what to do with each individual based on our assessment of their plans.

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Step 6:

We’ll Create the Tracking Process

As part of my theme of becoming a great delegator, your team will report to you how they are doing in every one-on-one.

The simplest way to do this is for you to own the one-on-one agenda and have the first item on the agenda be a quick reporting of their progress against their Key Results.

My favorite way to do this is for them to simply report red, yellow, or green for each Key Result. If you go this way, each of your direct reports needs to understand that the worst thing they could do is surprise you. They need to be very transparent about their progress.

You can usually ignore the greens and will focus on any reds or yellows.

Business People Climbing a Hill to the Top

STEP 7:

Work on the Most Important Issues with My Executive Coaching for CEOs

I guarantee that within three weeks into the quarter; you will start to see yellows and reds. When we start to see these, we’ll start to delve deeply into the causes of these issues. This is where massive positive change can occur.

Together, we will discover:

  • Who is even better than you thought they were
  • Who is encountering issues but understands what to do about them
  • Who is falling behind and is getting stuck

It’s the last category that usually represents your biggest management challenges.

STEP 8:

Drill Down on the Areas Where Things Are Not Getting Done to Your Satisfaction

Importantly, we will get to the root cause of why things are not getting done the way you’d like them to get done.

Spoiler alert: the root cause is always something that YOU did. For example, it could be that:

  • You put the wrong person in the role
  • You haven’t trained that person sufficiently
  • You let them bite off more than was reasonable
  • You have enabled excuses to win the day

Regardless of the root cause, we’ll find it and address it, so we eliminate the issue and replace it with a CEO best practice.

Sometimes the CEO will bring a strategic issue to the meeting for us to discuss. In that situation, we will go through an in-depth evaluation of the various options. We’ll talk about the pluses and minuses of each choice. We’ll talk about the short-term and the long-term implications. We’ll determine if we have enough information or if this requires more work. We will move forward toward a decision.

For example, one of my CEOs had a significant investment offer from an investor. The CEO didn’t need the money at the time and was concerned about dilution. It was right for the CEO to take their time.

We looked at the advantages and disadvantages of this investment from many perspectives. The answer wasn’t initially clear. I shared stories of how my other CEOs thought about similar opportunities and some of the insights into their decision criteria.

In the end, the CEO and I decided that taking the money was the right decision for the company. It turns out that we are both very happy we did this as the market entered a significant downturn shortly after the CEO closed on the financing.

“His advice helped me raise $3 million. Thank you for all your guidance and leadership coaching … it really made a difference.”

– Darren Marble, co-CEO, Crush Capital.

Sometimes the CEO has ruminated about an issue for a while. It could be about making an acquisition. It could be about a challenging employee. It could be about a frustration they have. When it makes sense, I will tell the CEO what to do. Invariably, they know the answer, but they want my help to validate their decision. When the meeting is over, they execute against my recommendation.

Every CEO is unique. Most of the challenges they face are ones I’ve seen before. Together, in one hour, we can make amazing progress.

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Let’s talk. Let’s do a working session together so you can get a feel for my executive coaching process and services. Worst case, you’ll get real work done within our hour together. Best case, you’ll want to do this kind of work every week. Schedule a chat with me at calendly.com/glenngow.

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TESTIMONIALS

Take Their Word For It

What Glenn’s Clients are Saying…

SUCCESS STORIES

Janice Raises Over $100M for Her Company

Janice Raises Over $100M for Her Company

As one of the founders, Janice had created the perfect solution in an exploding market. As her CEO Coach, we worked very hard to create a scalable business model that significantly accelerated revenue growth. This model included geographic expansion, the addition of new product offerings, and stickiness to create repeat business.

This triple revenue-acceleration model not only worked but it attracted the interest of growth investors.

But a growth model wasn't enough. We needed to help Janice become a better CEO. Specifically, we worked on how to manage her board, so their faith in her as the CEO grew as time went on.

For some CEOs, the board can be intimidating. At first, it was for Janice as well. We worked on how to manage the board and get the most out of the board. Ultimately, we turned the board into a strong set of advisors and advocates for Janice as the CEO.

The support and confidence of the existing board was a critical factor in enabling her to raise well over $100M in the next round, increasing the valuation by more than $600M.

Darren Raises His First $3 Million

Darren Raises His First $3 Million

My CEO client (Darren) was starting a company in a new category. He was focused on raising capital for his business and wanted help crafting his story. Darren is a brilliant CEO, yet he realized he could produce a better story with help from someone who has created successful fundraising stories many times.

When we started working together, his story was overly complex, difficult for investors to understand, and not as strong as it could have been. Together we built a story about the tremendous value the company was creating. We used historical precedent to bolster the vision and mission. We gave investors confidence in the founders. We proved that the company could scale.

Investors are pattern-matchers. They look for the patterns that tell them this opportunity is like other opportunities they’ve seen, giving them a strong belief in the potential ROI. Together, Darren and I constructed a winning story that helped key investors see the patterns of success.

According to Darren, “Glenn gave me the perspective and confidence I needed to succeed.” Darren raised $3 million for his startup company in his first round. Darren has continued to successfully raise money in later rounds as well.

Meilin Creates A Scaling Organization

Meilin Creates A Scaling Organization

Meilin was always asking, "How can I help my company grow faster?" She was successful by most measures but had higher growth ambitions.

As her CEO Coach, I helped focus her efforts and energies on an often-overlooked area for many CEOs. This area enables scaling and enables the CEO to manage their team more effectively -- values.

Most CEOs have corporate values but don't use them as the ultimate way to install a belief system - a way for every employee to focus on the most critical issues for the company.

Meilin and I worked on making the values core to the thinking and speaking of the management team. Once the management team adopted these values and started speaking about them in their regular communications, we knew that we were on our way to ensuring that every employee “lived” the values.

While values are not the only thing a company needs to grow fast, they are critical to its success. Meilin's company is now growing over 100%.

Sean Gets It All Done

Sean Gets It All Done

As CEO, Sean had no work-life balance, and he was struggling with the overwhelming responsibilities of being a CEO. One of the biggest challenges of any CEO is to get everything done. The list of critical items seems to grow every day.

As his CEO coach (and as a former CEO), I recognized the stress he was under. That level of stress is no fun. To help Sean become a better CEO, I focused him on delegation, talent development, and balance.

First, we focused on developing Sean's delegation skills. Delegation is the "8th wonder of the world." When you make it work, your workload diminishes, and the company performs at a higher level. As Sean became better at delegating, he also began to see strengths and weaknesses in his leadership team from a different perspective.

The next step was to refresh his leadership team. We created a plan to either develop the ones that could step it up and perform better or find new leadership team members for those that couldn't help the company grow.

Finally, we worked on creating a way of living for Sean that provided him some balance. I tell my CEOs to "put their oxygen mask on first." If a CEO wants to perform at the highest level, they need to take care of themselves first.

Now that Sean has a much better leadership team, he has become a master delegator. By delegating many of the activities he had taken on before, he now has much more time to take care of himself.

Sean's company has now entered a new growth phase. More importantly, he is enjoying his work a lot more and his life a lot more.

Viraj Fires His “Best” Employee

Viraj Fires His “Best” Employee

As a CEO, Viraj was focused on employee retention. He recognized the value of keeping high-performing employees and the high cost of turnover.

One of Viraj's direct reports was one of his "best" employees. This person consistently out-performed against their targets. Within their function, they were a rock star.

However, this same person was toxic to the rest of the organization. They constantly argued with others, and they made most others feel bad about themselves. Viraj found he was spending a great deal of time managing around the toxicity created by this employee.

Viraj valued this person's contributions within their function, and he also really hated the idea of employee turnover. As a result, Viraj put up with this person and continued to work around the toxicity issue.

As Viraj's CEO Coach, I helped him understand that team alignment and team cohesion are critical factors to help the company grow. We agreed that preventing employee turnover is a good goal, but not at the expense of creating a well-functioning team.

Viraj wanted to become a better CEO, and he knew what he had to do. While it was difficult, he decided to fire the person he once thought was his "best" employee.

The first thing he heard from the rest of his direct reports was, "What took you so long?"

Olivia Finds Product-Market Fit

Olivia Finds Product-Market Fit

Olivia, my CEO client, is a product genius. She is highly creative, an excellent problem-solver, and knows how to get products out the door on time.

Olivia raised a great deal of money based on her product ideas and some early successes. The challenge was that her company wasn't growing fast enough. The pressure from the investors was building, and she was worried.

Raising a lot of money early is a blessing and a curse. The curse is that Olivia delivered her product too quickly. She delivered it, making too many assumptions about the market she was serving. When the product was released, it was a good fit but not a great fit.

Olivia was concerned about the time and dollars it would take to conduct research and test product-market fit in multiple market segments. We created a partnering strategy that enabled us to test multiple new market segments in a short time.

Olivia has found multiple market segments that are a fit for the product. Now that she has achieved product-market fit, the strategy is to "go big" on the go-to-market. And her company is taking off.

Wilson Turns the Board Around

Wilson Turns the Board Around

Wilson was a first-time CEO. The company was doing well, but not quite as well as the board had hoped. Wilson found himself uncomfortable as a minority shareholder working with a board that could fire him if he didn't perform.

Wilson wanted to know how to manage a Board of Directors. The first step was to acknowledge that a board has different measures of success than the CEO. That means there will naturally be tension. The second step was to dig in to deeply understand what the key drivers are for each board member.

Based on this information, Wilson can now address his needs, the company's needs, and the board's needs. That was the first breakthrough.

Once he knew how to address the needs of the board, we turned to address his needs. As Wilson's CEO Coach, I helped him realize that the board is an incredible asset to leverage.

Wilson began to build relationships with the board members individually to understand better how they could be of service to him and the company.

When Wilson works with the board, he is fully aware of their needs and addresses them appropriately. More importantly, he now tells the board what he is doing and relies on their insight and experience for feedback on how to help the company perform at a higher level.

Wilson is no longer concerned about the board and now gets more out of them than ever before.

Darius Solved His Crisis

Darius Solved His Crisis

I got the call at 10 PM on a Thursday. Darius, a CEO client, reached out to me just as I was about to end the day. "Glenn, my Chief Revenue Officer, just resigned, and I'm not sure what to do."

Darius was running a rapidly-growing business that was highly dependent on a well-run sales organization. He had delegated sales responsibility to his Chief Revenue Officer so Darius could focus on engineering and product.

The good news is that Darius didn't relinquish oversight or reporting of sales, just sales execution. It's also true that Darius wasn't in a panic, and we had worked on a plan for the departure of each of his direct reports.

At the moment, though, Darius and I needed to review that plan to ensure it was our best option. We checked whether or not the interim head of sales could genuinely step into the role. We discussed which accounts Darius should immediately nurture relationships with. We agreed that the recruiter we would need was still the right recruiter.

We quickly put together a communication plan on how to bring this news to the leadership team and the rest of the company. We worked on the exact next steps to interact with the interim head of sales, the director of sales operations, and HR.

Darius felt he didn't know what to do, but in actuality, he did. We had prepared for this, and he just needed to talk it through in the heat of the moment so he could execute against the plan immediately.