Transitions

Transition coaching lies at the heart of Chelsham’s executive & leadership coaching practice.

For good reason. It is development at its most impactful.

I sometimes think that everything I have done in my career comes together in a transition coaching session. It all falls together – I started as a recruitment consultant advising people around career moves. I moved in-house and worked in a high-growth business where hiring the best people, in numbers, and helping them to hit the ground running was key to business success. I worked across more than one blue-chip business as a consultant – advising and mentoring as I went.

I started developing my formal executive coaching practice nearly 20 years ago. I qualified from a leading coaching school. I continued to work with senior players, and others, around transitions as part of my various senior HR roles including as HRD. I coached and mentored as my contribution to people’s development.

And now I coach individuals – many (but not all) of whom are very senior – and teams for a living. I have deep experience in, fascination about and understanding of the dynamics of transitions into new companies or new roles within an existing employer.

And, what’s more, I simply enjoy this work for all sorts of reasons.

Any form of development needs to be carefully targeted and accurately timed – with clearly defined objectives and success measures. A person’s transition period into a new role is one point at which coaching is an extremely relevant intervention where objectives can easily be defined and worked towards. Use of transition coaching is increasingly common but it  surprises me that more businesses don’t make this modest additional investment to help realise their much larger investment in hiring a senior player.

What’s it all about? Any executive coaching is designed to help talented people unlock their potential. Or should be. The emphasis is on ensuring successful people continue to be a success and find ways of maximising their performance. An underpinning assumption is that nobody has realised their full potential as there is always “interference” i.e. things that get in the way.

The greater the interference, the lower the performance – even in “high potentials”. Interference can be lack of knowledge, unhelpful mental attitudes (e.g. fear or isolation), impact of colleagues, out-of-work events, politics, a confused state of mind and so on. It might be anything.

My coaching incorporates various models, with a healthy dose of intuition and corporate experience thrown in for good measure, and is designed to help reduce interference and therefore increase performance.

So that’s executive coaching. What about transition coaching specifically? Any career move – whether it be intra- or inter-company – increases interference and there is a high risk of people under-performing compared to their prior achievements for a period of time.

By definition people have a new boss, are in a new business or team, have many unanswered questions and need to understand how to operate in a new environment.

Networks have vanished, new mindsets can appear (e.g. “am I good enough?”).

And here’s the thing…..this all happens in a 90-100 day period which is a crucial time, and a time-limited opportunity, for the individual. Transition coaching is designed to reduce the period of time it takes for the coachee to be contributing effectively and to minimise the risk of under-performance. It is a type of coaching which delivers genuine benefits and ROI. It is one where I have particular interest – as you have seen.

The individual will normally be working through some well-recognised phases in their transition – for example building a view of their new “world”  and a response to it which fits well with the culture and expectations of their new company and/or new boss.

Coaching should, if possible, start before the person commences their new role to support them in hitting the ground running.

By the end of the process we would have helped the coachee develop an agenda for success which is sustainable and which they will go and deliver. It will already have accelerated the speed at which they become effective in their new job.

This can also apply to other transitions – out into a new phase of life, return from parental leave or secondment,  re-induction after lengthy absence on grounds of health and so on.

I really enjoy talking about transitions. I enjoy coaching people through them. “My” coachees express pleasant surprise about what a difference it makes.

So do get in touch if you’d also value a conversation.