Are you baffled by executive coaching?

Is it like therapy? How is it different from mentoring? How do I know if I need a coach? How long does coaching take? And of course… Does it work? These are some of the questions prospective clients often ask us. To help answer these questions, we invite you to read the following “True Tales” from our world.


Turning Lemons into Lemonade: Change Management Edition
By Jeanne Schulze, Senior Coach & Consultant

When a large multi-national equipment manufacturer moved its entire customer support back office to India, “Joe,” VP of customer service, reached out to Jeanne Schulze to help him effectively address a raft of new challenges resulting from the restructuring. With one-third of the company’s product and customer support team reporting to him, Joe and the team faced a huge disruption. Suddenly, his current team of 25 customer service reps saw their responsibilities disappear, and 18 new directors were assigned to report to him. Joe not only faced the difficult task of reassigning or laying off people, but he also needed to develop a strategy to onboard and integrate the new India-based customer service reps.

He turned to Jeanne to help him develop a coaching model that he could use with each of the 25 team members. Jeanne worked with Joe to develop a plan and together they facilitated a two-day strategy session with the team to ensure everyone understood how the company’s restructuring would impact them. Jeanne helped Joe identify and communicate how they could succeed in the new customer service model. He was able to say what he needed to say in an inspirational, motivational, and supportive way that made most team members want to make changes. Many employees were reassigned to other departments, some chose to leave, and some were asked to leave.

Throughout the transition, Joe maintained his commitment to developing his team, some of whom still rely on his counsel. Word of the successes Joe had with his team spread throughout the 120,000-person company, and the leadership coaching model he and Jeanne developed is in use today.


Take away: You don’t have to, and shouldn’t, go it alone. This scenario could have ended up being a career nightmare for Joe’s existing team. Instead, together with Jeanne, Joe developed what became a replicable, textbook case of seamless change management.


Transforming a bully into a sought-after leader
By Dr. Carl Fowles, Senior Coach & Consultant

When Dr. Carl Fowles met “Kevin,” a mechanical engineer at the VP level, he demonstrated expert technical skills, great passion for his job, and the potential to move to the next leadership level. But his counter-productive behaviors of intimidating others, dominating processes through command and control, communicating with negative verbal and non-verbal language, and stressing his team and peers prevented him from progressing. His intensity made people across the organization nervous and often kept his team from engaging. After a 360 Assessment comprising superiors, peers, and direct reports, Carl developed an action plan focusing on:

  1. Becoming more effective in communicating with openness, engaging in empathetic listening, and controlling counter-productive body language.
  2. Using the principle of emotional intelligence and the communication process of dialogue to achieve collaboration.
  3. Gaining more credibility among senior leaders, peers, and direct reports by applying principles of team effectiveness, employee engagement, and building trust through delegation, development of talent, and caring for team members.


Take away: You are the commander of your professional life, and you can make dramatic changes. Through constant reframing, exploring possibilities, and experimenting with new relevant actions, Kevin became grounded in new attitudes and behaviors. A breakthrough occurred when he said: “I have known for years how to treat people outside of work, but I have failed to do these things at work.” He opened up with empathic communication, established trust with superiors and peers across the organization, and engaged his team by making it safe to engage in conflict to get to synergy. When the coaching engagement ended, Kevin said, “I have a hard time not getting choked up because I now feel I am aligning with who I really am. This coaching has been life-changing for me!”