Purpose | Effectiveness | Leadership
What We Do
EffectiveTalent Office (ETO) supports the success of capable senior executives seeking to be more effective in their current roles, and promising talent aspiring to broader leadership. We help clients address organizational, situational, and motivational challenges and capitalize on opportunities, so they thrive in their careers. The client executive’s needs, combined with the breadth of our experience, inform the advisory engagement and help establish the most effective working relationship.
Our employment, coaching, and consulting experience embraces general management, P&L accountability, and multiple C-level positions (Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief HR Officer, Chief Information Officer), as well as additional hands-on roles. ETO industry experience spans consumer goods, financial services, technology, health care, capital equipment, pharmaceuticals, and retail.
We advise both majority and minority clients and are uniquely accomplished at addressing the coaching needs of executives of color.
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Our premise is that managers and employees are most effective when they align on purpose, priorities, performance, and potential. Nuances in what effective leadership looks like can challenge even the most highly-regarded talent. Alignment on these themes is fundamental to high performance and eventual advancement.
Our mission is to help leaders achieve greater clarity and delivery on these themes. The result is accelerated acclimation to new roles, enhanced mastery, and greater insight into what it means to excel in each executive’s unique context.
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Services:How We Help Clients
We help client executives improve results in five specific areas:
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Perception
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See themselves as others see them
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Appreciate how their approach or behaviors impact others
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Understand the need for change
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Leadership
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Assess their leadership effectiveness
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Identify leadership strengths, opportunities, and barriers
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Build more effective relationships
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Planning and execution
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Accurately diagnose and prioritize key issues
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Build well-defined objectives, strategies, timelines, and workplans
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Strengthen operating performance, delegation, tracking, and follow-through
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Communication
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Improve listening and communication skills
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Strengthen presentation, persuasion, and influence skills
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Enhance leadership presence
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Personal efficiency
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Manage time more effectively
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Drive meetings with clarity, purpose, and progress
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Manage documents, messaging, scheduling, and collaboration efficiently.
Key Differentiators
The results we achieve for clients are rooted in four key differentiators:
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Experience. The breadth and depth of our professional experience at senior levels in distinct functions and industries provide a wellspring of pragmatic insights, solutions, and tools. Building on this foundation, we help clients prioritize issues, build relationships, solve problems, and deliver tactical and strategic results.
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Expectations. Starting with our own direct experience, we understand what high-performing organizations expect from effective executives. Additionally, we invest in understanding the expectations our clients face, and build on that understanding to frame the coaching engagement with specificity.
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Purpose-Effectiveness-Leadership Model. Our advisory services seek to align three domains of performance: (1) personal and organizational purpose, (2) what effectiveness requires in the client's specific context, and (3) the culminating leadership impact the organization requires. Intersections among these domains govern achievement of sustained performance, delivered impact, and realized leadership and organizational potential. On a personal level, performance in these domains flows directly from the executive's drive to perform, skill at the work, and will to overcome obstacles, resistance, challenge, and doubt.
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Availability. We charge a fixed monthly fee and plan to be available to our client executives for unlimited virtual, phone, and email interaction. Corporate calendars, key meetings, and unexpected events can vary the duration and intensity of support; we want clients focusing on results, not watching the clock.
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The Coaching Engagement
Principles. Our engagement approach ensures that both supervisor and client executive have a shared understanding of objectives, and assurance that we can deliver. Personal chemistry, confidentiality, and trust are essential. The overarching goal is confidence in the plan, in our accountability, and in the client executive’s willingness to do the work needed to create a high likelihood of success.
Scope and process. Engagements range in scope from specifically targeted (e.g., refining a leadership capability) to broadly advisory (e.g., negotiating the organization and positioning for influence). Following alignment on goals with the executive and his or her leadership, we ensure the right “chemistry” and understanding of the coaching process during an initial, informal meeting. If the mutual decision is to move forward, engagements generally unfold in three stages:
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In-depth interview. Our in-depth, one-on-one interview generally lasts from two to three hours and provides an informed perspective on the executive’s organization, career context, aspirations, performance, and perceptions. This interview serves two purposes. First, it informs the engagement design that best supports growth objectives and performance opportunities. Second, it provides an occasion for reflection and self-awareness that executives rarely find time for in the normal course of their careers.
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​Engagement Plan. Following the interview, we will agree on the key steps, content, and cadence of the engagement, including specific discussion of how our work together should contribute to the agreed results, and confirming the level of commitment required from the client executive. While the plan provides guiding structure and coverage, we respond swiftly to changing situations, emerging opportunities, and unexpected events that almost always arise.​
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​Delivery. The right delivery approach varies widely depending on objectives and desired results. Scheduled discussions are the norm, with more intensive frequency or involvement driven by business needs and corporate events. We guided a manufacturing executive to more effective interaction with his leadership peers using role-play over a 6-month period. We prepared a financial manager to achieve her goal of vice president leveraging a comprehensive 12-month program. We supported the effectiveness of a newly-promoted healthcare CEO amid industry change and organization transition with a combination of operating, board, and ongoing implementation counsel.​
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​Results. Once the engagement is underway, the advisor-client relationship is confidential. We assess progress through confirmation or course-correction check-ins with supervisors. However, results typically become evident through improved client executive behaviors, performance, and impact.
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Duration. Our minimum engagement lasts six months with specific checkpoints on progress and executive commitment. We also offer program-specific engagements, annual standby retainers for executives we have worked with previously, and issue-driven workshops for teams of 8 to 15 participants.
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Selected client coaching, employment, and consulting experience:
