Marshall Goldsmith is one of the world’s most accomplished and most in-demand executive coaches. He is very selective in choosing clients and will personally work with a maximum of eight clients at any one time. He currently has a waiting list of six months for any potential new clients. His coaching process is very unique. He only gets paid after his clients get better! “Better” is not defined by Marshall or by his individual clients. “Better” means measurable positive change in pre-selected leadership behaviors as determined by pre-selected key stakeholders. Marshall’s clients are usually CEOs or C-level executives whose work is critically important to the organization.
Marshall Goldsmith Partners
While Marshall can only work with a limited number of executives, his coaching network, Marshall Goldsmith Partners (MGP), can work with large numbers of leaders. MGP’s work ranges from coaching assignments for one executive to corporate-wide assignments for hundreds of leaders. MGP can provide coaching for leaders around the world.
In 2006 Marshall Goldsmith Partners was ranked by Leadership Excellence as the #2 organization for independent consultants/trainers/coaches in the world.
Our Approach
The Goldsmith Coaching Process™ (GCP™) is based on an empirically-tested method of executive coaching developed by Marshall Goldsmith, a leading authority in the field. Marshall has devised this straightforward and highly effective process that has consistently delivered successful results across a large population of leaders in a broad spectrum of professions.
The focus of the GCP™ is behavioral change. By identifying specific behaviors to improve and choosing concrete methods of change, the GCP™ supports positive and measurable behavior improvement.
The GCP™ consists of the following eight steps that are typically carried out over the course of a year:
Step 1 – Establish Leader Buy-In
Leaders are more responsive when they set their own goals. During this step, the coach guides the leader through the process of defining the characteristics and qualities that are important for a leader in his/her position as well as the importance of improving, both for himself as well as for the company.
Step 2 – Identify & Enroll Assessment Contributors
In the case that the leader does not have a current leadership assessment, the coach involves the leader in identifying a robust set of contributors for the assessment. It is important that the leader is involved so that he accepts the results as valid and will not be likely to dismiss or discredit the feedback.
Step 3 – Implement & Review Assessment
This step involves conducting the assessment in a timely manner, compiling a report of the data collected, and sharing the report via email or in person with the leader. If necessary, the coach can also conduct interviews with selected stakeholders to provide additional input.
Step 4 – Determine Key Behavior(s) & Stakeholders
Using the leadership assessment report, the coach guides the leader meet to determine which 1-2 behavior(s) should be the focus of the coaching engagement and which assessment contributors should be his key stakeholders — individuals who are committed to the leader’s development and willing to provide feedforward to the leader during the coaching engagement. Once the leader has identified behavior(s) and stakeholders, they are validated with the leader’s manager (and/or HR).
Step 5 – Collect Feedforward
This step requires two types of activities. The first activity is enrolling the key stakeholders, which happens only once during the GCP™. The second activity is collecting feedforward, suggestions on how to improve the selected behavior in the future in from the key stakeholders. Collecting feedforward happens regularly throughout the GCP™.
Studies on the value of this step are very clear. When successful people identify and articulate goals, announce these goals to others and involve the colleagues in helping them improve, positive and measurable change is much more likely to occur.
Step 6 – Develop Action Plan
Once the stakeholders begin to provide feedforward, they become the true “coaches”. This step involves the coach and leader developing an action plan with specific and measurable behaviors based on the suggestions of the stakeholders.
On a monthly basis, depending on feedback and feedforward, the action plan will be revisited and revised according to the leader’s progress.
Step 7 – Facilitate Follow-up
This step occurs iteratively with Steps 5 and 6. In the leader’s conversations with stakeholders, he will ask for feedback on his performance over the last month and then ask for feedforward suggestions. Depending on the stakeholders’ suggestions, the coach works with the leader to adjust the action plan regularly.
Step 8 – Review Results
In addition to the informal follow-up conversations (leader-stakeholder, leader-coach, coach-stakeholder), more formal methods of assessing progress, mini-surveys, are also used in the GCP™ at the mid and endpoints of the coaching engagement. These mini-surveys are designed to assess the stakeholders’ perceptions of the leader’s improvement in his selected behavior(s) only during the coaching period.
After the final assessment at the end of the coaching engagement, the coach and leader determine how the leader can continue applying the steps of the GCP™ without a coach as they identify new behaviors/skills they want to improve.
Our Services
Marshall Goldsmith Partners leverages an unparalleled breadth of experience and resources, to deliver strategic value at the corporate level and at the level of each executive with whom we work. We are focused exclusively on applying the Goldsmith Coaching Process to behavioral coaching and on delivering related services such as executive assessment, training internal coaches and designing internal leadership programs.
We aim to establish a strategic partnership with each of our clients, in contrast with many coaching providers who simply broker relationships between individual leaders and coaches. Because we operate as a cohesive business and not simply a loose association or network of executive coaches, we are uniquely equipped to provide our clients with integrated, high-value account management services, simplifying administration and offering greater pricing transparency. The structured nature of our business combined with the depth of our resources means that we are also able to respond quickly and easily to changes in corporate priorities.
In recognition that one size does not fit all, we create a customized program to fit each client’s particular needs. Where we work with multiple leaders within an organization, we can provide value on a number of dimensions: |
