Onboarding & Leadership Acceleration

The Stage, Las Terrenas, 2024

How can you facilitate the integration of your executives and ensure that their transition to new functions is as smooth and successful as possible?

Career development can take many forms: taking on new responsibilities within the organization through internal mobility, promotion, or a change of company, sector or even industry.

A professional life is built up in stages, and at each one, the habits and beliefs that had been beneficial up to that point are potentially challenged.

One of the pitfalls executives face when taking up a new position is underestimating the novelty of the situation. Of course, certain familiar elements are always present — more direct reports, new regions, new products, new dotted line reporting, … A priori, why assume that this transition to new functions would not go as smoothly as most successful transitions before?…

However, adaptation can be tricky since any change of role involves a more or less extensive transition phase that is both a stimulating opportunity and a source of stress.

Optimizing the first few months and successfully integrating into a new environment, as well as embodying a new leadership role, is a challenge that the transitioning executive often manages alone, once the induction program (if any) has been completed.

How do you facilitate the integration of new executives when everyone in the organization is already overloaded?

Calling in an external partner with significant and relevant experience within business organizations and a detailed understanding of emotional dynamics and how change impacts organizational behavior can be a simple and efficient solution.

Individual executive onboarding coaching, focused on emotional, relational, and organizational dynamics, quickly and effectively mobilizes and activates executives’ resources to enhance personal effectiveness in role and in the context of their specific environment. The transition into the new role is enabled, the integration is accelerated and the risk of derailment is contained.

Through onboarding coaching sessions during the first few months of their integration, executives benefit from a confidential space for reflection with a professional partner who does not have any personal stakes within the organization.

When does onboarding coaching add value and prove beneficial?

Onboarding coaching is most often relevant for:

• Internal mobility: Coaching fosters self-reflection on leadership behavior patterns, the executive’s posture, and accelerates integration into the new professional context.
• Internal promotion: Coaching enables the executive to take stock of their leadership role and safely explore their management style.
• External recruitment: Coaching facilitates the executive’s integration into the company, in line with their specific work objectives that need to be accomplished during this phase.
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What impact can you expect from onboarding coaching?

• Faster integration into teams and organization
• Optimized performance during the first few months on the job
• Minimized risk of derailment
• Smoother, more qualitative transition
  

How does onboarding coaching work?

The onboarding coaching process begins within the first few weeks of taking up the position and continues over the first three to six months (depending on the seniority and the challenges of the role).

The one-on-one sessions usually last one hour and are held twice a month, either face-to-face or remotely via video-conferencing.
Each session is an opportunity to step back, clarify and address the issues that emerge as the executive takes on their new role, while simultaneously focusing attention on what could be done to ease the transition and accelerate contribution.

In particular, each new role requires to:

• Adapt to a new work context and ‘blend in’ while expressing one’s personality in role
• Understand the real expectations of the new organization, of one’s team, of one’s management
• Take ownership of projects within the corporate culture
• Find the right leadership stance
• Integrate the mass of strategic information while mastering the inevitable stress of the trial period, to ensure a successful first few weeks
  

These are just some of the essential challenges that are tackled head-on during an onboarding coaching process.