…"coaching enables a leader to go farther, faster."
from The Next Generation Leader, by Andy Stanley, 2003
Click here for client testimonials.
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GUARANTEE OF RESULTS
If you choose to work with me, Dennis Hooper,
and you've experienced no improvement in your leadership capabilities
in nine months (as measured by your direct reports),
all fees paid during that time will be returned to you!
NO RESULTS = NO EXPENSES FOR YOU
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Typical Services Offered
(scroll down for details)
1. Provide professional one-on-one coaching
2. Conduct a single, personal leadership skills assessment
3. Generate a single, personal "Leadership Development Plan"
4. Provide training for your leadership team
5. Conduct an “Organizational Health Assessment”
6. Generate an organizational set of values, a vision description,
and a “mission” statement
7. Install a “Leadership Development Process” in your
organization
8. Facilitate an off-site leadership team "Bonding Session"
9. Serve as "Adjunct Professor of Leadership Awareness and
Growth" for your organization.
1. Provide professional one-on-one coaching. (Typical fee is $10,000 for nine months.) Requires initial dialogue about your desired outcomes, your level of motivation to improve, your willingness to invest time in improvement between sessions, etc. Individual coaching sessions (typically 60-90 minutes) usually occur twice-per-month and occasionally three times in a month. I provide e-mail notes summarizing the actions taken and agreements reached, usually within two days; these include the followup actions each party agrees to take.
2. Conduct a single, personal “leadership skills” self-assessment. (Typical fee is $400.) Using a commercially available assessment tool, you evaluate your strengths and limitations in 67 attributes of a leader. You also evaluate 19 significant “stallers and stoppers” that could severely limit a leader’s career. Usually done as a self-assessment, we can adapt it so that a customer, supplier, peer, direct report, or supervisor provides your assessment. ($800)
3. Generate a single, personal “leadership development plan.” (Typical fee is $4000.) Using a vision of your desired skill level and the information generated from the leadership skills assessment (item #2 above), you select two or three attributes for your leadership development plan. These are skill areas you would like to be applying much more effectively a year from now. Selection may be made intuitively or through a rigorous analytic process, comparing existing skills with those needed to be successful in your current or a desired future role.
Action steps are generated with the expectation they will be taken as the year progresses. The plan typically requires the involvement (support and accountability) of your direct boss. The boss typically provides front-end contribution in generating the plan.
Inputs to the plan include the creativity of the individual and his or her boss, reference material in the form of commercially available books, and my experience. My involvement usually ends at the creation of the plan, but some individuals prefer that I provide additional coaching assistance throughout the execution of the year-long plan.
4. Provide training for your leadership team. ($2000/half day) A morning or afternoon of work with your team can be arranged based on the needs of your organization. These sessions are planned around two-hour training sessions in topics that support your organization’s improvement efforts. After the conceptual training, the work continues with individuals or the whole team to develop practical applications suitable for your organization. (Two-hour sessions alone without the practical application support are $800 each.)
5. Conduct an "organizational health assessment." (Typical fee for “boss viewpoint” only is $2500. Typical fee for interviewing a cross-section of the organization, up to ten people, is $9000.) Leaders have difficulty evaluating just how healthy (or dysfunctional) their organizations are. Due to fears of political repercussions, employees are reluctant to provide their honest perspectives. A skilled outside facilitator can elicit information that internal resources cannot.
I interview the leaders and a cross-sectional representation of members of your organization. I use a simple yet comprehensive set of questions (you may participate in adapting the questions to your organization, if you desire). Interviews are typically conducted in person and on-site. Time required with each participant is usually 45-60 minutes. To increase the number of individuals who participate in this process, sometimes the information is collected in pairs. If this is to be the case, special care is required to ensure that the individuals scheduled at the same time are comfortable speaking frankly in front of each other.
I prepare a detailed report of aggregated responses (protecting the confidentiality of each contributor). I deliver this report to you as soon as possible after the interviews (usually within two weeks). You and I, within a few days, then deliver the report to all the participants in the interviews. In some situations, this is the end of my involvement with the organization. In most situations, however, some form of improvement steps are desired after the assessment. Options are usually generated by the leadership team of the organization. If my continued involvement is desired, we mutually design the followup steps, which often include the following items.
6. Generate an organizational set of values, a “vision” description, and a “mission” statement. (Typical fee is $9000.) Using the leaders and a cross-sectional representation of your organization, I spend up to two days in an off-site process generating these three independent but interrelated documents.
I provide coordination support prior to and following the session. Bringing the effort to closure will likely require one or more sub-teams (selected from among volunteers in the session) to do final wordsmithing, to communicate the off-site work to the rest of the organization, and to execute the followup work required to implement the new values, vision, and mission as an ongoing part of the culture. I provide counsel and guidance to you as the leader and to the key volunteers who assume responsibility for completing the process.
7. Install a “leadership development process" in your organization. (Typical fee is $1000/month per person). Includes one-on-one coaching for each team member (see service #1 above) and special guidance for the leader and the future “Leadership Development System Owner.” Many organizations have never considered an overt methodology for building future leaders. They likely have developed very strong technical and functional skills associated with the particular product or service they provide. Most of my clients have a reputation for exceeding their customers’ needs. After years of success, they have never consciously focused on building leaders for the future of the company. Or if they’ve considered building leadership skills beyond those required for functional or technical mastery of their product or service, they’ve not known how to successfully accomplish that intent.
Installing a system for ongoing leadership development involves:
--conducting a leadership skills assessment for each member of the leadership team (see item #2 above).
--helping each individual select two or three “focus areas” for improvement.
--using available resources, assisting each individual in identifying and choosing specific action steps to include in his or her leadership development plan (see item #3 described earlier).
--coordinating the above steps with the individual’s immediate direct supervisor; teaching that person how to provide challenge, support, and accountability throughout both the generation of the plan and the execution of the plan.
--teaching a leader in the organization (usually in the Human Resource functional area) to become the infrastructure “system owner” in an ongoing way for this process. He or she will learn how to conduct leadership skills assessments, to assist colleagues in selecting two or three focus areas for improvement, and to identify action steps to include in the development plans
--building the supportive relationship between the individual, his or her supervisor, and the “system owner,” such that the “leadership development process” is indeed inserted into the culture of the organization, and future leadership development (and improvements) can be accomplished internally without further involvement of outside consultants.
--analyzing the characteristics and culture of the organization by looking at a matrix of the strengths and limitations of all of the leaders of the organization.
My experience with installing a leadership development process is that almost instantaneously morale increases, work processes function smoother, and the products and services flow to the customer more easily. Hard number results improve within months of insertion of this process. The two or three years that follow show significant improvement in measurable outcomes, including employee engagement, customer retention, profitability, and productivity.
8. Facilitate an off-site Leadership Team “Bonding Session.” (Typical fee is $4000.) This can occur as a stand-alone event. A preferred approach is that it be part of a more extended organizational improvement process.
Prewornity to comment on some examples of how his or her talents have been manifested in the workplace. Then each of the other participants is encouraged to provide complimentary comments regarding how they have seen and appreciated those talents. Finally, each participant is invited tok of about two hours is required for each participant. After all prework is done, conducting the process properly requires a day. For very small groups (five or fewer), a shortened version of this process can be conducted in half a day, but the same amount of prework is required for each participant.
The objectives of such an activity typically include:
--clarification and communication of each team member’s natural talents and strengths
--enhanced relationships among the leaders, resulting in improved communications and more collaborative interactions
--greater awareness of how to capitalize on strengths and manage around weaknesses
Sometimes, leaders feel a need to “just do some teambuilding.” This event is a superb general team-building activity. However, the process is even more effective when conducted as part of an intentional, organized initiative to improve the results, operation, and culture of an organization. (The organization has to be somewhat healthy already; this is not a “problem-solving” activity!)
The prework involved prior to the group session is personalized. Each individual identifies his or her top five “talent themes” by taking the web-based “StrengthsFinder Profile” assessment. During the event, a description of all the participants’ dominant talent themes is provided. Each participant is provided an opportu look to the future and identify how he or she would like to utilize the talents in support of the leadership team and entire organization in the coming year.
9. Serve as "Adjunct Professor of Leadership Awareness and Growth" for your organization. (Typical fee is minimum of $6000/month for a minimum of a year.) Colleges hire adjunct professors when:
--they want the expertise of the individuals, and
--the individuals are unwilling to become full-time professors, and/or
--the college is unwilling to pay full-time professor salaries.
After a year or two of my services as described above, some organizations want my committed expertise for an additional period of time. Some decision-makers have asked that my influence extend beyond the organizational leaders to their entire culture.
