The federal government is suffering from a serious leadership deficit, and that deficit has only grown in recent years given the challenges facing the United States. Thats the major headline to emerge from a recent report published by the Partnership for Public Service (PPS) in conjunction with consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH). The report, Unrealized Vision: Reimagining the Senior Executive Service, examines the state of the governments senior leadership corps 31 years after its creation.

The report found that the governments leadership development programs for senior executives today are inadequate, decentralized, and not strategically linked to agency succession planning. It also found that on-boarding programs for new senior executives are rare and that not enough is being done to fill the federal leadership pipeline with future leaders.

The PPS/BAH report noted that since the creation of the Senior Executive Service (SES) in 1978, the governments role and mission in the lives of the U.S. public has shifted enormously. The report states: The issues faced by government executives today have grown increasingly difficult and global and include the most serious financial meltdowns since the Great Depression, two foreign wars, an aging population, soaring budget deficits, and serious energy and healthcare problems.

Yet the nature and operation of SES has not adjusted in response. Many of the most challenging issues confronting government agencies today are interdepartmental in nature, the report noted, and require government executives to work across agency boundaries to address them. Despite this, most career senior executives remain in the same agency and do not move through the government to share their expertise or provide an enterprisewide collaborative approach to decision-making, the report said.

Based on these findings, the report calls for multiple changes:

  • a comprehensive review and overhaul of the federal governments senior leadership development programs
  • the introduction of robust onboarding programs in agencies to help new senior executives get quickly up to speed in their jobs
  • the inclusion of new training and learning modalities in leadership programs, notably executive coaching, to help accelerate new skills development in leaders.

A Critical Role for Executive Coaching

While executive coaching is well-known today in the private sector, it is not yet consistently used as a leadership development tool in the federal government. Although some agencies have coaching programs in placeparticularly for select GS13s, GS14s, and GS15sothers do not. In fact, some federal managers are exposed to coaching in executive development programs provided by universities or corporate training firms, but it appears that many in the SES ranks have not been personally exposed to executive coaching at all.

According to the PPS/BAH report, less than one in four members of SES has received executive coaching. And according to a 2008 U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) SES survey, just one-third of SES members have had their development needs assessed.

By contrast, the private sector routinely provides executive coaching to senior and mission critical executives and uses it extensively to

  • help already strong performers become truly stand-out performers
  • prepare recently promoted executives and managers for new or expanded job responsibilities
  • position high-potential managers for future promotion
  • strengthen the leadership bench and pipeline
  • help executives and managers of many levels develop critical interpersonal skills and selfawareness that are increasingly required to manage people and operate successfully in a rapidly changing business or organizational environment.

Introducing Executive Coaching

While the PPS/BAH report urges federal executives to take a governmentwide approach to enhancing leadership development programs and activities (coordinating activities closely with OPM and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget), much of the groundwork for these efforts will likely be based on pilot programs and test initiatives that originate in individual agencies and then gain visibility governmentwide.

With this in mind, you may want to consider making your agency or department a test location for implementing executive coaching, perhaps on a limited basis at first. You can start by linking executive coaching to your agencys current leadership development (LD) programs or to executive development options offered through OPM, the Federal Executive Institute (FEI), the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, or other organizations.

For several reasons, organizations should position executive coaching as a natural complement to new or existing training and LD programs:

  • coaching provides a confidential, one-on-one opportunity for an executive to explore leadership issues and challenges in depth with a skilled coach
  • leaders can get better acquainted with their own personal style, strengths, and weaknesses
  • leaders can test implementation of ideas or principles covered in training or classroom LD programs
  • coaches can help new leaders develop action plans to deal with skills gaps or challenges currently affecting their work.

Executive Coaching Inside Your Agency

Successfully bringing executive coaching into an organization requires four key factors:

  1. strong sponsorship by an organizations senior leaders
  2. careful review and selection of coaches
  3. consideration of the range of services to offer executives and managers
  4. appropriate matching of coaches to individual executives and managers.

Top Leaders Should Emphasize the Importance of Executive Coaching to Agency Performance

If you are thinking about introducing executive coaching into your agency, its important that it be championed by the agencys top career executivesand ideally by high-level political appointees as well. It should be introduced as a vehicle for helping drive implementation of agency programs, for strengthening leadership and team alignment, or for executing of your agencys overall public mission and strategic operating plan. It could also serve as an ideal vehicle for helping implement the Obama Management Agenda within your agency, once action plans and initiative specifics for that agenda have been further articulated by the White House.

When coaching as a leadership development tool is positioned within an organization this wayas having a critical linkage to the success of the agency, the achievement of its public mission, or the realization of specific goals and objectivesit sets the tone and expectation for what executive coaching is intended to do and gives it strong internal legitimacy. Executives and managers can see that the agency is strongly committed to coaching as a way to improve or enhance individual job performance, foster leadership growth and development, and align individual executive or management performance with strategic operating goals and the agencys public mission and vision.

While an agencys human capital office or training department has a critical role to play in supporting and administering coaching programs, coaching should not be perceived by government executives and managers solely as an HR initiative, but rather as an organizational initiative emanating from the highest levels of the agency or department. For this reason, top agency career executives and politicals should publicly be on record about the importance of coaching in helping the agency achieve its goals, change its culture, drive increases in manager and employee performance, and so on.

In addition, top executives should retain coaches for themselves. This sends the message to others working in the leadership chain that doing so is expected and, in fact, an initiative that top management in the organization takes very seriously.

Build a Team of External Coaches

As part of introducing coaching into your agency, it is important to identify and assemble a cadre of coaches that your organization is interested in making available to executives and managers. Access to a coach could be linked to participation in an internal or external executive development program. Or, you may decide to offer it to individuals on a standalone basis or as a component of a specific training curriculum.

Ideally, your agencys human capital office should maintain a database about coaches that your agency is interested in making available to individuals either at your agencys headquarters location or in field offices around the country. Appropriate coaches can also be found through discrete executive referrals, networking, and contacting local chapters of organizations, such as the International Coach Federation (www.coachfederation.org) and the Human Resource Planning Society (www.hrps.org) and its affiliates around the United States.

Focus on hiring coaches with proven credentials. For example, you should engage coaches that are professionally certified or that are graduates of recognized coaching programs. They should also come with strong referrals or good references. In addition, look for coaches with solid agency, program, or organizational line experience, who can relate personally to the challenges that likely clients in your organization face.

Finally, look for coaches who are good at connecting with many kinds of people. As part of vetting coaches, the human capital or human resources office should interview individuals to better understand their personal coaching approaches, their coaching philosophy, and the specific kinds of tools they use in their coaching work.

Decide What Level of Services to Offer

Your organization needs to decide what level of coaching to offer its executives and managers. Some organizations, for example, offer a range of coaching options to individuals, based on seniority, specific job responsibilities, and other factors. Some limit coaching services to a stipulated number of meetings, hours, or days over a certain period of time, typically six months to a year.

In other cases, and particularly for very senior executives, an organization may offer a fuller range of coaching options that includes weekly meetings with a coach, administration of 360-degree assessments that are then used as the basis of initial coaching work, 24/7 availability, and shadowing (whereby a coach travels with and observes a top executive in meetings with employees, other senior executives, and with other stakeholders).

Typically, coaches give executives and managers assignments between meetings that are designed to help the coachee identify and prioritize their coaching goals and develop a coaching action plan. In some cases, coaches also prepare summary reports for coachees on completion of coaching engagements.

Email interaction and phone calls are normal components in all coaching engagements. Coaching can also be done over the phone and via video conferencing link, once the coach and coachee have met once or twice in person.

Match Coaches and Coachees

Once you develop a cadre of coaches you are comfortable with, its time to inform your leadership and management that they are available to meet with interested parties within the organization. Generally, an organization should give executives and managers who are being offered executive coaching the opportunity to interview several individuals before making a decision about whom to work with.

Comparison shopping is a good way to ensure a good fit between individual coaches and coaches. This may not always be possible (for example, if an agency has assigned specific coaches to participants in an executive development program), but it is the preferred approach. If it is your role in the organization to introduce coaches to prospective coachees, it is best to avoid offering the same coach to both an executive and his or her direct reports.

Typical Steps in a Coaching Engagement

Once your agencys coaching program has been put in place, coaching engagements typically follow a programmed series of steps.

Step 1| Alignment Meeting

Once a coach and coachee have been paired, it is critical that a meeting be arranged between the coach, the coachee, and the coachees supervisor. Such alignment meetings are designed to ensure that there is broad, general agreement at the start of a coaching engagement as to what areas of focus the coaching will have.

This is typically a 30- to 60-minute meeting, during which the coachees supervisor shares her perspective and the coachee describes what he hopes to achieve out of the coaching relationship. It is generally agreed at such a meeting that the coach will report back at regular intervals to the coachees boss as to the general progress of the coaching engagement. However, during this meeting it is also made clear that the specific subject matter discussed in one-on-one coaching is confidential.

Step 2| The Initial Meeting Between Coach and Coachee

In an initial coaching meeting, the coach normally outlines to the coachee what executive coaching is designed to do. The coach discusses issues of confidentiality, accountability, and supervisor report-backs with the coachee, and together the two parties contract with one another for purposes of moving forward.

As part of the contracting process, both parties make commitments to the other about the roles they will bring to the coaching relationship. Because coaching is best thought of as a co-equal process (an alliance between peers), the coachee must bring an openness and willingness to look at issues affecting his own leadership and management of others and be willing to invest time and energy to develop a coaching action plan with a set of clear and concrete goals. The coach must bring curiosity, authenticity, and integrity; a willingness to ask searching questions, to be direct, and to challenge the coachee when appropriate; and a desire to help the coachee articulate a set of coaching goals.

After contracting occurs, the coaching engagement begins in earnest. The coach typically queries the coachee about what his coaching goals are and initiates the process of getting to know the coachee in more depth. Significant biographical information is collected, along with a career history and current professional goals.

At this point, the coach and coachee will usually review any existing 360-degree assessments, past professional development plans, and other documents to gain insights that may be useful to the coaching process going forward. The two may also agree that other assessments (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, for example) will be administered if it is deemed helpful to enhance the coaching process.

In some cases, a coach will meet informally and alone with the coachees supervisor, and sometimes with the coachees direct reports, to further gather contextual information that can inform the coaching process.

Step 3| Client Assessment and Goal Setting

As the coaching process proceeds, data-gathering, observation, and conversation continue and broaden. Because an individual brings to the coaching process many elements of selfhis life history, professional experiences, personal beliefs, and subjective worldviewits important to gain insight into each of these areas as coaching proceeds for it provides important clues about the person they are today.

Coachees are often asked to answer questions about how they view themselves in the context of their organization. For example, to what extent do they feel aligned with the organizations mission and values? To what extent do they understand their organizations culture, politics, organizational dynamics and history? And to what extent does their own management style match that of their boss and co-workers? All of these factors influence a persons success and effectiveness in an organization.

As conversations proceed over the course of several coaching meetings, the coachee typically comes up with five to eight specific coaching goals they want to pursue, given the organizational context in which they work and the nature of the position they currently hold.

Step 4| Determining Measures of Success

A key element in making executive coaching work is ensuring the coachee and coach agree on specific metrics that will be used to assess their coaching progress. A coachee who decides that one of their goals is to improve their team leadership skills might decide to query their team about this at the start of the coaching process and then again six months later.

Or, a coachee who decides one of his coaching goals is to improve the clarity of communications with his direct reports might agree to use data from a 360-assessment conducted before coaching work starts as a baseline to measure their progress with this goal six months after coaching begins. Sometimes the coach and coachee decide to include the coachees immediate supervisor both in determining the metrics of successand in providing key input into the coachees development plan.

Step 5| Creating the Coachee Development Plan

As the coach and coachee work to define development goals and associated metrics and timeframes for accomplishing them, it is important that the coachee develop a personal mission statement to drive her actions and shape the development plan. In addition, the coach and coachee need to identify any specific skill gaps in an executives or managers background and available training or leadership development programs that may be available to address these skill gaps.

This is where the federal governments extensive resources can be brought in to provide individual coachees with specific training; opportunities for rotational assignments to broaden the individuals experience and skill base; or networking opportunities that can help the individual deepen his resource and professional contact networks within or outside government.

Step 6| Implementing the Plan

Once coaching goals have been established, time-frames for completion have been agreed to, and action steps have been initiated, it is important that the coach and coachee continue to meet on a regular basis to review progress in achieving goals and to discuss issues of interest or challenge to the coachee, as they arise. During this time, it is good for the coach and coachee to talk on a regular basisevery two weeks or soand to be in touch by email as well.

During this phase of coaching, a coach will sometimes check in with a coachees direct reports, or shadow his coachee, to see how that individual is applying ideas and principles discussed in coaching in real life situations with employees and co-workers. Also during this phase, a coach may perform role plays with coachees as a way to address specific challenges they may be dealing with.

In some cases too, the coach will use video feedback to help a coachee understand how she comes across when delivering public presentations, interacting with employees, delivering speeches to external audiences, hosting town hall meetings, or interacting with the press. In other cases, a coach may recommend journaling, meditation, regular exercise, and other forms of recreation to help people reduce stress and restore a semblance of work/life balance to hectic work, travel, and meeting schedules.

Step 7| Broadening the Coaching Conversation

Inevitably, as coaching proceeds, the pathways of conversation broaden. As part of the coaching process, we sometimes move into areas of discussion separate from work, but which affect who the individual is at work. For example, discussion of family, children, spouses or partners, and relationships sometimes comes up, as does discussion of long-term career and personal goals.

Good coaching is flexible and holistic enough to accommodate discussing these things and, in fact, to encompass all domains of a persons life. This includes not only the intellectual domain (the domain of the public or professional self), but also the emotional domain (the heart and emotions), the somatic domain (the body, health, and wellness) and the domain of self-actualization and life purpose.

Step 8| Evaluate Progress and Next Steps

As coaching proceeds, it is obviously important for the coachee to provide feedback to the coach on how she feels the coaching is going. Is the coachee being successful in implementing his action goals? Is he getting positive feedback from co-workers and supervisors in the areas where coaching needs were indicated? What does the coachee think of the coaching relationship itself? Does the coachee feel both supported and challenged? Has trust been firmly established, and is there good chemistry between the coach and coachee?

Good chemistry can be a tough element to measure, yet it is important to successful coaching relationships. Because coaching relationships are co-equal, it is appropriate for the coach to occasionally ask the coachee for feedback. For example, the coach may ask, Is the approach were taking here helpful to you? Good chemistry between coach and coachee is important because it creates momentum in the relationship and binds the parties together in a mutual endeavor.

Step 9| Wrap Up: Completing the Formal Coaching Engagement

Most coaching engagements last from six to 12 months, sometimes longer. And they can involve different levels of service, depending on the seniority of a particular executive or manager, the needs of the organization, and so forth. Coaching is sometimes also configured to work around a specific leadership development program or standalone training courses an individual may be participating in.

That said, there comes a time when formal coaching engagements endwhen the coachee has achieved good progress with their coaching goals and structures have been put in place to evaluate their continuing progress on a going-forward basis.

To bring formal closure to a coaching engagement, a coach will, in many cases, prepare a summary report for discussion with the coachee. The coach may also make a final overview report back to the coachees supervisor about topics covered and ideally hold a three-way close-out meeting that includes the coachee and the coachees supervisor.

On occasion, a former coachee will ask his coach to come back to the organization and work with the former coachee and his team in a team-coaching context, often acting as a facilitator in such situations. In many cases, a coach will have become acquainted with members of the coachees team in the course of the one-on-one coaching engagement. Thus, team coaching is often a natural outgrowth of the work that the coach and coachee have done one-on-one.

Getting Started

Now is the time for federal agencies and departments to become more intentional about nurturing and developing future generations of leadersespecially as the White House focuses on implementing the Obama Management Agenda, which puts emphasis on improving overall government performance. The private sector has been focused on leadership and performance for years. Now its time for government to play catch upparticularly if it wants to recruit a new generation of the United States best and brightest to federal service. Studies show that providing people with strong leadership development opportunities, including coaching, are a great way to recruit and retain top talent.

Because the nature and role of government is expanding in our country today, the skill sets and leadership development options available to top executives and senior federal managers must expand as well to ensure we have a strong, skills-based federal workforce. Executive leadership coaching is a powerful and customizable component to include in an agencys training and leadership development mix and can do a great deal to help strengthen competencies and build a strong pipeline to meet an agencys current and future leadership requirements.