The Executive Mentor Program
By working in a trusted and confidential relationship with me, my clients are able to address longstanding issues, overcome private concerns and dramatically improve their communications — across the board.
At this level, I know you will only work with someone who has experience in, and a sound understanding and appreciation of, the environment you work in:
- A professional who can give you a sound diagnosis of your current writing & speaking & interactive communications — and of what your role requires for you to be truly successful. This means you can be crystal clear about your current communications skills and strengths and where you need more practice or support to enable you to succeed in your current role.
- A professional who can show you how you can prepare and deliver great communications that saves you time. You need to know which skills, techniques and approaches to adopt and why. You don’t have the time or headspace to gather every bit of communications knowledge out there and then apply it to every project or deadline — and you don’t need to. Buying more books on the subject is really NOT the answer. Besides, when would you get the chance to read them?
- A professional who understands that you can't separate any professional development from the real work at hand. You need integrated support. My experience means that I don't disassociate the communications from your commercial business objectives. When we talk, we talk about the whole picture.
- A professional who recognises that the bar is high for you. The people you are writing for, and presenting to, like the CEO, Board & influential stakeholders, have high standards, little time and expect you to do the work for them. You need to be able to prepare and deliver work that meets (or exceeds) their expectations and is consistently high quality, regardless of how much time you have to pull it together.
- A professional who acknowledges that in your role there will be times when you will need to be a maverick and challenge the status quo for the good of the organisation. In fact, at this level, you have an absolute obligation to dissent and ‘speak truth to power’ when the situation calls for it. And this requires diplomacy, an ability to demonstrate logical thinking, and the clear articulation of both what’s at stake and what must happen next.
Some of the results you can expect when we work together
- Be a better writer
- Be a better speaker
- Ensure successful interactions with your CEO and Board
- Be recognised as a vital and contributing Board Director
These are just the basic results — you can learn more about the benefits of our working together here.
My work with clients often leads to their being recognised as ready & able to stretch into even more challenging goals & high profile projects.
They almost always develop more passion and enthusiasm for the role, which usually leads to their demonstrating stronger leadership qualities. My senior manager clients, for example, often get much better at identifying and then nurturing talent in their people.
If these are the kind of results and benefits YOU want, then please contact me and we can set up a time to talk openly and confidentially.
The 5 Steps
When we work together in the Executive Mentor Program, we use 5 steps to guide our approach. These steps form the backbone to our work, but our relationship and working program will be determined by your role, your aspirations, the time we have, the skills that we agree on as priorities, and the results you want to achieve.
Step 1.
Get clear on where you are now in your current role: What are your communications skills & practices? What do you need to make an impact in your role over the next 6 or 12 months? What is required to ensure your business strategy and supporting projects are successful? In this step, I work with you to review your current writing, speaking & interactive communication skills and give you clear & actionable feedback, including quick next steps to start making an impact immediately.
Step 2.
Agree on a set of communications goals for the next 6 to 12 months that serve your business objectives as well as your overall career plan —and outline the right approach to reach them. An important part of this step is to help you to identify your ‘communications heroes’ for writing and speaking, how they influence your aspirations, and how they can help to model an approach.
Step 3.
Ground your work with a tried-and-true approach to creating a logical structure and persuasive arguments. In this step, I teach you how to structure writing and presentations in a way that is empirically logical and persuasive. This is a tried-and-true approach that is simple and repeatable. And I give you feedback — the kind that is helpful — so you can continually improve and finetune.
Step 4.
Build a relevant toolkit to enable you to consistently prepare and deliver excellent communications: on the page, on the stage and in meetings. This step is specifically tailored to your communications goals and career aspirations so that you can master the handful of techniques, practices & skills that will give you the results you want. And you get to practise how to use these techniques and skills.
Step 5.
Master how to translate your ‘write and speak’ communications skills to live, interactive situations and meetings. Regardless of whether you are a Board Director, a Senior Manager, a Partner, or the CEO, this is a crucial step to ‘round out’ your communications skills. Everyone in a senior role needs to learn or refresh these meeting and facilitation skills and put them into practice.
If you'd like to talk about this program, please contact me and we can set up a time to talk openly and confidentially.