Jeannine: Female executives who have grown up with a really rough male model present interesting challenges. Some have gone so far beyond their own original tendencies to play the game as it used to be five or ten years ago, that they have even gotten tougher, meaner, than their male colleagues. It’s hard for them to come back into the game on a level playing field. This is where I have run into the most interesting and complex dynamics. I seldom have difficulty with the male client. I grew up in a male world I’m an only child that grew up in my father’s business. So, for many years I had no concept of this kind of a distinction. So, I would walk into briar patches without realizing I was in one. It’s actually served me well because the expectation is that I’m coming in as a human being working with another human being. That served me well until I was actually working in Europe and Asia some 10-15 years ago where I had to take, really quickly, a completely different stance of honoring that culture. So, I look at this now as, am I bilingual both in the culture and the diversity much beyond the male or the female agenda. And going from that platform, there is very little difficulty or at least you can name it and deal with it when you’re simply looking at differences versus tying it back to a gender.
Session Time Variances
Moderator (Linda): How much time do you spend working with an individual executive? Are you with that person for an hour, for a day? What’s your model for working with individual executives?
Klaus: I don’t believe in rigid 50 or 60-minute time slots. Usually a coaching session with me ranges between an hour and a half and three hours. We meet every two or three weeks in the beginning and then the time in-between stretches out. With a rigid 60-minute session, I might not be able to cover the topic I am concentrating on and then I’m not delivering full value. I’m not saying rigid session times might not work for others, but it has never worked for me. My clients never seem to have a problem booking a three-hour time slot.
Val: I’m happy to hear Klaus say that. I would like to transition to longer sessions myself. I’m still in a traditional model. I coach executives in 40-60 minute sessions because it seems like I attract people that demand brief coaching exposures. I do a lot of laser coaching and they often don’t have more than an hour at a time to give me. So I’m still coaching an hour once every two weeks or an hour a few times a month if it’s an individual. I’ll spend more time with groups of executives.
Bob: Typically for us, we are onsite as well as using the telephone. We tell our executives for the onsite coaching to plan on 90 minutes—we usually like to try to leave some space open after that in case it stretches. Telephone coaching sessions last for 45 minutes and are scheduled for once a week. We find, on average, that one of these sessions every month is canceled for whatever reason. So, we average three sessions a month and their initial commitment for the coaching relationship is six months.
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