“Too many people are thrown into the deep end and not given the ground rules. There isn’t the level of contact needed after the hire is made.”
Jay A. DiLorenzo President, Preservation League of New York State
You’ve selected the right person for the job; congratulations. But no matter how experienced the candidate, the person has never been a part of your organization. Having the right skills and experience does not automatically ensure a leader will be effective in a new environment. Because the first few months of your leader’s tenure will set the tone and shape everything that follows, it’s absolutely critical to have a smooth, effective leadership transition. It’s the difference between missing opportunities and establishing a solid foundation that enables the organization to move ahead by making the best use of everyone’s time. When your chief executive gets started on the right foot, your team will be able to build momentum, capitalize on opportunities, raise morale, and accomplish ambitious goals.
LAUNCH: The First 100 Days is an intensive 14-week executive coaching program for Executive Directors and their organizations. The purpose of the program is to ensure the success of your newly appointed chief executive during this critical transition period. The program not only helps your Executive Director become productive sooner, it helps your board define and implement its role in shaping how your leader is received by staff, funders, clients, and community partners.
The benefits of LAUNCH to the nonprofit
By engaging an executive coach during the 100-day transition period, the board and chief executive are brought together to establish a productive and candid relationship about how your organization’s future ambitions can be realized.
Benefits to the organization include:
- Establishing momentum early on by focusing the leadership team on the most critical issues facing your organization
- Defining clear goals for your Executive Director and a timetable for accomplishing them
- Establishing the measures and outcomes by which the new chief executive will be evaluated
- Clarifying board expectations of how the Executive Director will work with board committees
- Transferring the leader’s learning to the entire organization
- Enhancing the value of the team by facilitating interactions that result in outstanding team performance
- Avoiding executive director burnout
The benefits of LAUNCH to the Executive Director
Unlike any other person in the organization, Executive Directors have no peers, and the role can be a very isolating one. Even experienced leaders benefit from having an impartial, experienced confidante to test their assumptions and serve as a sounding board.
Benefits to the Executive Director include:
- Discovering the unspoken expectations of the position
- Understanding the unwritten rules that shape the organization’s culture
- Identifying patterns that limit or enhance the leader’s ability to affect positive change and understanding the organizational triggers that result in positive or negative consequences
- Identifying strengths that may no longer serve the leader in the new environment
- Distinguishing learning styles and strengths of the leadership team and recognizing how to capitalize on them
- Learning what is required to produce results from the whole team
What is executive coaching?
Executive coaching is not skill-building or training. It is a focused, structured, and confidential leadership development process that helps leaders understand their circumstances, objectively assess their behaviors and the impact they have on others, leverage their strengths, overcome barriers, and clarify and achieve goals around which others will rally and support.
What do coaches do?
- Build leaders’ capacity to deal with ambiguity and anxiety in challenging circumstances
- Share frameworks, models, and tools to help shape a leader’s understanding of situations
- Challenge leaders to bring rigor to their thinking and decision-making to ensure they learn from their circumstances
- Assist leaders in sharing their insights and transfer their learning into results for the organization
What does LAUNCH consist of?
Each LAUNCH program is customized for the particular circumstances of the nonprofit. A typical LAUNCH program includes weekly, 45-minute one-on-one coaching sessions with the Executive Director, usually in person, accompanying the leader at key board and staff meetings, live-action group coaching with the board and staff, conducting team assessments or administering self-assessments with the leader, facilitating dialogues between groups, and on-call support as requested.
To learn more about LAUNCH
Contact SINTRA Consulting at info@SintraConsulting.org or call (323) 666-9700.
LAUNCH:
The First 100 Days of an Executive Director
Mobilizing the potential of individuals and organizations
2014 Balmer Drive Los Angeles, CA 90039
Phone (323) 666-9700 Fax (323) 913-3199
