We ask the right questions to enable leaders to focus and explore what’s important, working through complex business challenges to unlock personal performance & organisational success

Starboard provides Coaching for strategic and future leaders, with our coach-coachee selection critical to successfully directing reflection and catalysing insight.  We also provide Mentoring for future and existing HR leaders, who may wish to work with an experienced and proven professional, from HR Manager to Global HRD.

Building the impact of your best performers

  • Coachees are transitioning to a more senior role, developing their strategic capability
  • Technically skilled managers require leadership coaching to fully engage and enable their team’s performance
  • Senior leaders are tasked with the delivery of complex projects, and would benefit from an external perspective to direct their critical thinking and focus
  • There is a business change (such as mergers, acquisitions or outsourcing) which demands leaders’ personal and professional readjustment.

Critical impact for the business

  • Development and retention of the critical talent in your business
  • “Bringing the outside in” – especially where complex projects would benefit from external focus
  • Increasing focus on personal efficiency and organisational productivity
  • Providing a stabilising factor when change occurs and leaders need to simultaneously work through the personal and professional implications
  • Facilitating knowledge-sharing and skill-transfer across the organisation by highlighting critical networks and ensuring key relationships are prioritised.

Critical impact for the individual

Whether the leader is new-to-role; changing function or country; leading a new team or critical project; or requiring professional development we can provide an enabling perspective and the following benefits to the coachee(s)

  • Improving performance, motivation, morale and stress management
  • Providing an unthreatening but challenging environment for discussion, where challenges can be explored without censure
  • Enabling the transition from one career level to another
  • Giving self-directed learning which builds this learning habit
  • Exploring stakeholder relationships, whether internal or external, to build focus and efficacy.

The coaching contract

All great coaching is built on trust, integrity and skill. However, for organisations the crucial thing is that it delivers a measureable impact. Starboard coaches initiate a 3-way contract between Coach, Coachee and sponsoring Manager to agree the critical impact opportunities of the coaching assignment. This involves being clear and specific upfront about what the coachee is focused upon – for example, entering a new market; building a new product or service; or transitioning to a broader leadership role. This contract clarifies what success will ultimately look like at the end of the coaching relationship. Subsequent face-to-face meetings between the 3 parties are then held at the middle and end of the coaching period to review results against the original commitment and purpose. Coaching would typically take place over a 6-9 month period, though this is entirely dependent on the needs of the coachee and the organisation.

Coaching questions

Coaching conversations are always bespoke to coachees and their particular challenges, but the following questions give an idea of what may be asked to direct a person’s insight in particular situations:

  • Who do you need to spend more time with?
  • Which important activities do you procrastinate on?
  • How can you improve your relationship with your customers and more frequently ask for feedback?
  • What is your unique contribution to [a project]? How can you accentuate it?
  • What is not working optimally [on the project or in on-going relationships with key stakeholders]? What can you do to address this?
  • What capabilities do you value in your team? Do they know that? What tasks can you start to delegate and to whom?
  • What are the 20% of activities that deliver 80% of your results?

“An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.”

Stephen Covey