Inner Power International, Inc.

Below are a few examples of our coaching and consulting work with clients.

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All Success Stories profile actual client challenges and the IPI coaching or consulting approach to the situation. The names of clients and some details about their organizations have been changed to protect confidentiality.

Coaching Leadership Presence

Regina was an experienced middle manager with deep expertise in her functional area who found that despite her PhD and positive feedback from her peer group, she continued to be passed over for high profile assignments. She had an outstanding track record of producing results, her internal organizational clients had positive feedback for her, and her team was clearly aligned to the vision she had set forth. Yet time and again, her boss would pass her by for projects that involved presentation to the SVP/C-level within the organization, remarking that she was lacking "leadership presence" and "edge". The challenge was to help Regina discover her own internal source of executive impact and boost recognition of her and her contributions within the organization at the senior-most levels.

Goals

We set our coaching goal as achieving 2-3 high profile assignments and receiving positive feedback from her boss and boss's boss on those projects. In truth, we agreed that that goal would only be accomplished if we discovered ways to increase Regina's personal power and presence, the basis for her ability to influence and have impact at higher levels within the organization.

Coaching Approach

Regina had a few paradigm shifts ahead of her: As a PhD, she came from the school of thought that said she had to be the complete and total expert in something before speaking out on an issue or taking a position on something strategic. While that mental orientation made for a superb researcher and specialist, always striving for mastery, it did not encourage Regina to share her knowledge with key decision-makers and "go out on a limb" to speak up and influence others at critical times of strategy-setting. It also held her back from asking "edgy" questions that she might not know the answers to herself.

Regina also had to learn a simple fact of organizational life: a certain amount of self-promotion - when justified - can go a long way in creating more organizational leverage and ability to influence others.

We decided to take an inside out, dual approach: First, we would dig down to uncover Regina's real sense of personal power, and tackle any blocks to her unleashing that power more consistently at work. Then, we would analyze the external loci of power throughout the organization, and pathways or people key to establishing a more powerful presence among senior leaders.

The first step involved an exploration of Regina's natural strengths, core values and behavioral style attributes. We then examined how Regina was drawing on her natural abilities and where there was room for greater alignment and expression, to tap into an organic sense of inner power. We focused on how she communicated and role played several situations involving presentations to senior leaders, examining verbal and non-verbal components of success. We also reviewed how she was managing her energy expenditure and energy renewal, and how that was impacting the way she emobodied a sense of leadership --- or not. We then tackled her perception of what being the expert and achieving "mastery" meant to her, and I challenged her to experiment with being at a meeting and speaking up without having all the answers. We specifically used the skills of inquiry and advocacy to practice asking more powerful questions and assertively adding her perspective to executive dialogues.

At the same time, we began mapping out the various "power centers" around the organization, understanding how each of these stakeholders influenced senior-level awareness and decisions. From this "power map" we choose several pathways through which she could represent herself, her team and her results. By focusing on a few strategic pathways, and using her newfound sense of assertive communication, Regina opened the pathways to power surprisingly quickly.

Results

Regina went on to secure the leadership of more than 12 high profile projects over the coming year. SVPs from various business units began to show their confidence in her ability to handle the high profile projects by requesting her lead on several "mission critical" assignments.
Today, she is still delivering outstanding results, but now she speaks her truth authentically and has a heightened sensitivity to power opportunities and the tools to take advantage of them when appropriate. She has also been promoted - a result she and her boss were quite pleased with.

More success stories coming soon!