What to Expect at Your First Meeting with a CEO Coach
On your first call with a CEO coach, you won’t get a lecture. You won’t get advice, tips, or tricks.
What you will get is a lot of questions.
Your CEO coaches are here to understand your business and your priorities—and help you do the same. You may have already diagnosed an issue in your organization you’re trying to solve. Or you may just feel like things aren’t going in the right direction, but you’re not sure where or how to fix it.
CEO coaches offer immediate ROI to your organization by focusing on three main areas right away: Your people, your strategy, and you as a leader. Here are a few of the questions you can expect on your first call:
1. Do you have the right people in the right seats?
People is the #1 issue our CEO coaches hear about on their introductory calls.
That’s because even if you have a great team that’s performing well right now, they may not be the right people that can take you where you want to go.
One of the first exercises any coach will run your team through is a TTI Assessment. That’s made up of two different exercises that help you map out the strengths, weaknesses, personalities, and communication styles for yourself and your team:
- DISC analyzes behavioral style, or how you and your team like to get things done. It asks questions about how you approach problems, how you influence and interact with others, and what kind of work environment allows you to thrive.
- Driving Forces analyzes motivation, or what brings you to work every day. It asks questions about what gives you satisfaction and what encourages you to do a job well done.
“It’s like a decoder ring,” explains CEO Coach Edward Hughes. “We run it on every CEO we do, ideally in the first 30 days on the leadership team.”
Hughes recalls a client that had just hired a CFO, but it was already rocky between the new hire and the rest of the team. “We ran the analysis and it turns out the CEO and CFO had completely opposite decision-making styles, so they didn’t know how to work together,” explains Hughes. “The CEO needed to understand that you can’t just go into this guy’s office and tell him he needs the numbers right now. And the CFO had to understand that the CEO liked to think on his feet and make decisions quickly. Now, it’s been a fabulous relationship because each understands how the other thinks, communicates, and what they need.”
2. What’s your North Star?
When everything is important, nothing is.
The second area that a CEO coach will ask about right away is your vision for the company, and what key priorities you’re focusing on to get there. What they often find is that the CEO’s vision has become muddled under the weight of all the day-to-day work.
Take, for example, one of our clients, consumer tech company Sound United. In 2015, they plateaued at $152 million, with an EBITDA of $13 million. Respectable, but not what CEO Kevin Duffy wanted. He tapped CEO Coaching International to rework their strategic approach.
To do this, our coaches ran them through the Three Provocative Questions exercise. With guidance from our coaching team, Sound United imagined it was starting a brand-new company that would compete with the current firm. Then they asked themselves:
- What are we doing now that we would stop doing in our new company?
- What are we not doing now that we would start doing in our new company?
- How would we compete to try to put our old company out of business?
Sound United used their answers to completely reimagine its business. By 2020, revenues soared to $798 million, with an EBITDA of $113 million. And in 2022, Sound United was acquired by Masimo Corporation for $1.025 billion.
All from clarifying their strategy—and running with it.
“I constantly hear that teams have great people, or that they’re working hard,” says CEO Coach Keith Corrigan. “But if they’re all working on their own independent version of what they think needs to be done, it’s like everyone is trying to push a boulder in completely different directions.”
3. Who do you want to be as a leader?
Finally, your coach will ask about YOU.
Who do you want to be, as a leader?
“You can build a $10 million company and say you’re successful,” says Corrigan. “But is it killing you? Are you working 100 hours a week? Is it sustainable for you as a person, not just for your business?”
Often, our coaches find that CEOs are trying to take on too much. Whether that’s because of a people issue that prevents them from delegating, adding too many projects to the “key priorities,” or simply a personality trait, CEO coaches will help you focus on what really matters. Your coach will remind you what a CEO is responsible for:
- Vision: Creating a clear path for the company to move forward on.
- Cash: Understanding every aspect of the company’s finances.
- People: Hiring the best team members for the right roles.
- Key Relationships: Facilitating internal and external relationships that help drive the business forward.
- Learning: Staying up-to-date on the industry and market so you can be one step ahead of the competition.
Anything outside of that needs to be delegated or dismissed.
Schedule your first call today with a CEO coach who gets it
Your first call with a coach might not be the a-ha moment that turns your business around. But it is the start of a relationship that could set you and your company up to grow BIG. A coach can serve as an advisor, therapist, and sounding board—because they’ve been in your shoes before.
Says Hughes, “As a coach, it’s much easier to dive in and say, tell me why you’re doing that. We don’t know the inner workings of the business, and we’re here to ask questions without the baggage of, ‘You should know this, you were in that meeting.’”
Our expert coaches have years of experience with executive leadership. If you have questions or just want to connect with someone who knows what you’re going through, schedule a complimentary, no-obligation coaching session today. Get started >
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About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, the firm has coached more than 1,500+ CEOs and entrepreneurs across 100+ industries and 60 countries. Its coaches—former CEOs, presidents, and executives—have led businesses ranging from startups to over $10 billion, driving double-digit sales and profit growth, many culminating in eight, nine, or ten-figure exits.
Companies that have worked with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have achieved an average revenue CAGR of 22.8%, nearly 2X the U.S. average, and an average EBITDA CAGR of 37.5%, nearly 3X the national benchmark.
Discover how coaching can transform your leadership journey at ceocoachinginternational.com.
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