Transition Coaching Framework

Effective coaching is a major key to improving business performance. Executive coaching focuses on the qualities of effective leadership and improved business results. It is comprised of a series of structured, one-on-one interactions between a coach and an executive, aimed at enhancing the executive’s performance in two areas (Bawany 2018i, 2019a):

1. Individual personal performance
2. Individual organizational performance

When executives are first confronted by being coached, they are not always clear about how best to use their sessions and are quite unaware that it is they who set the agenda; in fact, some executives expect executive coaching to be like a one-on-one tailored training program where the executive coach initiates the agenda. Executive coaching teaches the beneficiary (coachee) to minimize, delegate, or outsource non-strengths by changing ineffective behaviors or ineffective thinking (Bawany 2020).

The upfront purpose of executive coaching is to develop key leadership capabilities or focus required for their current role. But it can also be used as an instrument to prepare them for the challenges of the next level. The whole coaching experience is structured to bring about effective action, performance improvement, and personal growth for the individual executive, as well as better results for the institution’s core business (Bawany 2023).

An executive coach only has one item on his agenda—the client’s success. This means going where it might hurt and keeping a client accountable for achieving their goals. Coaching helps people grow personally and as professionals. This growth allows them to commit completely to the success of an organization. When professional coaches work with organizations, they can turn performance management into a collaborative process that benefits both the employee and the organization.

While many executives are familiar with executive coaching and may even have enlisted the help of external coaches at some point, few understand the right type of coaching approach required to address the challenges faced by leaders in transition situations. Many newly placed executives fail within their first two years in the position for reasons ranging from their inability to adjust to a new role and develop strong relationships, to a lack of understanding of the business imperatives. What new leaders do during their 90 days in a new role greatly determines the extent of their success for the next several years.

What if there was a proven process to support new leaders in their role while significantly increasing return on investment and ensuring a positive economic impact for the organization? One such process is transition coaching, an integrated and systematic process that engages and assimilates the new leader into the organization’s corporate strategy and culture to accelerate productivity.

Transition coaching encompasses the goals of executive coaching but focuses on a specific niche, the newly appointed leader (either being promoted from within or being hired externally). Leadership transitions are among the most challenging situations executives face. Take the case of a leader who might enter a new position thinking he or she already has all the answers; or just the opposite, the leader might lack a clear understanding of what to expect from the role. The goal of transition coaching is to reduce the time it takes for new leaders to make a net contribution to the organization and establish a framework for ongoing success.

Those promoted from within will have to be mindful that a smooth and effective role-to-role transition is critical to the organization’s business performance. The organization depends on leaders to execute and meet objectives and has placed its bet that internal candidates are better valued and have less risk. Organizations understand that successful transitions ensure future capability.

An unsuccessful transition can negatively impact an organization through poor financial results, decreased employee morale, and costly turnovers. So rather than risk this sink-or-swim gamble, organizations can improve the assimilation process through transition coaching.

Transition coaching is also recommended when organizations assign managers to the role, for the first time, of leading digital transformation projects. If organizations use the right transition strategies, the leader will not only help prevent failure but also create additional value by accelerating the new leader’s effectiveness. Transition coaching engages the new disruptive leader in the organization’s corporate strategy and culture to accelerate performance.

Transition coaching has three overall goals: to accelerate the transition process by providing just-in-time advice and counsel, to prevent mistakes that may harm the business and the leader’s career, and to assist the leader in developing and implementing a targeted, actionable transition plan that delivers business results.

While many of the issues covered by transition coaching are similar to those included in executive coaching, such as sorting through short- and long-term goals and managing relationships upwards as well as with team members, transition coaching is focused specifically on the transition and designed to educate and challenge new leaders. The new leader and coach will have to work together to develop a transition plan and a roadmap that will define critical actions that must take place during the first 90 days to establish credibility, secure early wins, and position the leader and team for long-term success.

The transition coaching relationship also includes regular meetings with the new leader as well as ongoing feedback. Frequently, the coach conducts a “pulse check” of the key players, including the boss, direct reports, peers, and other stakeholders, after four to six weeks to gather early impressions so that the new leader can make a course correction if needed.

The transition coaching framework developed by the CEE with the complete transition coaching process provides new leaders with the guidance to take charge of their new situation, achieve alignment with the team, and ultimately move the business forward (Bawany 2023).

The “transition readiness assessment” is designed for the evaluation of the desired disruptive leaders’ competencies as stated earlier, which includes the ability to envision the future, agility, ESI skills such as empathy and relationship management (social skills), cognitive readiness, critical thinking, engagement, agility and adaptability, innovativeness and courage to experiment, and resilience, among others.

The biggest trap that new leaders fall into is believing that they will continue to be successful by doing what has made them successful in the past. There is an old saying, “To a person who has a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. So too it is for leaders who have become successful by relying on certain skills and abilities. Too often they fail to see that their new leadership role demands different skills and abilities. And so they fail to meet the adaptive challenge. This does not, of course, mean that new leaders should ignore their strengths. It means that they should focus first on what it will take to be successful in the new role, then discipline themselves to do things that don’t come naturally if the situation demands it (Bawany 2020).

Another common trap is falling prey to the understandable anxiety the transition process evokes. Some new leaders try to take on too much, hoping that if they do enough things, something will work. Others feel they have to be seen as “taking charge,” and so make changes to put their stamp on things. Still others experience the “action imperative”—they feel they need to be in motion, and so don’t spend enough time upfront engaged in diagnosis. The result is that new leaders end up enmeshed in vicious cycles in which they make bad judgments that undermine their credibility.

New leaders are expected to “hit the ground running.” They must produce results quickly while simultaneously assimilating into the organization. The result is that many newly recruited or promoted managers fail within the first year of starting new jobs.

From the extensive executive and transition coaching engagements over the past 20 years by the CEE’s panel of executive and transition coaches, it has been discovered that many newly promoted leaders in transition fail due to one or more of the following factors:

1. They do not fit into the organizational culture.
2. They don’t build a team or become part of one.
3. They are unclear about their stakeholders and their bosses’ expectations.
4. They fail to execute the organization’s strategic or business plan.
5. They lack savvy in maneuvering and managing internal politics.
6. There is no formal process to assimilate them into the organization.

A proven assimilation process such as Transition Coaching is critical as it provides support to the newly hired executive and helps the organization protect its investment.