Coaching star

The Coaching Star: Observing and Assessing Progress

Three-way opening and closing meetings are an important part of the executive coaching framework, creating synchronization between the parties involved, who together agree on objectives. The three-way meetings take place between the coach, the coachee, and a sponsor representing the company or organization. Generally, the sponsor is an HR/Talent Development director or the coachee’s boss. In some cases, executives may choose a mentor or professional peer as their sponsor.

The closing three-way meeting serves to highlight and assess behavioral change that the coachee has experienced, and which the sponsor has observed in day-to-day interactions. This final meeting symbolically closes the coaching journey and assesses the progress made. The coachee shares his/her perceptions, while the sponsor acts as a witness to the coachee’s positive change. Each participant shares their point of view on how to maintain, project and continue to develop the dynamic launched.

The Coaching Star is a useful tool to prepare for the final three way, as it examines behavior through a six-step process. This guided conversation can also be done using somatics, or body movement. The coach may ask the executive to “walk” and physically map out the coaching journey by moving from one area of the room to another, to embody each of the six steps of behavioral change.

Six Steps

Create: What new actions, approaches or behaviors will you/have you created?

This axis relates to major evolutions, breakthroughs, innovations. Something new and completely different that the executive had never felt, experienced or used before: a new capacity, a new culture, a new team, a new strategy….

Reduce: What behaviors will you/ have you reduced? Behaviors that are useful but that can be reduced.

Something that already existed, which will decrease but remain, making room for novelty without disrupting what is currently present.

Keep: What behaviors will you keep?

Something the executive won’t change, because it is one of his/her values or key success factors. To re-invent or renew the organization, executives need to evaluate their foundations – what should not move, what should remain. Stability is also part of the change process.

Implement: What behaviors will you/have you put into action?

The concrete manifestation of a decision to create, keep developing, reduce, delete to strengthen sustainability and added value (ex: a new organization, a new management system, a new approach, etc.)

Develop/ Amplify: What behaviors will you develop or amplify?

Something that already exists which the executives will build on and grow to facilitate and reinforce change.

Delete: What behaviors will you stop completely? These are behaviors that may have been useful at one stage, but which are no longer serving the executive. Something that already exists that will totally disappear. Something that is now obsolete and must disappear to leave room for creation.