| Executive
coaches hired to shape leaders | | |
| Such clients as Cisco Systems
and Google find coaching a cost-effective way to counter the brain drain of a
more mobile and global economy.
"When a star employee leaves, there are incredible
skills and abilities and knowledge capital that are going with them, and that
is pretty much irreplaceable," he says. "The cost of replacing even
an average employee can equal about 150 percent of the base salary of that employee." Despite
appearances, employee satisfaction is not always about the money. Companies find
that hiring an executive coach for a rising star might be the coolest new perk
they can offer. "Surveys on why people leave a company
often find that money is fifth or sixth. Often, No. 1 is recognition," says
Garfinkle. "Hiring an executive coach can be recognition from a manager of
the support you need." DeNita Turner, president of Laurel,
Md.-based Image
Builders Inc., has provided the polish to many of the professional athletes
in the National Basketball Association. She says coaching is a one-on-one sport
that goes far beyond a pep talk in the locker room. "If
you're managing people, I have to care about your dog, your man, your wife, your
husband, your house, your flood, the pipes broke, your car doesn't work, I hate
this person, I don't like where I sit, it's too dark, it's too warm, it's too
cold," she says. "People will say of someone, 'They're great in this
area, they have wonderful skills BUT …' When people ask me what I do, I say
'I take care of everything that comes after the BUT.'" For
Post, executive coaching can run the gamut from cubicle etiquette and body odor
diplomacy to how to request or offer help without offending. Not surprisingly,
companies call upon the Emily Post Institute frequently for a refresher course
in good old-fashioned table manners. "People judge others
by their actions and appearance and words, and certainly table manners seem to
rise to the top when people think about etiquette," she says. "A lot
of people just haven't been taught these skills. It's just a reality of our informal
times; with so many single-parent and dual-income families, there has been a decline
in families having a meal together over the past two decades. They want to give
their employees these skills without embarrassing them." What's
in it for you to take advantage of executive coaching, should it be offered? Plenty.
Take one of Garfinkle's clients, who was working for $120,000 a year, roughly
30 percent to 40 percent below market value, at a dead-end job. With less than
two years of coaching, he managed to land a job that paid $165,000 that was three
levels above his former dead-end position. "He said to
me, 'If I had talked to this company three months ago, I wouldn't have gotten
past the second interview.'" Jay
MacDonald is a contributing editor based in Mississippi. | 
