. . . and optimizes your opportunities for success. Visionary companies and professional partnerships now treat executive coaching as absolutely essential for key players — especially those in positions of strategic leadership and those who show great promise for the future.

. . . and enlarge your options in a setting of confidentiality and collegial respect. Executive coaching helps you "rise to the occasion," whether to pursue cherished dreams, to meet demanding challenges, to perfect critical skills, or to synchronize your life with your deepest values and passions.

Entrepreneurs. Aspiring leaders. Professionals. Executives. Managers and supervisors. In short, leaders at all stages of their careers.

Executive coaching centers on enhancing performance. It's ideal for people who are outcome-oriented and ready to accept full responsibility for effecting the outcomes they desire.

But since coaching is a change process, it is only for men and women who are prepared to embrace change.

What kind of change? For some it may be increased personal effectiveness. For others an improved quality of life. Or launching out in a new direction. In a word, any change that will optimize your life and career.

For more information, see Why Have A Coach?

Since leadership always entails strategy — either developing it, implementing it, or executing it — our executive coaching pays special attention to the client's personal strategic priorities and skills.

We call this approach "strategic leadership development," and it revolves around four critical questions

• How clearly can you state your organization's strategy?
• How clearly can you state your specific role in carrying out that strategy?
• What skills are required in order to be effective in your strategic role?
• Which of these skills need further development in order for you to fulfill your role completely?

Coaching, like any business endeavor, must provide a satisfactory return on investment. While our rates are competitive, you still make a considerable commitment of time, energy, and finances when you work with a coach.

By coaching to strategic alignment (see the preceding section), we increase the likelihood of a solid ROI. After all, better execution of strategy almost invariably improves the bottom line.

In addition, we stay centered on your ROI at every step of the engagement. This begins with the very first coaching conversation, where we define the specific outcomes you want. Then we keep the coaching engagement focused, tightly paced, and harnessed to your desired outcomes in order to give you the best return possible for the time and financial investment you are making.

Strategic Leadership Development International believes in holistic executive coaching and mentoring. This means that we always examine critical questions against the broader framework of your total pattern of life commitments, your core values, and what gives you a sense of fulfillment. It also means that we treat the mind, body, and spirit as an integrated whole, helping you find inner balance as well as external success.

We structure executive coaching and mentoring relationships around a six-phase "A.C.T.I.O.N." plan that leads to lasting results. This is no "cookie-cutter" approach, however. We carefully customize our executive coaching and mentoring to meet your specific needs.

The answer depends on your specific needs and circumstances. While executive coaching and executive mentoring have much in common, they each serve a distinct purpose.

Executive coaching centers primarily on two sets of outcomes, both of them near-term in nature. The first is sharpening, enhancing, and applying critical skills. The second is gaining clarity on goals, options, and decisions that are rather near-term in nature.

Executive mentoring is usually much broader and longer-term in its focus. Mentoring is less about improving skills than it is about developing greater wisdom and "political savvy." Mentoring is more likely to address topics such as career satisfaction, professoinal development, critical life transitions, and "learning the ropes" from someone who has been there before.

For more on the difference between executive coaches and executive mentors, see The Difference Between Executive Coaching and Mentoring.

You may also want to look at The Difference Between Consulting and Executive Coaching

Coaching has proven to be so valuable that many companies now want their managers to function as coaches and mentors. These "internal coaches" often have a solid mastery of their business or industry, but limited experience in the skills that make for good coaching and mentoring.

Using accelerated learning techniques and utilizing the full potential of LeaderPerfect™ resources and solutions, SLDI provides a comprehensive program to enrich the skills of your internal coaches and mentors. If your organization does not have an internal coaching program, SLDI can help you design one and implement it.

Although face-to-face coaching has distinct advantages, we can also provide effective executive coaching and mentoring by telephone and email. For clients outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area, this approach is especially cost effective, since it saves travel time and allows for optimal flexibility in scheduling.

Where possible, we prefer to conduct the first two or three coaching sessions in person. This gives both you and your executive coach an opportunity to build rapport more quickly. But where distance or schedules preclude face-to-face conversation, we can work by phone right from the start.

While not usually as effective as face-to-face or telephone conversation, coaching and mentoring by internet is sometimes an attractive option.

Coaching or mentoring by internet is most appropriate when dictated by factors of distance or cost. Overseas clients, without VOIP capabilities, may choose this approach. Or where a person has very limited funds to invest in coaching or mentoring, these services are most economically delivered via email exchanges, reserved space in a chat room, instant messaging, and related technologies.