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Coach Your Top Executives to Deliver Quickly in New Roles

According to Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins in Right from the Start (Harvard Business School Press, 1999), 64% of new executives hired from outside the company will fail at their new jobs. Coaching for your newly hired or newly promoted executive will increase his/her probability of success and accelerate his ability to have an immediate, positive impact on business results. Protect your company's investment in new hires and support newly promoted executives with onboard coaching.

The Business Case: Why do new leaders fail?

Most executives think it is important to "go it alone" due to their belief in the myth of individualism; they hold tightly to the idea that everyone succeeds or fails on the basis of individual efforts and abilities. This assumption is so powerful that when an alternative view is suggested (that success depends on our relationships with others as much as it does on you), the usual reaction is denial. Denial of the role of relationships in the executive's success preserves the self-enhancing illusion that we are masters of our own fates and, therefore, deserving of all the credit for our successes.

The myth of individualism can negatively affect the chances for success. Consider that four out of ten newly promoted managers and executives fail within 18 months of starting new jobs, according to research by Manchester, Inc, a leadership development firm in Bala Cynwyd, PA. "Failing" includes being terminated for performance, performing significantly below expectations or voluntarily resigning from the new position. When newly recruited, the following types of executives experienced the highest failure rates within the first 18 months: senior-level executives (39%), sales executives (30%), marketing executives (25%), and operations executives (23%).

Here are the major reasons for failure in the new job:

• They fail to establish a cultural fit ...........................................75%
• They fail to build teamwork with staff and peers.....................52%
• They are unclear about what their bosses expect…................33%
• They don't have the required internal political savvy...............25%
• There's no process to assimilate executives into the firm........22%

Two out of every five new CEOs fail in the first 18 months (HBR, January 2005)

During the second half of 1999, when statistics began to be compiled, nearly 270 chief executives were forced to leave their companies or simply resigned, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the Chicago-based outplacement firm that follows employment issues. Since then, the pace has quickened--in 2001, 929 chief executives departed and another 749 followed in 2002, according to the firm.

CEOs are now lasting just 7.6 years in office on a global average, down from 9.5 years in 1995, according to consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

Executive onboarding coaching of the newly recruited or promoted executive can turn around this high rate of failure.

New job. New employer. And new headaches when staffers resist your new approaches. More and more newly hired executives will confront this challenge. How can you champion enough change to justify your hiring -- without rocking the boat so much that you endanger your latest gig? Failure to strike the right balance often derails newcomers. "They push too hard, too fast and do it in a nondiplomatic way," says Ben Dattner, a New York industrial psychologist. Yet few corporate orientation programs help recruits "work through what's the best approach to get up to speed in the new job," reports Michael Watkins, a Harvard associate professor of business administration and author of the new book, "The First 90 Days."

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