7 Must Ask Questions before
Choosing a Leadership Program
When most people think of leadership, in its broadest form, they picture a CEO or appointed
figurehead; however, when we focus on the individual’s title or rank, it’s a limited view at best.
Leadership, boiled down to its essence, is simply influence and impact. The influence you have as
a leader can be positive or negative, focused consciously or unintentionally, and the impact can be
minimal or maximal, to any degree. A leader is the individual in the interaction who knowingly or
unknowingly creates the greater influence and impact on the other person or person(s).
As the leader that perhaps you are, or would like to become, how intentional are you in using your
ability to lead; that is to say, your ability to influence and impact others? How consistent are you in
terms of your actions and behaviors matching your values, beliefs, and principles? How effortless is
leading for you—especially in challenging situations?
Every individual possesses the innate capacity to lead, and to make a significant contribution, and
meaningful difference, in the workplace. We were never taught this; there was no class in high
school, or even University, where leadership, and understanding the psychology of motivation and
performance, were the focus. Most, if not all, learning, takes place “on the job”— and the economy
and culture of organizations is not as it used to be.
Many preconceptions of leadership are still derived from a manufacturing economy, where mass
production was the dominant focus. This business structure promoted hierarchy, rigidity to rules
and processes, a clear command-and-control model to maximize efficiencies and remove ambiguities by keeping all decision making centralized. Well, so much for that model! Today’s fast-paced,
always accessible, rapidly-changing, completely interconnected business world just can’t function
that way. The vast majority of the workforce is, as Peter Drucker coined, “knowledge workers”—
meaning you’ve got to put your smarts to work.
Herein lies the challenge laid before contemporary leadership programs: how to train leaders to operate
in an ever-changing environment, with changing resources, increasingly complex information, and
marketplace demands that are creating new jobs, in new sectors, requiring new competencies, every
three to five years (at most!).
Well, there are some things that actually won’t change. Leading, from this point forward, will
always require the ability to understand your people, what motivates them, what enables their best
performance, and how you can assist them in consistently developing, and building, their capacity.
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iPEC Coaching 7 Must Ask Questions before Choosing a Leadership Program
✔ What would your organization look like if your leadership leveled the playing field?
✔ What if self-accountability was not just encouraged, but a process that could be
taught and integrated?
✔ What if we looked past job titles and empowered your key influencers to shape and mold a culture
of engagement throughout their immediate workplace? And then the organization as a whole?
American writer, George Matthew Adams, once observed that “many moments of personal success
and fulfillment in an individual’s life come about through encouragement from someone else.”
(Source: HR.BLR.com, Employee Mentoring and Coaching: What is the Difference?)
Leadership programs need to adopt this sentiment, knowing that shared engagement will propel
cultures. Employees will naturally follow you out of want, not out of obligation or need. Middle
managers will feel acknowledged, not resentful or reclusive. Newcomer protégés will discover
confidence, not ambiguity due to company paradox. Such programs are not only adaptable, but
smartly equipped to accelerate the bottom line in just days and weeks.
So, in considering what leadership program may be right for you, think about what you want to see
in your employees. What do you really want from your employees? Gaining clarity around this will
shape what you need to learn ‒ and how.
Ask yourself if your employees exude the following behaviors:
✔ Arrive eager and ready to work—full of new ideas
✔ Put aside the need to be right—or do things “their way”
✔ Replace office politics and cliques with genuine cooperation—and true teamwork
✔ Focus on bolstering “what’s right”—instead of scrambling to correct “what’s wrong”
✔ Regularly develop innovation and customer service breakthroughs—no longer requiring
the creation of special “task forces”
✔ Knock on your door for a meeting, ready with multiple solutions and their well-thought-out
recommendations—instead of “hey boss, here’s the problem today. What would you like
me to do?”
Assuming that these behaviors would enhance your work environment (and add a little more
enjoyment to your “job” as leader), then it’s time to take a look at what a leadership program needs
to contain in order to help you and your organization get there.
Must Ask Question #1: Motivation
How will your approach help me, the leader, motivate my team and inspire trust at all levels of
the organization, while substantiating our unique needs, so I can implement what I’ve learned
as soon as I return to the office?
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Leadership programs must know how to provide you with processes for learning and re-learning,
for adapting and evolving, for building understanding and trust, and for developing your people on
an ongoing basis.
Well, therein lies the issue. You can’t “motivate” someone long-term because motivation is
something that must come from within them. You need a process by which you can help them
self-motivate. Not an easy task, but this is exactly what any leadership program must be able to
deliver to you if you’re going to be a highly effective leader in today’s climate.
Part of creating an environment and team dynamic that enables motivation begins with this simple
fact: 67% of employees, worldwide, say their top motivating factor is a sense that they matter and
are valued by their employer. And, by “employer,” as you read countless other HR studies, the
employee is really saying “their boss”—because their relationship with their immediate manager
is the greatest impacting factor on the performance and satisfaction of that employee.
Now, here comes the next challenge: carrot and stick recognition, rewards, and remedial programs
are repeatedly shown to be only temporary. They’re good demonstrations of appreciation, but in and
of themselves, they can’t produce long-term, sustainable motivation for employees because they’re
still extrinsic. Sustainable motivation is intrinsic.
“Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily,
even if you had no title or position.” ~ Brian Tracy
So then, as a leader, what are you supposed to do? Leadership that supports this self-motivation is a
balancing act of listening and understanding, combined with challenging your team to be great. It’s
knowing what’s important to them, what they take pride in, what they see as their strengths and
unique contributions, and knowing how to get them to know all of this as well. It’s using all of this
knowledge, and helping build the capacity of each person you lead so that they see themselves as
having a direct impact on the results being achieved by the team and organization.
While this just begins to scratch the surface, it’s precisely why leadership is evolving to incorporate
significant aspects of coaching. Coaching is both a profession and process that was developed to
help people self-motivate, determine their own solutions, commit to and engage in the choices they
make, implement a clearly thought out plan of action, understand how to monitor progress, and
learn and adapt in pursuit of their ultimate goals.
Must Ask Question #2: Sustainability
How will I retain and master what I learn so that I’m applying it all not just five days from
now, but more importantly, five years from now?
With an eye primarily on adult education, David Kolb and Ron Fry developed the Experiential
Learning Model, which specifically points to these four elements as essential to the learning process:
✔ Concrete experience
✔ Observation of, and reflection on, that experience
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In surveys, interviews, and informal conversations with hundreds of executives, from financial
services and hospitality, to healthcare and IT, we’re repeatedly asked, “How do I get my team truly
motivated, and then keep them there?”
✔ Testing the new concepts
✔ (Repeat!)
The center of adult learning is building the learning around specific experiences and practice.
Lecture mode, online presentations that are low in interaction, or made-up scenarios (that may or
may not be relevant to a particular learner) are of very little help. In fact, retention is very low with
these types of instruction.
Leaders, in particular, need to be able to truly apply whatever it is that they’re learning to their
particular circumstances. This enables not only mastery of the particular skills, but most importantly,
it enables the participant to form core beliefs, understanding, and even a philosophy for how they
will use all that they’re learning. This means that not just the skill is learned, but the true purpose
and underlying reasons why that skill works in certain scenarios is understood, and embedded into
how that leader sees leading going forward.
Because of this layering effect—learn something new, conceptualize it, create an experience, reflect on it,
alter what you know and understand, try again—the most effective leadership programs are modular.
They provide stages of learning so that a foundation can be learned and applied, before advanced, and
then mastery level concepts and methods are learned and applied. Additionally, leaders should be
supported through that application phase, providing them with key resources that can help them process
what they’ve learned, applied, and experienced so that they can adjust as necessary.
A key method in this assimilation process is actually coaching—meaning, receiving that which you
are learning at the same time. Coaching is meant to cultivate a sustainable “change curve” for any
organization. The Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching’s (iPEC’s) Coach Centric
Leadership™ approach combines a sustainable, 360° holistic transformation model via an
“Executive Mentor Coaching” modality. Each organization is matched with a mentor over a
5-month period, in addition to in-person modules and the delivery of an Energy LeadershipTM Index
assessment and debrief. All of these program layers present the opportunity for an individual to
transform, both personally and professionally, starting with their inner selves—the very core of their
being. They don’t just learn the skills; they truly become the leader they are seeking to be.
Why? Because, with this approach, working from one’s core becomes the focal point, lending a
deepened level of competency, so the individual does not just “learn” and “apply” concepts, but
rather “emanates” and “incorporates” them into a natural way of being.
Given the extraordinary results of these tools and processes, the organization stays energized and engaged.
“Like many companies, we have struggled to find the ‘secret sauce’ to improve our employee engagement
and, therefore, our customer satisfaction and financial performance. We’ve implemented many initiatives
over the last decade (at great expense) and even with careful follow through, we have not seen sustainable
results … until now. We put 35 executives through iPEC’s Coach Centric LeadershipTM Engagement
Program. Even before the program was complete, we began to see results. Our key leaders now understand
their own core thoughts have driven their behavior and, as a result, they have made significant shifts in how
they are leading their teams. They have also developed coaching skills that have given them the ability to
“coach” their mid-level managers rather than “direct” them.” ~ Renee West, President, Luxor and Excalibur Hotel and Casino
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✔ Formation of abstract concepts based on that reflection
What can I tangibly take away from your training program, so that I am equipped with
a “ready-made” toolkit for planning, strategizing, and buy-in?
Just as leadership programs should be the tried and true bedrock of an organization, the fruits of
this labor should be unapologetically tangible—seen, heard, and felt like a mass reverberation. The
tangible takeaways should be of two kinds: first, relevant to your specific situation and, second,
clearly demonstrable and actionable.
The first element of specific relevance to your situation and needs is discussed below in Must Ask
Question #5; however, to summarize, consider what good a training is if it’s not directly, personally
related to who you are, what you’re trying to accomplish, and how you’re going to apply it.
As to the takeaways being clearly demonstrable and actionable, this is where the rubber meets
the road for your leadership going forward. Leadership does begin with shifts in perceptions,
understanding of people and what motivates them, developing your own philosophy of how you’ll
lead, but ultimately, it comes down to how all of those beliefs and principles translate into your
behaviors, skills, and actions.
Here’s just the short list of the critical leadership skills and takeaways from the Coach Centric
Leadership Engagement program:
✔ 24+ core coaching skills
✔ 3 separate approaches for breaking resistance in under 15 minutes
✔ 2 core skills that alleviate someone’s frustration in less than 5 minutes
✔ Multiple “coaching management” processes to produce clearer, more well-thought-out
goals, with defined action plans and mutually agreed upon accountabilities
✔ A simple process to get at the heart of gaining buy-in
✔ A proven model that reveals thought processes in order to better understand where
anyone else is coming from
✔ How to use 4 key drivers behind engagement to determine what’s really fueling,
or inhibiting, someone’s performance
✔ 3 different dominance types that impact decision making
✔ How to identify, coach, and eliminate the 4 specific internal blocks that greatly inhibit
confidence and undermine collaboration
✔ How to use a coaching conversation to align individual motivational drivers with
role-based and organizational objectives, vision, and mission
✔ How to build dynamic teams for shared leadership and continual development and learning
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Must Ask Question #3: Tangible Takeaways
This specific program has sculpted the tools and strategies that you’ll learn in such a way that the
new behaviors become embedded. It’s certainly not easy at first; however, it’s a layering effect—and
this process that you’re going through is simultaneously the process you’re learning to use within
your organization for long-term effect.
Must Ask Question #4: ROI
How does your program translate and/or apply to those high-impact areas that truly
influence my organization (productivity levels, performance levels, engagement scores, etc.?)
The ROI conversation must begin with knowing the
return you’re seeking. ROI comes in many forms; one
of the most common errors made in pursuit of the
right leadership program for you, and your organization, is not clearly articulating the goals (i.e. the
return) you’re looking to attain.
That said, certainly, one of the key end returns is
financial in nature—and so we need to look at what
drives financial results from the realm of leadership.
Whether looking at Gallup, Towers Perrin, Bersin, Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM) or studies conducted by other major research groups and
industry associations, financial results improve based
on engagement, productivity, contribution, relationship between employee-manager and colleagues, and
connection to the goals and purpose of your job or organization. All of these increase individual and team
performance dynamics, while also lowering turnover
and absenteeism, reducing recruiting costs, and, very
importantly, increasing retention of high performers.
Engagement is one of the key areas from the above
that’s been isolated as a driving factor for many of the
other “returns” that leaders seek. So, let’s explore this
one further.
The higher the engagement of an organization, the
higher the key metrics. Energetic engagement will
significantly improve human, customer and financial
metrics. In its absence, U.S. businesses lose $11 billion
annually as a result of employee turnover (Bureau
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A medical device company, owned by
Johnson & Johnson (J&J), adopted this paradigm
in 2003, trading in a 49% customer satisfaction rate
for a highly engaged and energized organization. By
2006, customer satisfaction topped 95%, a foundational
principle earning the company three major IT awards and
a realized gain of $45 million in benefits under the
auspices of its Global Demand Management initiative.
Prior to this upward mobility, the company’s Enterprise
Resource Planning software (ERP) was losing $1 million
per month and receiving a dismal ranking in its Credo
Survey. So, what changed?
The company scrapped its hierarchal model of leadership,
adopted the Coach Centric Leadership™ approach,
whereby leaders of the organization began utilizing
coaching as a very definite part of their leadership style,
and ultimately replaced 50% of its top-line executive
team. Such transitional measures were only compounded
by budgetary cuts and downsizing, yet employees
remained focused and committed to the organization.
The company was people-powered; this multi-national
team now had widespread buy-in around its mission,
vision, goals, and values.
The company’s Chief Information Officer knew that being
“bought-in” hinged upon one simple fact: employees are
highly motivated when they know that they matter and
are valued by their leader. It’s pure human economics—
transforming one’s core—to get to the deepest touchstones
of one’s being, including their potential, their allegiance
to morals and ethics, and their direct impact on the
corporate mission. Just like a symphony plays in unison,
the Coach Centric Leadership™ approach is the requisite
conductor and catalyst.
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A leadership program should emit a cascading model of coaching concepts and principles designed
to shift everyone, in every department. This trickle-down effect will induce self-leadership, giving
corporate teams the awareness, skill set, and foundational principles that were potentially lacking.
Tools, such as asking empowering questions and the many outlined above, will help augment
communications and processes of the work culture.
The difference is that for every leadership style that fails to underscore the value of engagement and
authenticity, the threat of employee turnover, burnout, interpersonal conflict, and lower productivity
levels, will most certainly prevail.
According to Gallup’s Global Practice Leader, Ed O’Boyle, research suggests leaders who welcome a
concerted effort to drive human potential in the workplace saw as much as a 240% boost to their bottom
line. As O’Boyle observes, “a person serving another person is still the biggest area of untapped
potential for all companies.” (Source: Gallup Business Journal, The Business Impact of Human Emotions.)
Coaching, by definition, engages one’s greatness. Emerging leadership programs, by virtue,
are taking note.
Must Ask Question #5: Theory vs. Experience
How will your training program take theoretical concepts beyond “hearing” and
“explanation” towards demonstrated, rock-solid examples and first-hand experience?
Oftentimes, people attend professional development programs, collect a myriad of training materials,
and return to their office, only to tuck those materials away, likely to never be seen again. While the
approaches, principles, and processes you learn need to be grounded in solid, researched theory, that
theoretical understanding is only useful if it’s directly applied and practiced in real-world scenarios.
Any leadership program that truly helps you make significant progress must include the ability for
you to bring your real situations into the classroom and practice—not relying on old, prepared and
crafted case studies. You need the ability to roll-up your sleeves and get into trying things out right
away. It’s not enough to hear it and conceptualize it; you need to do it as well.
iPEC’s Coach Centric LeadershipTM program addresses this need in two ways; first, with highly
experiential in-person modules, which are then supplemented by powerful Executive Mentor
Coaching outside the classroom.
The in-person modules are designed in such a way that any presentation time is immediately
followed by application—whether through peer-to-peer exercises, group exercises, or even some
fun and games. These information, then application, phases are then followed by debriefs, enabling
the group as a whole to discuss differences in what they found, isolate best practices, and learn from
each other as they learn to apply these new approaches. And, what are you practicing on? Your
scenarios—meaning, through facilitation, pre-work, and other means, you’re given the opportunity to
directly introduce those issues and situations that you want to focus on ‒ and see immediate impact.
Next, iPEC’s Executive Mentor Coaching employs a first-hand, experiential component, keeping
leaders and their employees in the action—performing “best practices” everyday via a “pull”
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of National Affairs). Engaged employees lead to amplified customer engagement, which inevitably
leads to a vast ripple effect on sales, profit margins, and stock prices. Put another way, almost four
out of five workers are not living up to their full potential or doing what it takes to help their
organizations succeed. For employers, the implication is clear: they are not harnessing the full power
of their workforce and achieving the performance lift that high engagement delivers. (Source: Towers
Perrin Global Workforce Study)
This specific style of mentor coaching also presents participating leaders with accountability, keeping
him or her aligned with the goals of the program, while ensuring that the participating leader will
make a sizeable impact in his or her workplace—its people, culture, and values. Over a period of time,
leaders and employees will begin to determine the issues and challenges that surface most frequently
in their workplace, and learn to see them in a new light, and approach solving them with enthusiasm
from the opportunity, as opposed to begrudgingly “dealing” with them (or worse yet, avoiding them!)
In turn, they become more comfortable facing such challenges head-on, “owning” their self-leadership,
and formulating a solution-based mind-set, until it becomes second nature.
By hearing, seeing, questioning, and listening, these elements activate a mindset, and a way of
leading, that is Coach Centric, creating and facilitating a high-performance team—one that is both
personified and unified by mutual principles. In fact, the role of experience in shaping and driving
productivity and growth is critical in increasing returns on human capital. As Robert Lucas stressed,
“on-the-job-training or learning-by-doing appear to be at least as important as schooling in the
formation of human capital.” (Lucas, Robert E., Jr. 1988. “On the Mechanics of Economic Development.”
Journal of Monetary Economics, 22(1): 3-42.)
Employees are alerted to the fact that their leader is putting a considerable investment into their
talents and potential, while sensory learning reinforces their skill set.
Must Ask Question #6: Coaching
Methods & Expertise of Trainers
Will your training program teach a complete methodology and framework or just skills?
How will this bring about someone’s best performance?
Coaching, just like leading, isn’t a paint-by-numbers approach. There is no 1-2-3 approach to
leadership. A leadership program should help you break down any situation so that you can become
fully aware of all the elements that are influencing it (i.e. a holistic and systemic view), understand
what the key drivers are, know how to identify and diagnose the real core issue, explore it from multiple
angles, and then know which tools and skills to draw on in order to clear up the issue and move it
forward into action. Skills are just a means to enabling this process; without the process, and a more
complete framework, skills will often be applied in the wrong way for the wrong reasons.
Underlying iPEC’s Coach Centric LeadershipTM approach is the Core Energy CoachingTM process,
which is both a methodology and a framework—meaning it provides you with not only the skills,
but an understanding of what to use, when to use it, why to use it, and how to use it. You need to
know all of the “why’s” and “wherefores,” in addition to being able to apply what you know.
These coaching and human potential development processes were developed over three decades,
and include unique tools, concepts, and principles never before seen in the world of coaching.
This methodology is based on the scientific application of energy and consciousness and our Founder’s
decades of experience in the field. In addition, we built upon the very best of other paradigms, such
as consulting, psychotherapy, positive psychology, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP),
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strategy. This approach allows the individual to be gently “pulled” along, utilizing coaching tools
and knowledge in their everyday situations, while working at their own pace.
In addition, our trainers have graduated from iPEC’s ICF-accredited Coach Training Program
and are experts who have many years of experience with helping to create significant energy shifts
within leaders; this shift enables leaders to create a new culture, anchored in organizational
engagement, resulting in organizations, teams, and individuals that consistently achieve substantial,
and sustainable, results.
All of our presenters have significant coaching and leadership experience, and have undergone an
extensive training program with iPEC, making them experts in the Core Energy Coaching process.
Our lead presenters have been selected from hundreds of our certified graduate students, and only
a select few are chosen based on our rigorous selection process. As veterans within our company,
they hold advanced degrees and have wide-reaching backgrounds in such areas as education, HR,
training & development, and law enforcement.
Must Ask Question #7: Accreditation and Fit
How do I research a sound program with complete International Coach Federation (ICF)
training regulations and accreditation?
Coaching has become a staple in the toolbox of modern leaders and has been repeatedly shown to
have a dramatic impact on increasing an individual’s level of engagement, performance, focus, and
commitment. It’s also been shown to significantly enhance learning, including the application and
full integration of new concepts.
Knowing that, would you go to a knee surgeon for heart surgery or a chiropractor for a root canal?
Not likely. So, if coaching is going to be an inherent part of your development into the type of leader
that impacts and influences others, then the program you select should have the appropriate,
unquestionable expertise in that field.
And, a coach-approach leadership training should, at a bare minimum, meet all industry-regulated
standards and competencies. While all accredited programs offer training, not all accredited
programs offer training of equal quality. In fact, they can ‒ and do ‒ vary greatly in training quality,
training quantity, training methodology, and services provided.
iPEC was one of the first 12 schools to be accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF), the
industry’s governing body that sets the standards, core competencies, and ethics for coaches and
training schools alike. Many unaccredited schools have actually been rejected by the ICF accreditation
board and some, multiple times. So, beware of who you’re selecting as your training partner.
Hundreds of leaders, from C-level executives and front line managers, to entrepreneurs and
non-profit directors, have experienced iPEC’s Coach Centric LeadershipTM Engagement Program,
applying our pioneering coaching process to real-world leadership. This approach has led to a
best-of-breed coaching and leading process that is producing highly engaged workforces,
powerfully driven organizational and team cultures, and significantly more enjoyment for the
leader behind the results!
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mentoring, social motivation theory, metaphysics, adult and accelerated learning theories, emotional
intelligence, and leadership development. These paradigms are rooted in the individual, guided by
proven tools and practices that lead people to high performance.
The Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC) offers the most comprehensive and experiential
coach training program in the world and is the originator of the Core Energy Coaching™ process—the most
effective leadership framework and change process in use today.
Founded in 1999 by Bruce D Schneider, MCC and Ph. D., the Institute graduates Certified Professional
Coaches in the specialties of life, career/transition, health and wellness, relationship, sales, business, corporate,
and executive coaching, and also offers the highly successful, and deeply transformational, Coach Centric
Leadership™ Engagement Program to corporations, businesses, governments, and law enforcement agencies
around the world.
To learn more about how you can become a Coach Centric Leader™, or bring coaching into the culture of
your organization, please go to www.iPECleadership.com and register for one of the upcoming “Preview
Calls.” You can also reach out directly to one of our Program Coaches at [email protected]
or 866.72COACH.
Additional resources, and leadership tips, are always available on our website, including our blog, our white
papers, our research, and more.
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About the Coach Centric Leadership™
Engagement Program by iPEC
866.72COACH
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