Frequently Asked Questions: Executive Coaching Questions with Dana Theus of InPower Coaching

During my executive marketing career, prior to professional coaching, I worked in the tech industry (telecommunications, Internet, software, and software as a service [SAAS]), so I had planned to coach people primarily in technical sectors. What a surprise to find out that people value my service across industries! In addition to technology executives, I’ve coached individuals across various industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, insurance, biotech, retail, agriculture/food, consulting, marketing, financial services, construction, education, journalism, and real estate, in both commercial and nonprofit sectors, as well as government and entrepreneurial settings. I have yet to find an industry or sector where I can’t help people. It turns out that people have similar leadership and management challenges no matter where they work! You can learn more about my previous work experiences on my LinkedIn profile.

Clients come to me with development needs in numerous areas, including professional growth, self-awareness, and leadership development, among many others. However, the following are common to almost everyone that I’ve worked with at some level.

• Leaders taking on greater authority and responsibility often engage with me to expand their strategic thinking skills, moving their mindsets beyond getting things done/being the doer and nurturing vision. Such leaders become capable of achieving greater organizational impact.

• Many clients want to become better managers, learning how to empower and develop their direct reports for greater prioritization and productivity, employee engagement, and impactful results.

• I’ve successfully helped many senior leaders position themselves for promotions and salary increases. The work we’ve done together tends to focus on refining personal brand, managing up effectively, navigating office politics, and building confidence.

• Gaining credibility that opens doors can be a challenge, so I’ve helped many clients develop mindsets that boost their personal brand confidence, so they can show up as their best selves with less stress about what everybody else thinks about them.

• A great career reputation strategy that helps professionals stand out is thought leadership, but learning to cultivate your ideas into true ‘leadership’ and share them with influencers is a skill unto itself, which I help clients master and execute.

• I support clients in building stronger relationships with supervisors, direct reports, and external stakeholders. This results in a wide variety of benefits, including developing mentors and sponsors, generating greater team productivity, and achieving goals with less stress.

• Everyone needs to do more with less these days, and I provide clients tools, approaches, and mindsets that help them prioritize and improve productivity without increasing their stress.

• Stress comes from many directions so I help all my clients identify their greatest stressors and explore self mastery to reduce unhealthy stress and create sustainable resilience.

• strategies and messaging for challenge transitions

• Emotional intelligence unconscious biases

Executive coaching is not a competitive sport, and many executive coaches provide tremendous value. You get the best results when you find a coach who matches your values, style, and needs. My approach works best for people who want to focus on authenticity. That’s what I mean when I talk about finding your internal power–helping you evolve beyond the messages about yourself that you’ve been socialized into–psychologists call this social-authoring–to identify those beliefs, behaviors, values, and attitudes that reflect the best of who you are. This is called self-authoring. In my experience, the people who make the most sustainable, effective, and low-stress results take this approach. They fuel their presence and performance with a deep sense of purpose, meaning, and vision about the person they are and the world they want to create. This gives them the resilience, determination, and intuition to achieve and create impact.

My coaching style balances compassion with directness and self-accountability. I like to work with people who are at critical inflection points in their life and career. This doesn’t have to mean you’re making a big change on the outside. It can also mean you’re feeling a big shift on the inside as well. When you focus on navigating these inside shifts authentically, the changes you can create in your career and in your life become more authentic , successful, and fulfilling. I’m honored that a number of clients have continued lean on me as a trusted advisor for years, allowing me to support them as they evolve their leadership and career trajectory.

Many senior leaders become frustrated with what they perceive as a glass ceiling above them, blocking the C-Suite. Sometimes an insular culture–with all kinds of unconscious bias, including gender, race, education, and many other factors–is a real thing. However, you also have to overcome obstacles you can’t often see by upleveling your leadership approach, such as:

• Shifting from a strategic management mindset to a strategic leadership mindset

• Contributing to organizational and market strategy and goals rather than functional execution

• Learning to take accountability for strategy execution across functional lines (moving past silos)

• Representing the organization to all employees (not just the ones that report to you) and to external stakeholders

• Working with board members and investors

• Project and build confidence in the organization, despite its flaws

• Leading projects and teams that positively impact their organizations in significant and measurable ways

I’ve coached numerous professionals to decipher the ways these high-level leadership styles manifest in their organizations and industries. It’s amazing to see people blossom into their higher selves as they simultaneously deliver greater value to their organizations.

As with senior leaders, senior managers seeking the next level promotion must gain new insights into what it means to succeed when their scope of responsibility and authority expands. These challenges often require a fresh perspective on what success looks like, such as:

• Analyze trends and take strategic action to achieve workplace and business goals

• Set strategic goals and manage teams to achieve them through strict prioritization and tactical goal-setting

• Developing managers into leaders who can develop individual employees and manage teams

• Build and maintain a wide variety of stakeholder relationships, especially with peers, on behalf of their teams

• Fully removing themselves from the “doing” so they can focus on managing teams of “doers”

• Mastering emotional intelligence to deal with challenging interpersonal situations and learn to empower employees

• Learn to work smarter, not harder, improving themselves through self-reflection (and the support of a good coach!)

I enjoy this work, helping motivated managers gain new skills and build the foundation to become great leaders.

I use a number of self-mastery, management, and leadership tools I’ve developed on my own and available to my clients through my video and worksheet library to work through change management, team management, strategic leadership, and many other coaching challenges. In addition, I rely heavily on the following two external tools:

• Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): For strategic goal-setting. In large teams and medium-sized organizations, the OKR goals process can be a game-changer to help leaders stay focused on what matters most and deliver results that matter. This system is based on a book called Measuring What Matters by John Doerr.

• Leadership Circle Profile 360 Assessment: The LCP 360 is a powerful tool, both for teaching clients what effective leadership looks like, and also for helping them evaluate their own strengths and opportunities for personal growth. The LCP’s PULSE tool supports them in engaging a small number of people to support their personal journey to improve key leadership behaviors with its PULSE tool. I’m also certified in helping teams use this methodology to define how they can work together to improve their performance. You can find more information on how I use this tool here.

Yes! When teams need to improve their performance, I support the team leader on a 1-1 basis, and also work with team members in some of the following ways:

• 1-1 support with team members

• train them in decision-making processes (e.g., consensus), techniques to manage difficult conversations (e.g., active listening), agenda-setting, OKR setting and tracking etc.

• facilitate key strategic conversations (e.g., strategic planning, annual meetings etc.), reinforcing the training I’ve given them above

• Administer Leadership Circle Profile Teams 360s and facilitate their decisions as to what to improve and how to improve the leadership culture they build together

• Consult on culture change, change management, and leadership development

Bias is one of the hardest challenges any of us face in the workplace, and there are always several factors at work when bias is present. My approach uses powerful coaching questions to help my client build their strategy from the inside out, solidifying an emotionally healthy form of resiliency into their personal brand before taking on organizational and systemic bias. I start by helping my client center on the most key aspects of their purpose, accomplishments, and goals–to build confidence in their best self. Next, we explore interpersonal and group dynamic strategies to build their emotional intelligence and develop alliances. Finally, once all the low-hanging fruit has been plucked and the true root of the bias they’re facing is visible, I ask the right coaching questions to help them identify what risks they’re willing to take in confronting it, interpersonally and organizationally, and support them as they progress forward.

I’ve advised and helped women at every stage of their careers, from independent contributor to CEO. I’ve also done a lot of research on women’s leadership, which I fold into my advice to them, always in a way that empowers them to lean into their authenticity for success. My support ranges from helping them to:

• Shifting self-doubt into confidence

• Negotiating raises, which they received

• Transforming people-pleasing behaviors into leadership actions

• Managing bullies and overcoming misogynistic behavior by colleagues

• Making smart career moves to preserve and increase their lifetime income

• Navigating tricky office politics with authenticity for career progression

• Building empowering mindsets to achieve more while reducing stress

While I’m very familiar with many of the behavioral and mental patterns that can hold women back, it’s my experience that most women ready for coaching are also ready to shift into empowering approaches to their career and life. These are my favorite clients, and we make quick progress moving them closer to their goals.

Yes. Over the past decade I’ve worked with English-speaking clients from all over the world. I find that most people’s problems have similar roots across cultures. By learning to accept circumstances for what they are, anyone can use the tools of clear goal-setting, personal reflection, and communication to empower themselves and overcome many of the challenges they face. When it comes to people with spectrum disorders, I’ve worked with clients who are high functioning to help them adapt to the requirements of their organization, becoming more successful in their role. In all cases above, my coaching has focused on helping my clients succeed in a business and organizational context.

The majority of my clients choose a monthly coaching session, which gives them enough time to work with the concepts, assignments, and mindset shifts I give them to see what fits in their situation. This frequency also helps me stay abreast of the office dynamics and key relationships, which makes our coaching sessions get off to an immediate start. I have three. measures of success. One is that at the end of each call. My client feels lighter and more empowered. A second one is that within 3 to 6 months, my client has achieved some of their most urgent coaching goals. Third, it’s important to me that within 9 to 12 months, they have achieved the majority of the coaching goals they established at the beginning of the engagement, and have begun to set new goals. I am happy to say that the vast majority of my clients achieve these successes.

I’ve experienced two primary types of coaching engagements. One is brief, 3 to 6 months, and targets specific and acute career and leadership coaching challenges. The other is longer-term, averaging 18 months, but sometimes extending over years, where I support them through multiple cycles of professional and personal growth. I have had many clients start with a briefer engagement and come back for longer-term support, and vice versa. Each engagement is tailored specifically to the client’s needs.

I structure my payment packages at a cost per session, which ranges between $375 and $500, depending on the services included. All coaching engagements include access to my online libraries of videos and workbooks, as well as email support and access to my personally trained AI coaching assistant. I offer both monthly payments and upfront payments to take advantage of employer reimbursement and professional development funds . While I encourage people to budget for 4 to 6 months to ensure that whatever changes they make due to our coaching, have the opportunity to become habitual, I don’t require that anybody making monthly payments commit to a certain number of months. I do not reimburse upfront payments if coaching sessions are not used.

I also run a group coaching experience for women, the InPower Women Mastermind community, for a much lower monthly fee. This offering includes unlimited access to all my online materials.

Many people are using AI tools instead of hiring coaches, so why would I invest in training an AI to support my clients? It’s because the work you do between our sessions–when you apply the tools and advice I’ve given you–is the crucial time for you to learn and develop. I can’t be with you personally then, but my AI can. You can download it on your phone and use it in situations like these:

• troubleshoot difficult relationships, leadership situations, career challenges, office politics and more – use it to test your plans for how to handle the situation
• prompt you into deeper reflections on what’s going well and poorly, what you’re learning in the days and weeks between our calls
• prepare for our calls by “thinking out loud” about wyas to approach the areas you want to dive into deeper coaching

I’m not worried AI will replace me, I want you to use it to help you get the most out of our engagement.

I use a very powerful 360 tool called the Leadership Circle Profile. The system maps out 29 categories of leadership, strengths, and weaknesses, giving leaders a detailed and measurable picture of their capabilities and challenges through the eyes of the people they work with. In addition to rater feedback, the LCP 360 comes with a detailed workbook and leadership development plan that I use to make assignments that help clients focus on behavioral changes with the power to dramatically improve their leadership effectiveness. We also have the ability to do pulse surveys with a smaller 360 group of leadership advisors that give the leader on ongoing insight into the degree to which their colleagues see improvement in their leadership style. The leadership Circle profile 360 can also be used with teams, to give the team insight into the leadership culture they’re creating and places they can target efforts at improvement.

All my client sessions are confidential. Even in circumstances when I’m working with teams, or supervisors and their staff, I do not share information i’ve gained in individual sessions. Supervisors are aware of this at the beginning of our engagement, and I will not work with those who do not respect this limitation.

I use AI as a powerful tool to enhance my coaching, not to replace the essential human connection. My primary focus remains on the personalized, confidential relationship we build together. I am training my own AI assistant, which you will gain access to as a client. I am training this tool to be available 24/7 as a thought partner to you in working through challenging issues you face in the workplace between our coaching sessions, and to direct you to resources in my libraries of coaching tools. I also leverage AI-powered tools for administrative tasks, such as scheduling or writing meeting notes, to capture key points of our discussion. However, all client-specific conversations and proprietary information are kept strictly confidential and are always used under the terms and conditions of public vendors like Zoom and Calendly. My commitment is to ensure your privacy while using technology responsibly to deliver the most effective coaching possible.

The most important thing you can do to prepare, for our executive coaching session is to have an intention for the conversation, which you share with me at the outset. Once I understand your objective for the conversation, I will ensure that we achieve it. This can relate to a specific situation you’re struggling with, or a broader set of issues you’d like to have a fresh perspective on. Some clients take some time the day before to review notes from our past conversations in order to consider what they’ve learned, and how I can help them build on it. I suggest that all clients engage in a weekly personal review where they reflect on what they’ve learned in the prior week, and how they’ll apply those learnings in the future. These reflections often give us quite a bit to talk about in our sessions, and accelerate the client’s learning and benefits from coaching.

There is no specific time commitment required, but I noticed that the clients who invest at least 30 minutes a week to do the reflections I mentioned above tend to get the most benefit out of our executive coaching sessions.

I live in the Washington DC area and support clients all around the world via phone and video. While I periodically meet in person when Travel makes it possible, I don’t find that in person meetings are required for for clients of either leadership, coaching or executive coaching to gain benefits benefits of their investment.