By Bruce Dingman (Open as PDF)
There has been a growing trend regarding how companies take care of their executives including outplacement assistance, executive coaching, and more recently, wellness programs. For more than twenty years, it has been common for fired executives to receive outplacement assistance. Such help makes the parting more amicable, helps the executive maintain a better feeling of self-worth during a potentially traumatic time, gives an opportunity for self-evaluation and exploration of one’s gifting, and gives an opportunity for community with other unemployed executives. Outplacement is not new.
Executive coaching is not new. In fact, TEC/Vistage, now based in San Diego, was founded in 1957 and today involves over 13,000 CEOs throughout the United States and multiple foreign countries. Each executive is mentored or facilitated individually or in peer groups by a professionally trained TEC/Vistage chair. Our friend, Dr. Bill Amberg, has chaired TEC/Vistage groups for nearly 20 years, and has also consulted with a wide variety of companies, combining a unique perspective of behavioral science and business management.
Some executive coaching groups, like the management styles espoused by Dr. Peter Drucker, Dr. Ken Blanchard, and Max DePree, are based on the leadership principles of Judeo-Christian values found in the Bible. Dr. Blanchard even founded the www.LeadLikeJesus.org to teach these values in a conference-style manner. We encourage you to look at the executive coaching websites at the end of this newsletter—some of them have incredible articles that are well worth reading and saving.
Moving beyond executive outplacement and executive coaching, a new concept is moving onto the scene: executive “wellness” management. A 2003 survey on health and wellness programs by the American Management Association reported that 71% of executives now say that corporations have a responsibility to promote wellness among employees. The responsibility is financially motivated to counter rising healthcare costs and has led to a solution-based trend in employer-funded wellness programs that encourage healthier eating and exercise.
Prevention-based healthy living programs have grown in popularity as a result of the steadily documented reality that up to 70% of an organization’s benefit costs are incurred in six disease categories: hypertension, gastro-obesity related health issues, diabetes, heart disease, muscular-skeletal injuries, and cancer—all of which can be stress-related. Each of these ailments is recognized as preventable or at least modifiable through physical activity and other lifestyle and behavior changes.
Arcus Enterprises, a wholly-owned subsidiary of WellPoint, Inc., is working to offer effective and unique programs that will give progressive-thinking companies the new competitive edge. Through a joint venture with David H. Murdock and Dole, Inc., Arcus is incorporating a wellness resort into the amenity offerings of a new Four Seasons Resort in Westlake Village, California. Now purposeful executive retreat programs go well beyond standard golf outings. Arcus anticipates the use of the resort as an executive benefit where one might come to complete annual physicals and corporate business meetings might integrate business into a well-being environment.
Business meetings, conferences and incentive trips booked at the resort can have a focused well-being theme, immersing executives in the resort’s core healthy lifestyle programs that integrate food and nutrition, physical fitness, recreation, physical and emotional health, and the latest that science, technology, communications and personal care can offer. Along with outplacement assistance and executive coaching, wellness programs provide a way to care for corporate executives.
A few examples of executive coaching groups we’re personally acquainted with and respect include:
• Daniel Harkavy’s Building Champions, based in Portland, Oregon. He has about a dozen coaches doing one-on-one coaching of executives. www.BuildingChampions.com
• Kevin McCarthy of On Purpose, based in Orlando, Florida, does individual executive coaching. www.on-purpose.com
• Dr. John Brunstetter, an industrial psychologist based in San Diego, California, does executive and management team coaching and much more. www.teaminterplay.com
• Bill Bliss of Bliss Associates is based in New Jersey and has four coaches doing individual executive coaching. www.blissassociates.com
There are also companies who only work with Christian CEOs:
• *John Beehner’s Wise Counsel is coaching CEO groups and individuals in Jacksonville, Florida as well as across the nation. www.askwisecounsel.com
• *Chris Duncan’s Convene is based in Southern California, has 12 facilitators around the U.S. and Canada, and does group as well as individual coaching for Christian CEOs, presidents and
business owners. www.convenenow.com/about/convene-leadership
*Indicates CEO groups where Bruce Dingman was a guest speaker
© The Dingman Company 2012
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