Executive Coaching & Development Flashcards

A DDI-certified coach is working with an executive who dominates team meetings and stifles dissent. Which DDI competency is the primary development target?

Answer: Empowering Others

Empowering Others directly addresses the need to share decision-making authority, invite diverse input, and create psychological safety — all undermined by dominance behaviors.

In DDI's executive development model, 'derailment risk' is best mitigated through:

Answer: Early identification of overused strengths that become liabilities under pressure

DDI research shows that strengths overused under pressure become derailers — identifying and modulating these is the primary mitigation strategy.

Which DDI tool is most commonly used to establish an executive's baseline competency profile at the start of a coaching engagement?

Answer: DDI's Leadership Mirror or similar multi-rater assessment

DDI typically anchors executive coaching with multi-rater assessments like Leadership Mirror that provide competency-level behavioral data from multiple stakeholder perspectives.

When designing a coaching program for a newly promoted C-suite executive, DDI recommends prioritizing which transition challenge first?

Answer: Shifting from managing functions to influencing across the enterprise without direct authority

DDI research on leadership transitions identifies the shift from functional management to enterprise influence as the most critical and commonly underestimated challenge for new C-suite executives.

An executive coaching engagement is stalling because the coachee's manager is not reinforcing new behaviors in the workplace. The DDI-recommended action is to:

Answer: Engage the manager as an active stakeholder with specific reinforcement behaviors

DDI's ecosystem approach to development requires that the immediate manager actively reinforce new behaviors; without this, transfer of learning to the workplace fails.

DDI's research on 'leader readiness' found that organizations with the strongest leadership bench strength share which common practice?

Answer: They integrate formal assessment, targeted development, and real-experience exposure into a continuous pipeline

DDI's global leadership research shows that best-in-class organizations combine rigorous assessment with tailored development and stretch experiences rather than any single intervention.

In DDI executive coaching, 'psychological safety' in the coaching relationship is best established by:

Answer: Co-creating confidentiality boundaries and session norms with the coachee at the outset

DDI coaching establishes safety through transparent, co-created contracting about what is and isn't shared — ambiguity about confidentiality erodes rather than builds trust.