Coaching and Consulting Services
Susan Ennis & Associates excels in guiding purpose-driven organizations toward growth and impact while supporting leaders in challenging situations.
Executive Coaching
Susan coaches senior executives and high-potential managers. She is particularly effective at onboarding newly appointed leaders and coaching technical managers who need to expand their influence repertoire. She is especially committed to helping organizations realize the full contribution of executives whose social background, educational experience, or cultural heritage varies from their peers. She specializes in providing interview-based, nuanced 360 feedback. Susan’s approach to coaching is highly individualized, practical, and focused on producing business results as well as professional growth.
CEO Evaluation and Feedback
Leaders at the top want feedback, but boards often struggle to provide it. Known for her deep experience, discretion, and credibility, Susan is often asked by boards to assist with the evaluation of their CEOs. She gathers nuanced feedback from the board of directors, direct reports, and external players, such as customers, investors, and partners. She then provides detailed, actionable feedback and development recommendations to the executive, as well as a summary to the board. If the evaluation uncovers organizational issues, Susan can also work with the leader and key stakeholders to address them.
Senior Team Alignment
Whether a senior team is new or members are transitioning, ensuring that the team is aligned on purpose, strategy, and roles is critical to the success of any business. Team members often need to adjust their styles so that they can better collaborate to meet the challenges of the organization. She uses a variety of techniques, including 360 feedback for each team member, team culture assessments, observation and facilitation of team meetings, and short-term individualized coaching. With her decades of experience supporting executive teams, Susan is particularly good at quickly diagnosing problems and building trust.
Coaching Programs
Organizations understand the benefits of coaching leaders and they worry about the costs and effectiveness. Susan sets up unique coaching programs in companies. Twenty years ago, Susan was the first to publish a chapter explaining, in practical terms, how companies can design their leadership coaching program and evaluate the results. In partnership with you, Susan sets the standards, strategy, and framework that meet the needs of your leaders and your company. She can source coaches and match clients or even train coaches, if needed. Throughout the years, Susan developed innovative, targeted coaching programs for biotechs, financial service firms, and think tanks.
Culturally Grounded Competency Models
Competency models have become generic commodities. They are lifeless with little connection to an organization’s purpose or culture. As someone who has built hundreds of custom competency models over the course of her career, Susan works closely with key stakeholders to create a tailored competency model that captures the language and culture of your organization.
Custom-Designed Leadership Development Programs
Susan has been designing highly customized, experiential leadership training programs for decades, and knows what works and what doesn’t to develop the leaders of the future. Whether they are half-day, multi-day, or year-long programs, they are intensive and effective, and include practical, easy-to-use takeaways and tools. The longer programs include peer-consulting small groups and individual coaching support.
Mentoring HR Talent
Smaller companies run lean and often have early-career, high-potential human resources staff with limited experience. Susan relishes mentoring HR managers and training them on various talent management processes and tools. She is also one of a small number of consultants with the experience to help clients establish internal coaching programs. As she does with all of her work, Susan enthusiastically transfers her knowledge and experience to her clients.
Susan has been my executive coach for 14 years. She has been asking compelling questions, providing feedback, and offering guidance as I moved from running early-stage discovery programs to CSO and now CEO of three different start-ups.
Her insights, intuition, data-based analysis, and practical focus have been enormously helpful to me and my organizations.
Besides the one-on-one coaching with me, Susan has provided organizational consulting from codifying our culture to creating our unique talent selection criteria and tools to solving problems with our e-room diligence. I continue to appreciate the wide range of her capabilities and her unique perspective.
– Rosana Kapeller, CEO, Rome Therapeutics