Coaching has become a commonly used tool in most modern organizations. Most coaching is still focused on helping individuals to perform better. 6:30 Partners, by contrast, is committed to driving improved performance at the organizational level – by working with key leaders and their teams.

“Team coaching has a much bigger impact on organizational performance than the oneto-one method because, when you coach a team, you are coaching people while they are in action,” says Rob Bier, managing partner at 6:30 Partners. He likens it to the job of a football coach – as he says, “you can’t coach a team to victory without watching and coaching them as they play real matches against tough opponents, so while individual skill-building is a part of my approach, the primary focus is always on helping teams perform better together as they wrestle with their biggest challenges.”

One specialization of 6:30 Partners lies in helping executives to successfully shift from a traditional, top-down leadership culture to a more inclusive one. While many CEOs and executives outwardly embrace this transition, they may privately fear they will lose the speed and clarity that comes with top-down leadership. Often, top-down still feels more effective and decisive, while an inclusive style can feel slow. This can lead to a leadership style where “we’re inclusive until something really important hits – then we go back to being top down.” This naturally leads to cynicism about leadership’s real commitment to the transition.

6:30 Partners has developed a signature program that helps leadership teams learn to operate both decisively and inclusively, bringing together the best of both worlds. Through a series of workshops, teams learn to leverage their diversity and mold it into a cohesive, high-performing unit; a team of people that understand each other and work together with maximum synergy – even when the issues are tough.

6:30’s expertise in building cohesive teams out of diverse individuals came to the fore when dealing with an Israeli technology scale-up. As the organization expanded globally, the leadership team grew to include execs from North American and Asia as well as Israel, which led to communications problems and culture clashes. 6:30 Partners was hired to help the expanded leadership team find a way of communicating and working together that worked for everyone – both the more ‘polished’ North Americans, the conflict-shy Asians, and the outspoken Israeli founders. They learned to slow down and become better listeners and decision-makers, rather than just advocates for their own opinions.

Each workshop for this client ran for two days: one day of training and coaching, and another holding real ‘match-play’ Executive Committee meetings while leveraging the skills learned the previous day. Over a period of a year, the team came to grow confident and graceful in its ability to leverage diversity, allowing team members from different cultures to contribute and be involved in the decision-making process while still operating efficiently and effectively as a unit.

Rob believes that team coaching is also the key to more impactful 1:1 coaching. Team sessions give Rob critical firsthand observational data on how an executive operates both normally and under stress, and how they interact with their teams and stakeholders. This is far more actionable data than one can get from a traditional 360 review or psychographic assessment tool. These insights into how execs operate ‘in real life’ enable Rob to provide more impactful coaching for the individual.

6:30 Partners’ philosophy is that the true sign of effective coaching is when the benefits last long after the coach is gone. To that end, the firm has codified all its frameworks and tools into simple but effective supporting materials that teams can use on their own.
Another aspect of its philosophy is a belief in continuous development. The name 6:30 Partners is an homage to a practice from one of Bier’s stints as a CEO when execs would team break off from desk work around 6:30 n to spend the last thirty minutes of every day doing ‘people development stuff’: coaching, encouraging and training staff at all levels.

Prior to becoming a coach 14 years ago, Rob spent 12 years as a CEO, giving him a deep appreciation of what it takes to run a company. As a result, his approach is fully geared to the real-life needs of executives operating under time and financial pressure. His coaching is deeply practical while also being transformational at the team level.

Helping leaders work in modern and culturally diverse organizations while achieving consistent, high performance is the key to 6:30 Partner’s rare take on leadership development and what sets them apart in the executive coaching space.