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Much of the following is excerpted with permission from the Executive Onboarding and Coaching blog, published by Resources in Action. Other content is adapted from articles about executive onboarding in Business Week and the Harvard Business Review.

Executive onboarding is the process that supports a new executive in becoming productive quickly in his or her new environment. With the help of an executive coaching consultant who specializes in this area, the executive is guided through a structured process that helps her/him to focus on the right activities in the right ways during the first few months on the job, so that he or she is working in concert with her/his boss, setting the right direction for the team and making significant progress towards the most important deliverables.

New leaders are often required to make important decisions and succeed before they acquire the requisite skill set. Recent research from the Harvard Business Review indicates that it takes a new mid-level manager at least 6.2 months to reach the break even point, even in an organization where they are a good fit and have a good chance of success.

Job fit and corporate culture fit are the key success factors that significantly influence whether new hires will meet corporate expectations. The challenge is not just with senior executives; shifts in organizational size, focus and complexity are also creating more key roles for mid-level managers who are critical in helping companies maintain their competitive edge.

Since the late 1990's increasingly many corporations, large and small, have sought out executive onboarding and executive coaching services to prevent the loss of top talent due to poor assimilation to the new environment. Early on, onboarding was a niche service provided by small boutique executive coaching firms. However, in the last few years, many of the larger consulting firms have begun to tap into the growing executive onboarding market.