Executive coaching helps improve leadership style

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This article was published 12/05/2018 (2735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Executive coaching has grown into a full-blown profession with full- and part-time training, certification and international and national designations followed by the recent celebration of the International Coaching Week. It used to be that working with a coach meant you were experiencing a performance issue. Today, while coaching does help to address these type of issues, corporations are now using coaching as a leadership development tool.

As a development tool, coaching helps executives and managers to move their communication and leadership style toward “transformative” leadership. This means creating closer connections with your staff and inspiring them through the development of self-confidence in problem solving, strategic thinking and resiliency skills.

Transformational leaders also know a lot about themselves, they understand their strengths and areas of challenge, their communication patterns as well as their good and bad habits. They are open to listening and learning and eagerly apply new tools and methodologies for self-improvement as well as team development.

Coaches can also assist their client leaders to better formulate their vision for success, set goals and provide objective feedback on critical issues so that they can increase their impact and influence in order to create a culture of success. A good coach can act as an objective and constructive sounding board to help you strategize and think through challenges in a safe environment. There are several areas in which an executive coach can be of assistance. In particular, these include the following:

Personal communication skills: it is well-known that just because you can talk, it doesn’t mean you are communicating. A coach can assist with identifying one’s communication style as well as helping individuals to learn the art of asking questions and providing constructive feedback through effective coaching conversations.

Emotional intelligence: effective leaders are very aware of their own emotions and where their thoughts are coming from. They think before they talk. They are very sensitive to their environment and read and understand the emotions of others. A coach will assist leaders to understand their own emotional intelligence and apply tools and strategies to increase their interpersonal effectiveness.

Developing personal coaching skills: effective leaders in today’s workplace are themselves coaches who focus on developing an overall coaching culture. An executive coach can help you as leader to provide a coaching framework that suits your leadership style, including how to frame the conversation, understand the current state, assist your staff to formulate a success vision, set a goal and create an implementation plan.

Ensuring personal productivity: one of the biggest challenges for new leaders is letting go and delegating to others so that their time is used more productively on strategic issues. An executive coach can assist you as leader to maximize your productivity by examining your habits and challenges and developing new skills in time management, delegation and personal productivity.

Problem solving: executive coaches are excellent sounding boards to test new theories and ways of doing things and/or discussing a difficult workplace and/or career challenge. By using powerful coaching questions, you will gain more self-awareness, clarify your thinking, apply creativity to problem solving and develop specific skills for handling their stated challenge. The overall goal of course is to improve skills and create long-term results.

Goal setting: goal setting is not as easy as you think. Most people create generalized goals that are often too large and not specific. An executive coach can assist you to create specific goals that lead to specific implementation plans that will overcome potential barriers and ensure the achievement of specific success measurements.

In addition to those mentioned above, an executive coach can assist with a multitude of workplace challenges depending on your need and area of expertise. A coach does not need to have your industry experience but must be good at quickly understanding your issues and following a specific process or framework throughout your engagement. In selecting a coach to work with, meet with them and get a sense of their experience, their style and their energy. You will need to sense there will be a good fit, otherwise you may not accept their probing and challenging questions and feedback.

Most coaches will follow a set framework that can begin with pre-work and/or personal assessments. Pre-work allows the coach to learn more about you, make some observations about your stated goals and make a determination as to whether or not the issues are something the coach can work with and if there appears to be a readiness to learn. Keep in mind that an executive coach is not a psychotherapist, psychologist and/or social worker although some discussions may involve the resolution of personal issues.

However, in some cases, you as a “coachee” may be “sent” by your employer for coaching. In this situation, it is understandable that you may not always be open to being in attendance and may be resistant to participating. Therefore, you will find a coach will spend extra time to learn about you, understand where you are coming from and assist you to see the positives that can be gained from the experience and to set personal goals. No matter the credentials or experience of your executive coach, the key to a successful relationship will be their ability to use intentional questions to guide you through your coaching journey. Asking good questions also requires good listening so that you can shift your thinking towards creative solutions.

The coach will support you to identify and set your own goals and will help create personal insight into your potential solutions and to prioritize and initiate a development plan. Equally important, a good coach will hold you accountable — so be prepared.

Confidentiality in a coach assignment is imperative and must be clarified at the beginning of your work with a coach. In spite of the fact your employer is typically providing for the service, your conversations need to be private and confidential. Work with your coach to establish the parameters of confidentiality and get an agreement on the type of reporting back to the employer, including “who, what and when.” The executive coaching profession has becoming “professionalized” over the past few years. By this, I mean that there are many more educational programs, designations and associations. As well, the whole concept of coaching has moved from “fixing” someone to developing high-potential employees. In other words, coaching is all about becoming a better leader and becoming better in your job. The key is having a deep desire to learn and grow.

Barbara J. Bowes, FCPHR, CMC, CCP, M.Ed., is president of Legacy Bowes Group, the author of eight books, a radio personality, speaker, an executive coach and workshop leader. She can be reached at barb@legacybowes.com