What is Executive Coaching?

There has been a growing trend in recruiting coaches for promising leaders over the past fifteen years. Many of these coaches are former athletes, lawyers, academics, and consultants who join the ranks from the worlds of psychology, law, and business. There is no doubt that these professionals improve Executive performance in a number of areas. In my opinion, a different story needs to be told. In many situations, Executive coaches with little psychological training do more harm than good. The causes of deep-seated psychological problems are downplayed or ignored by them simply because of their backgrounds and biases. Moreover, when the Executive's problems are the result of an undetected or ignored psychological problem, coaching can actually make things worse. In my opinion, the solution lies most often in addressing unconscious conflict when symptoms are stubborn or severe.

Executive coaches who derive their inspiration from sports often tout simplicity and quick results as their specialties.

Executive Coaching is gaining in popularity because of our current desire for answers that are easy to understand. Businesses are perpetually seeking ways to change quickly and painlessly. You can find a lot of self-help material. For example, you may have heard something like “the key to success is to follow 12 simple steps” or “develop 7 effective habits.” As a result of the obsession with quick fixes, psychotherapy has been marginalized. As a result, Executive coaches have emerged to fill this gap, providing an alternative at the moment.

To achieve fast results, many popular leadership coaches model their interventions after those used by sports coaches, employing techniques that reject out of hand any introspective process that can take time and cause “paralysis by analysis.” The idea that a executive coach can help employees improve performance quickly is a great selling point to CEOs, who put the bottom line first. Yet that approach tends to gloss over any unconscious conflict the employee might have. This can have disastrous consequences for the company in the long term and can exacerbate the psychological damage to the person targeted for help.

Does Executive Coaching really provide a return on investment?

Psychiatric assessment and support are not always helpful or even necessary-and they can even be superfluous. Coaches who train Executives to strengthen their strategic-planning abilities need not be psychiatrists. It is important not to assume that all execs with planning issues lack the necessary skills. Is it possible to develop a business plan while suffering from a psychological disorder? Yes, if the client suffers from clinical depression, which is known to interfere with one's ability to engage in constructive, goal-oriented behavior. The Executive being coached and the companies in which they work will suffer if there are no safeguards to prevent coaches from training those whose difficulties are not inherent in their abilities, but more typically psychological.

While Executive Coaching has many intangible benefits, it is not immeasurable. The 360-degree Executive assessments provide coaches with the opportunity to assess different Executive skills, such as assertiveness and dedication, as well as active listening and effective feedback.

Providing high-performing people in Executive roles with Executive Coaching is a high-impact, efficient process that helps them achieve better results over time. The Executive Coaching Process involves short meetings between coaches and clients (i.e., 30 minutes per session). During this period, the coach and client can generate insights, gain clarity and focus, and make decisions to improve performance. The purpose of Executive Coaching is to enhance the performance of high-performing leaders. There is no attempt to "fix" anyone during this process. Coaches work with high functioning, highly successful clients. Every now and then, they too need a little help to get the job done.

The number of Executive coaches has increased tremendously in the last 30 years. Having a coach available to you is assumed to be a good thing and so we seldom find ourselves explaining the benefits of Executive Coaching to people in corporations. It is usually the case that most of our clients come to us knowing that they wish to engage a coach and also knowing what they hope to gain from the relationship. Hence, when a prospective client recently asked me how working with an Executive coach would benefit him, I decided to reflect on what I have seen from coaching. Because coaching has become such an accepted - even expected - practice in many companies, I realized others might have the same question but hesitate to ask.

The process of working with a coach can be daunting and challenging. Your coaching relationship can help you to become the person you most want to be if you're brave, committed, and curious.

The Benefits of Executive Coaching

So here are the positive outcomes we've seen in all our experience providing Executive Coaching services and seeing how clients respond when they take advantage of the opportunity. In a coaching engagement, you can anticipate these benefits if you are open-minded and willing to develop your capabilities:

This is the first thing. You will see yourself more clearly. Despite sounding simple, this is very important. Most of us lack the ability to see ourselves clearly, but it matters in the workplace: accurate self-awareness in leaders is related to organizational productivity and profitability, and employees prefer to follow leaders who understand themselves well (and are willing to share their perceptions). When you engage with a good coach, he or she generally gathers feedback about how others perceive you before the engagement, and will share that feedback with you. (The best coaches will also break down a feedback report into key themes, so that others are able to clearly perceive your strengths and areas for improvement.) Your most important consideration is to make sure that you build skills to see yourself more clearly: to question your assumptions about yourself, get curious about where you're strong and where you need to grow, and learn to see yourself with "fair witness" eyes.

Secondly, See others with more clarity. Oftentimes, leaders encounter problems because their assessments of others are inaccurate. Employees may be lost because they are not recognized and supported, or poor performers may be kept too long because they believe they are better than they are. The problem is that they might underestimate or overestimate someone's ability to influence their career success. Good coaches often perceive people around you in a neutral and accurate manner (especially if they are doing other work for your organization) and they will share this perception with you. Furthermore, since skilled coaches strive to make their coaching clients independent, they will also teach you how to use the same mental skills you learned to see yourself more clearly to make accurate assessments of others.

The third point is. Learn new ways of responding. Every one of us possesses a set of capabilities and responses that may serve us well as mid-level employees, but not as more senior leaders. As an example, I coached a very smart and capable senior vice president in a media company a few years ago, but she was still primarily focused on getting her work done - she had not learned to convince her team to work together toward the same priority goals. Through my guidance, she realized her success was no longer solely determined by her ability to execute her own tasks but also by her ability to lead and inspire others. Her "Executive toolkit" now contains new, more useful tools to help her be an effective leader. We worked together to learn the necessary skills and change her mindset.

The fourth point is important. Identify your strengths and exploit them. As a result of having an effective coach, you may also be able to identify and leverage strengths that you already possess. Many years ago, I coached a CEO who was very good at imagining products and services that would resonate with customers in the future. Apparently he didn't think it was a big deal (in fact, he once said to me, "Doesn't everyone do that?"). He learned how to embrace this capability in order to benefit his team and the organization, and how to use it more effectively.

The fifth point is: Increase the productivity of your relationships. By focusing on only building relationships with certain types of people, leaders can significantly limit their effectiveness. In most cases, they are people similar to themselves - in their background, race, gender, beliefs, or work style. Coaches can help you recognize that tendency in yourself and counteract it, both by helping you question the limiting assumptions you make about people who aren't like you, and by offering tools to help you build better working relationships with a wider range of people. (This is one of our favorite models - we use it in most coaching engagements and also as a tool for building teams.)

The sixth point is. You can achieve what you want. Coaching engagements must be centered on this principle if they are to be effective. It's important to understand your goals and dreams, and what you're capable of doing in order to achieve them, with the help of a coach. Additionally, he or she can be an incredible source of support: someone who knows you well and understands your goals and needs and wants the best for you — but is a neutral third party. Your coach is not dependent on you for his or her success, unlike your family or employees. A coach can be honest about how well you're doing, reminding you of the goals you've set and telling you what you are doing to support you or get in your way. And finally and most importantly, you will be able to learn new ways of thinking and operating that will enable you to move towards your goals and create the career that you want.

Today’s coaches have a broader mission and Executive Coaching is used as a business tool along all parts of the organization. A typical Executive Coaching engagement is about 6 months in duration, but can be anywhere from 3-12 months, depending on the situation. The greater the change that is needed, the more coaching is required.

During the first month, the Executive coach’s goal is to deeply understand you, your environment, your personal and professional history, your underlying operating system and your core drivers. This time is about capturing targeted data, building trust and intimacy between the coach and client.

In this analysis, the Executive coach asks in-depth questions about how you are being perceived in a multitude of Executive capabilities. The coach hears from those who work with you day in and day out which allows them to build a hypothesis and identify opportunities for growth and development. You also undergo a self- analysis of those same areas which can help to identify your blind spots. For instance, you might consider yourself a good listener, but your colleagues don’t feel the same way. They may see your cell phone use gets in the way of your listening skills.