WHY YOU SHOULD WORK WITH AN EXECUTIVE COACH

There is not a single person in the world who can confidently say that they cannot improve their leadership abilities. Executive coaching is all about developing the leadership and relational skills of business executives and managers at the C-Suite level. 

Sometimes, it is not always easy to see how you can improve your leadership skills and an executive coach can assist you by giving you an outside perspective and working with you to make great transformations.  A great leader can learn to accept that employees all have different motivators and personalities by adapting their approaches in order to create sustainable change. Executive Coaching can help leaders to identify behaviours and practices that might actually be counterproductive to goals and objectives within the business.

Executives should approach executive coaching training as a supportive and progressive opportunity. Undertaking this kind of coaching is never done because the individual is incapable in doing their job, it’s usually considered as a way of making positive changes and reassessing commercial behaviours to encourage both professional and, arguably personal growth. 

Leaders often engage with an executive coach because they can feel as though they are not performing to the best of their abilities and that maybe they might need some outside support to ensure their current leadership style is not preventing growth or hindering potential progress. It might be that they feel a little stuck in working out how to make their teams most effective and might need to broaden their perspective in order to work with all members of their teams. 

There are so many elements to management that often disruptions and distractions can put obstacles in the way of higher overarching goals. Executive Coaches can ensure that the Executive doesn’t stray from the path they need to be on and can maintain their clarity and focus. 

What to expect from Executive Coaching 

Distinctions Coaching adopts an experiential approach to Executive Coaching. The overarching goal from executive coaching is for the client to observe and correct their blindspots and problematic areas in their working abilities, in order to create sustainable behavioural changes within an adult learning environment. A lot of clients are very focussed on how they can create changes within an already busy working environment and executive coaching can enable that. 

An executive coach works with you, they get to understand you and are quick to identify behaviours that can be prohibiting progress and positive changes. If you’re open to this type of coaching, then you can expect to build a relationship with your executive coach through mentoring and if you practice consistently, you will start to see the impact of your leadership on your team. Coaching leads to professional confidence and in turn, this leads to sustainable success with being a leader. 

How to prepare for Executive Coaching 

Being open minded and ready to embrace the process is vital in making the most out of executive coaching sessions. Joanna Bown believes that “when clients are interviewing me as their coach, it’s really important that the timing of the coaching is right for them. So a client that says to me, “What are you going to do with me?” – I don’t normally work with. A client who’s really ready to sit in the struggle with vulnerability and courage towards a sustainable behaviour change is someone who’s really ready to do the work.” It’s a process that involves both parties communicating effectively and working together, the coaching is bespoke to the individual client and not a one size fits all service.

What an Executive Coach can help with

At a C-Suite board and executive leadership level, we coach on impact and influence negotiation skills, enrolling others, managing conflict and feedback conversations skilfully. Executive coaching enhances emotional intelligence; welcoming vulnerability and courageous conversations as well as developing presence. It teaches executives to have impact as a leader in negotiations that open up negotiation skills.

Executive coaching can offer emotional support for executives, it can increase confidence in leadership ability and it can help clients to systematically develop better working relationships with their team members.  This type of coaching can also help executives to work through specific tasks or issues, focussing on business priorities and encouraging self-reflection for long term progress.

How to make the most out of an Executive Coaching Session 

In order to make the most out of an Executive Coaching session, you need to be open, you need to embrace your vulnerabilities and have the courage to make changes. Executive Coaches will follow up each client session with a list of actionable items from the previous session – you cannot create change unless you are willing to put in the work. 

Distinctions Coaching invites clients to keep in touch in between sessions for support because executive coaching is a journey and new skills cannot be acquired in a single session.  The coaching process experience shows that what happens in the session is one thing, however what the client does with what happens in the session, experientially trying on the practice of observations in between the sessions is another, and is where the actual behaviour shift takes place. 

Typically, Joanna will contract with the C-Suite executive at any kind of global multinational company across global industries for six sessions, and she meets with them about once a month for two hours at a time. 

How to be a good coachee for an Executive Coach

1) Do the Homework and put the teachings into practice

Practice is the key and by really practising what you do in the session, in between sessions you can relax old habits and beliefs, and build up new habits and beliefs into your leadership repertoire; that are more suitable for the leaders of today rather than the past.

2) Be Open Minded

Sustainable change can only occur when you’re ready to embrace it. Accept that you might not be as developed as you might think you are and be eager to learn new habits and behaviours. 

If you’d like more information on how Executive Coaching could work for you, contact Joanna today.