From my perspective, executive coaching requires blend of professional development and personal development to facilitate individual growth, improve workplace performance and to empower the individual to develop personal contentment. Many large organizations including Fortune 500 companies have allowances for their upper middle management employees to hire executive coaches. The role of an executive coach is to enhance the client’s self-discovery by asking inductive questions, rehearsing specific interpersonal scenarios, and assigning homework or field assignments intended to cause control failure so that the individual can move through such failure into success.
An executive coach is not responsible for telling a client what to do in specific scenarios. Rather, executive coaching is based upon the coach serving as a sounding board and as an objective individual list outside of challenge, opportunity or crisis. Some executive coaches do have specific areas of expertise, and you will most likely want to work with the coach will you believe to be competent and skilled enough to understand your unique industry, organizational goals and personal goals.
One of the biggest wastes of time spent with an executive coach is to work on goal setting activities and using an executive coach as a babysitter to keep you accountable. There are plenty of software programs and mobile phone apps that do much better job for less money. Honestly speaking, if you are at an executive level or trying to become an executive within your organization and you do not have a handle on how to do goal setting at this point then this is a serious issue that needs to be resolved first. But, for most executive level employees this isn’t an issue – the issue actually happens much earlier than the goal setting activity.
In many cases it isn’t issue of knowing how to set goals and track them, it is an procrastination which has its roots in uncertainty, overwhelm, and insecurity. A critical part of my executive coaching process is to cause my clients to face the internal issues that have been holding them back (mostly fear, shame and guilt) and address these before tackling procrastination or hindrances to goal achievement. Business coaches or executive coaches without specific backgrounds in therapeutic modalities such as psychotherapy, NLP, or hypnosis may struggle to create successes for their clients because they’re only addressing conscious mind activities such as goal setting.
I'm Not Good Enough...
This is the major theme that I hear from most of my executive coaching clients when we first begin working together. Obviously it isn’t a direct statement and it usually doesn’t come out immediately, but lurking someplace inside there is the sentiment of inadequacy. This is why the effective executive coaching is a blend of professional development and personal development. First, focus on empowering the client to transcend his or her personal hangups. The better the client feels about him or herself in the more confident he or she begins to act with decision-making more effectively these changes will be noticed within the workplace.
The best approach to executive coaching is an individual approach. Every individual is unique obviously and there is no cookie-cutter formula that can help all executive level employees reach their goals. The way I personally approach executive coaching is to gain an understanding of their short-term and long-term goals and objectives. Then I apply a Johari window and Cartesian Coordinates to their goals and objectives. This tends to switch the client from conscious level, linear-thinking to unconscious, associative-thinking as the real fears, uncertainties and anxieties it in preventing them from being as effective as possible in the workplace begin to be revealed.
I use a variety of NLP techniques, conversational hypnosis, and guided imagery to provide solutions for my executive coaching clients. Instead of me being the constant gatekeeper of these resources, my focus is on training my coaching clients to understand how to use these resources on their own and in the moment when it is critical. Be on this there are circumstantial and situational events within which I provide feedback, different perspectives, and hold accountability for the outcomes.
What I’m really interested in creating with in my clients mindset and attitude is a self perspective of leadership. Beyond just professional development, when I offered is executive leadership coaching that transcends the workplace and it positively empowers the executive’s family and acquaintances because of the death of these individual changes. There are countless topics for professional development and unique circumstances and situations that every industry holds, but my perspective is that the psychological transformation of the individual is complete with he or she shifts from merely being an employee to acting and living as a leader both inside and outside of the organization.
There are numerous niches for coaching, but in my perspective, there are typically two major categories: personal and professional coaching. Interestingly, I believe that both overlap as it is nearly impossible to separate one's personal life from one's professional life. Below are common coaching niches that my services cover.
Business coaching helps to cut through distractions, increase your performance, find your focus, define the scope of your role, and pinpoint your reason “why” you’re doing what you're doing.
Executive coaching helps the coachee utilize coaching techniques to facilitate the individual growth of team members while improving workplace performance and goal-achievement.
The role of a life coach is in many ways to be that of a cheerleader or an avatar that keeps you encouraged, motivated and with your primary objectives and goals in mind.
Personal development coaching focuses upon improving self-awareness, create an empowering identity, enhancing one’s quality of life, determining one’s primary life purpose, and developing necessary resources.
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) coaching is focused upon self-awareness enhancement, goal achievement strategies, interpersonal communication, and understanding human behavior through flexible, subjective perspectives.
Leadership coaching is primarily focused on helping organizational leaders to gain a solid sense of identity, purpose, motivation, empowering resources, goal setting strategies, and synergistically using coaching to realize one's full potential.
