What is Executive Coaching?
Coaching is about positive change, helping leaders and organizations realize potential. Goals for positive development and change go hand in hand. With consistent focus and action on desired outcomes, it doesn’t take long to instill and sustain new ways of thinking and conducive behaviors that benefit the leader and create a positive ripple effect to further the organization and business. Coaching provides the encouragement, challenge and structure to facilitate and accelerate learning, growth and performance.
Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize personal and professional potential. – International Coach Federation
Coaching is the most direct and individualized of all talent development practices in talent development. It is centered-on a close, confidential and constructive coaching relationship between the Executive Coach and the leader being coached. Meeting one-on-one with senior managers or leaders within an organization (such as a director, vice president, president, or member of the C-suite), the Executive Coach helps the leader home in on specific, contextual objectives for their development and identify the way to strengthen and extend positive impact.
What is an Executive Coach?
An Executive Coach is a qualified professional who works with individuals (usually executives, but often high-potential employees) and groups to help them gain awareness and achieve development objectives, building capacity, enhancing effectiveness and ever-improving their agility and ability to capitalize on challenge and opportunity. The Executive Coach serves as a resource and sounding board. They ask questions, challenge assumptions and stimulate insights and ideas so that leaders develop greater strategic vision, acumen and confidence needed to solve problems, make better choices and decisions, and chart the course forward.
Who Hires Executive Coaches?
Today, organizations leverage the value of Executive Coaching as an investment in their top executives and high potential leaders. The leader receiving coaching might be newly hired, recently promoted, facing new challenge or tapped for succession to greater visibility and responsibility.
Often coaching is employed to accelerate senior team performance and cohesion. Coaching creates leaders as models and motivators, able to enlist the best from others throughout the organization and in key business relationships among board and business partners.
What is the structure of a Typical Executive Coaching Engagement?
While highly-individualized, executive coaching usually follows an overall structure with a sequence of phases:
- Intake and assessment
- Development planning and goal setting
- Sponsor alignment meeting
- Progressive regular coaching sessions
- Mid-engagement pulse check
- Continued coaching
- Final alignment and recommendation.
