What is an Executive Coaching Service?

An executive coaching service provides professional coaching to maximize performance in the workplace. Workplace coaching is a solution focused, result oriented process and involves an external workplace coach.

It is a great way to attain a certain work behavior that will improve leadership, teamwork, communication, conflict resolution, goal setting and planning.

It can involve one to one coaching of employees or groups of employees with the contribution of the employee’s manager and HR. It entails a mixture of counseling, clinical and organizational psychology.

How Can an Executive Coaching help me?

They can help you identify problems that may be holding you back from performing at your best. It can help you develop personal and interpersonal skill.

At the personal level it can help you learn and develop personal abilities such as self awareness – how do others perceive you and how do you perceive yourself. This will help you identify and correct unhelpful behavioral traits or thoughts that could be limiting performance or leading to conflicts.

Self management – learning how to deal with stress, learning from the feedback of others, time management and goal setting. They should also help you develop better working habits that that result in greater job satisfaction and higher self motivation.

Behavioral abilities are not innate talents and are typically learned through life experiences. You may have excellent technical expertise but may not have been taught these important personal and interpersonal skills. Most people make do with what they have learned randomly through experience rather then what has been demonstrated to work best. Improving your abilities in these areas can dramatically enhance your performance and job satisfaction.

What will an Executive Coaching Course Involve?

The first stage will be an in depth interview to identify any problems, what you hope to achieve at the end of the coaching and identify the obstacles in your way.

A professional consultant will not lecture or tell you what to do. They are there to listen and provide advice and help you to adopt effective work habits, assist you in developing your abilities while helping you to develop the right thinking and behavior that maximizes work place performance. They should empower you by helping you to identify problems and find solutions yourself. Often just having someone to listen and talk to helps you unleash your own problem solving skills and creativity.

Executive Coaches should provide positive support and feedback while offering occasional advice to an executive in order to help them recognize ways in which they can improve their own performance in their organization.

A good leadership coach will be someone with a history as a group leader preferably in a managerial role.

It is preferable that they hold a certification from a credentialing program. Examples include the International Coaches Federation or the World Association of Business Coaches. The certifications demonstrate that a coach has had some formal training, some mentoring and hopefully their performance has been reviewed.

It is best when the criteria for certification is established based on empirical studies of coaching outcomes, not just adherence to a particular philosophy of coaching.

They should have a grasp of psychology, preferably with some credentials in that field also. Much about leadership is to do with state of mind and behaviour. How you relate to others and yourself.

The leadership coach should vary the coaching to the individual needs of the client – their circumstances, history, emotions and aspirations. One to one discussion is important to get to know the client. With group discussions coaching class sizes should be kept small.

The purpose of leadership coaching is to help develop a leader who is not only honest and true to others but most importantly they are honest and true to themselves so that they act out of personal conviction. Helping a leader find their true selves is a difficult and sometimes overwhelming task. There are many different things that go into the makeup of an individual. Leadership coaches will often use personality reports to get an understanding of the client’s true self.

They must enable managers to be more consciously aware of their behaviour particularly under problematic situations. Role playing and question and answer responses to hypothetical situations can be useful methods to help managers analyse their own motives and responses to different situations. Feedback should be provided to help identify any unhelpful reactions or defences that managers may have. This can result in constructive improvements in how team leaders relate to others.

A good leadership coach will require you to open up emotionally and share personal histories. An examination of personal history provides the coach, and managers being coached, with a means to identify those patterns of behaviour that are effective, and others that are ineffective.

Leadership Coaching is probably the most powerful method for developing managers capacity for leadership.

Leadership coaching involves drawing out the individual qualities of managers and insuring that they fully utilize their talents productively to meet the goals of the organisation. From junior to senior managers, organisations and businesses need individuals who can inspire, influence, collaborate, manage and above all, lead.

Learning to Lead
Good leadership cannot be learned only from textbooks or workshops. It must be based upon self confidence, creativity and experience.

Those who want to be a leader can develop leadership ability By empowering and motivating others..

Developing better leadership through coaching is about changing deeply personal, often subconscious characteristics of a manager’s behaviour and fully utilizing ones own talents and strengths. This can only come about through self-understanding and coaching at a personal level.

Effective leadership stems from managers being attuned with their core principles and values, from reaching inside for the authority that comes from personal conviction, and sincerity. Leadership therefore contains a fundamental individuality while leadership is also concerned with the organisations vision and values.

Difference Between Managing and Leading
This site is geared towards both managers and team leaders. While both roles do overlap and many leaders are themselves managers there are some fundamental differences.

Leadership is more about behaviour then skills. Management relies more on organisational skills and planning while leadership relies more on qualities such as confidence, creativity, integrity, commitment, sincerity, charisma and passion. These qualities continue to grow from experience in the leadership role. Leadership involves more then just formal authority but personal charisma, motivating and inspiring those under you.

Leadership involves setting direction, communicating that vision passionately to those they work with, and helping the people they lead understand and commit to that vision. Managers, on the other hand, are responsible for ensuring that the vision is implemented efficiently and successfully.

Many managers tend to be subordinates themselves telling others what to do because there is some sort of transactional (money) benefit involved. Leaders however will often inspire and motivate others by attracting them to their cause often promising transformational benefits claiming it will make them and the organisation better.

While leaders tend to be more risk seeking managers will be more risk adverse preferring stability rather then change.

Also managers pay more attention to tasks. Their goals tend to be more short term and limited. Leaders on the other hand are very achievement focused motivated more by bettering themselves and the organisation and inspiring others to work towards their long term vision.