Why does Executive Coaching Work?

The Way to Highly Effective Leaders

Never has the need for good leadership been more critical than in today’s fast paced business world. Leaders of companies are no exception. Executive coaching is one such powerful means to help develop leadership capacity.

In this blog we delve into the numerous benefits of executive coaching, and in particular how it fast tracks behaviour change in clarity, accountability, emotional intelligence and strategic thinking. As an HR professional or someone who is interested in developing senior leaders, how you read into these advantages could help you to build a culture of successful leadership within your own company.

How to Manage Complex Leadership Relationships?

A common dilemma for many company leaders is the task of building more effective, empowered business leaders to help them effectively respond to this ever-changing dynamic. The discrepancy between what new context(s) demands and how much any particular incumbent’s background provides is already greater for more demanding leadership roles. This void can create multiple problems, such as low employee satisfaction, high turn over and lower creativity.

Companies with engaged employees outperform others by up to 202% (Gallup APRIL 2020). This highlights the need for leadership development opportunities, such as executive coaching, where leaders can develop and thrive in a conducive environment.

The Cost of Forgetting the Benefits of Executive Coaching

Ignoring the leadership development challenges would be at your own peril:

• Deteriorating engagement and retention: Leaders faced with difficult adjustments may not be able to motivate their teams; the result often is disengagement.
• Leadership fatigue: Leaders without support can burn out, affecting their decision-making and effectiveness.
• Disconnected teams: When leaders don’t have the right tools to communicate effectively, teams become disconnected and fragmented causing – misunderstandings and conflict.
• Reduced Creativity: When leadership is not vision-driven, lack of creativity saps the organisation struggling to keep pace in a competitive environment.

On the other hand, when executive coaching is utilized to help people confront and solve those challenges it supports a culture of growth and accountability which makes for higher organizational performance.

Five Critical Tasks to Maximize the Benefits of Executive Coaching

1. Augmenting Clarity with Goals

One of the great gifts of executive coaching is the newfound clarity it brings to leadership roles. Coaches assist leaders to define what matters to them and how it fits with their organisations desired outcomes. Through the creation of well-defined, SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) objectives or goals, leaders provide themselves with direction and focus.

For instance, a leader may decide he wants to improve team communication by introducing regular feedback sessions. This specific goal helps to define a leader’s duty, and keeps them and the team accountable because everyone is working towards a common cause.

Step 2: Promote Responsibility and Ownership

Coaching produces an environment of support where managers are empowered to take control of their development process. Coaches hold leaders accountable for their behaviors by checking in regularly and providing feedback. This creates an atmosphere of accountability that they also apply to their teams.

When leaders are held accountable, they tend to think differently about their choices and adjust as necessary, leading to drastic improvements in team performance. Hence, businesses are more effective and productive.

Stage 3: Cultivate Emotional Intelligence

The idea of emotional intelligence (EQ) is a basic building block behind great leadership. Coaches help leaders understand how to identify and control their own emotions, as well as the emotions of members on their team. This is an essential ability to trust and communication within your teams.

For example, a leader with high EQ will be able to manage difficult conversations empathetically, so the team feels they both listen to and consider it. These relationships are what foster a good working atmosphere that builds up in synergy and innovation.

Take Away 4: Develop Strategically How can you become a more strategic thinker?

Coaching also pushes the leaders to be better strategic thinkers. They help leaders sharpen their abilities to diagnose complex issues, assess potential outcomes, and make decisions based on consideration of the long term.

A leader working within an unstable sector can use these skills to predict market changes and change direction as needed, enabling them to place their organisation well for the future.

The fifth step: develop a cohesive leadership culture

Finally, great executive coaching creates a tight leadership culture. Organisations that bake coaching into the very fabric of leadership development create consistency in how leaders behave and act. This alignment not only improves performance at individual levels but promotes a consistent approach to delivering organisational targets.

Coaching leaders can be champions of these programmes in their teams and therefore help drive a culture of development through the organisation. This builds a healthy leadership transformation culture.

True Tale: A Journey of Change Through Executive Coaching

Imagine a worldwide technology company where a mid-level manager was enrolled in an executive coaching initiative designed to strengthen the manager’s strategic thinking and emotional intelligence. “At the 6-month mark, the manager reported a shift in their leadership approach resulting in an increase of team engagement scores by 30% and project turnaround times by 25%.”

As one participant put it: “The breakthroughs I got from coaching were priceless — I am much more confident leading the team and more clear than ever!”

Conclusion

Investing in executive coaching delivers amazing returns for leadership change. By nurturing clarity, accountability, emotional intelligence and strategic thought process in the organisation; it helps create leaders with a difference who can bring about success.

Next Steps

For further information on how executive coaching can support your leadership development approach, browse through our comprehensive resources:

• Visit our Executive Coaching page and find out how we can help your leaders.
• Explore our Leadership Training programs to improve team dynamics.
• Read more of our stories about motivation, conflict resolution and system change leadership.

Ready to help make a real impact in your company? Book a call today to see how we can custom fit our coaching to your specific areas of leadership!