Executive Coaching

For most people the word Executive is linked with professionals occupying senior roles, it may invite the picture of black suits, spacious meeting rooms and fancy corner offices.

While, at the same time, the word Coaching indicates to the act of helping and supporting someone, mainly in utilizing their talents to improve their performance.

And, when we combine these two words together (Executive Coaching), people might think, why do such people need coaching, since they have already achieved big goals?

In the last 20 years, coaching started to take a distinct shape from therapy, it emerged as a defined activity, being a tool to give people a leverage in the rapidly changing marketplace.

Nowadays, coaching is one of the most popular personalized practices in talent management, since it is built on building a confidential and a personal relationship between the coach and the coachee.

Executive Coaching is based on a structured framework which works on developing four groups of skills, technical, cognitive, social and emotional; an executive coach may work with his/her client on all these skills together or choose depending on the client’s request.

As Anthony M Grant defined it, it is “Goal-directed, results-oriented, systematic process in which one person facilitates sustained change in another individual or group through fostering the self-directed learning and personal growth of the coachee”.

The ultimate goal of executive coaching is to move from an undesired current state or situation to a desired one, by means of a sustainable behavioural and perceptive transformation.

Taking in consideration the various factors playing a role in forming the modern world of work; like demographic changes, technology and globalization; leaders are faced with many challenges in staying on the top of their game.

They have to manage multicultural teams, make decisions, find sustainable resources, and help their organizations thrive in the ever-changing markets; they have to be adaptable, empathetic, focused and present in order to achieve all the above.

In the midst of this stress, an executive coach can play a great role in supporting and guiding leaders through their struggles to achieve and succeed, by offering a supportive safe space where they ask difficult questions and challenge assumptions.

There are different approaches to executive coaching, and many tools and interventions are available for the coaches to choose from; in general, the process starts with an assessment to the current state, followed by constructing a clear picture of the desired outcome, and agreeing on a detailed action plan, after that they move towards action, at this stage, the trust bond is formed strongly between the coach and the coachee as they work together to overcome the problems preventing the coachees from fulfilling their set goals.

The end of the coaching process is marked by the coachee reaching the desired state agreed upon in the first stage.

It is very important to mention that, in order for the coaching process to succeed, the client has to be fully committed, working sincerely on cultivating a growth mindset, and open to feedback.

In a nutshell Executive Coaching will help coachees:

• Learn how to expand their skills and boost their confidence.
• Have the ability to motivate themselves and reinforce their performance.
• Understand how to cultivate a growth mind-set to help them learn from perceived failures.
• Be able to come over challenges by identifying their areas of growth and utilizing their competencies.
• Gain self-awareness and increase self-efficacy.
• Improve their relationships by developing empathy and social literacy.