When I am asked what Executive Coaching is, my response is simple: it’s the process of closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. You may want to be a more effective leader, a more powerful communicator, or even to completely change career. Whatever it is that you want to achieve, Executive Coaching CAN support you in defining your goal, mapping out how you will achieve it, and most importantly translating that desire into action. I call it a ‘road map’.
If you’re thinking of working with a coach, you’re in good company. Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman and former CEO, says the best advice he ever got was to get a coach. For him the benefit of perspective and support proved invaluable. Bill Gates is emphatic that everyone should have a coach, as he believes this is how we improve as individuals and executives.
So how can Executive Coaching help you?
- You will achieve your goals. An Executive Coach will help you with your roadmap.
- You will develop self-awareness. An Executive Coach can help you to see things clearly. You will have new or different perspectives, beliefs and behaviours.
- You will improve specific skills. An Executive Coach enables you to identify your skill gaps (e.g. communication, conflict management, delegation, resilience) and helps you to develop them in order achieve your goals.
- You will cope with change. Change can often be difficult. An Executive Coach will help you become accountable to the new actions that you commit to, supporting you in not only making, but coping with them.
- You will think differently. An Executive Coach can help you to find new ways of thinking and doing things that will result in different outcomes. Remember what Henry Ford said: ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.’
- You will be clear about your values. An Executive Coach supports you in identifying what matters to you, what you stand for and what your core values are. Equipped with this knowledge, goal setting, decision making and leadership all become far easier and more effective.
- You will think ‘big’. Sometimes we know what we want, but we believe that we cannot achieve it. An Executive Coach will encourage you to go for the big goals.
- Support, empathy and encouragement. With no agenda or connection to your world, an Executive Coach is your best supporter, co-creator and confidant, the resource you need to get where you want to go.