by Taymour Miri | Dec 11, 2024 | Coaching Articles

Numerous businesses find themselves hovering between average performance and outstanding achievement. This frequent occurrence is often attributed to managerial shortcomings. Executive coaches, with their profound knowledge and experience of organizational dynamics, psychological principles, and techniques for fostering motivation and eliminating barriers, are uniquely positioned to take companies from the realm of mediocrity to extraordinary success.

If you’re intrigued by the concept of coaching, particularly executive coaching, and are considering bringing an executive coach into your organization, this section will introduce you to the fundamentals of how this process unfolds.

As one executive coaching handbook states, “Coaches have numerous commitments to their relationship with the executive.” A good coach maintains an objective perspective and holds an equal regard for the executive’s viewpoints and those of the rest of the organization. Understanding these perspectives is key to developing executives, and without this understanding, development is hindered.

Executive coaches examine the short-term and long-term impacts of the executive’s behaviors and how they affect others. They observe and share with the executives any blind spots and work with them to establish a different approach that brings the required results for them and the organization.

Coaches strive to ensure that the executive is using all of their capabilities to meet the organization’s needs. They must employ appropriate assessment tools, gather relevant data, and carefully interpret their findings during coaching sessions. Through coaching sessions, I’ve realized that assessments are an added tool that can bring massive additional value to the coaching process.

Awareness of different learning styles helps the coach utilize the most suitable techniques for developing the executive. Ultimately, a good coach must enable long-term executive development by creating a long-term behavioral plan that the executive can follow after the coach’s departure. While a coach has only a few commitments within the coach-executive relationship, adhering to these commitments is vital in the coaching process.

After collecting all the data, it’s time for the coach to analyze and explain all the data to the client. Delivering this feedback must be done carefully, as many individuals struggle with learning about areas for improvement. The feedback is better received if it focuses on the executive’s behaviors rather than on the executive as a person. Additionally, it’s crucial to maintain the can do attitude. In other words, coaches should emphasize that change is not only possible but achievable.

Furthermore, the coach should focus on the executive’s strengths to maintain their trust in the coaching process. Once the coach has delivered all the feedback, the executive and coach define behavioral goals that the coach can help the executive achieve during the intervention phase, which will be explained next.

Coaching! A coach guides an executive through change interventions. During these interventions, coaches conduct sessions where they can monitor the executive’s progress. There are numerous approaches to executive coaching. A behavioral approach is one such method where coaches record the executive’s empowering and disempowering behaviors. When executives exhibit effective behaviors, the coach praises them, thus reinforcing positive behaviors. Similarly, they discourage uneffective behaviors through feedback and reminders of behavioral goals.

Progress Evaluation After a coaching session, when the executive modifies their behavior, an evaluation process is carried out. In this stage, the coach assesses how progress has been made during coaching sessions and how progress has been made at the end of these sessions. The evaluation phase can be conducted immediately after coaching sessions or later on. In both cases, it’s a good idea for the coach to hold follow-up meetings with the executive. To evaluate the specifics of a coaching session, the coach can gather data from the executive related to learning experiences and the impact of the sessions on leadership styles and overall effectiveness within the organization.

Conclusion As Steven Berglas, a Harvard Business Review journalist, states in his article the popularity of coaching is on the rise, and hiring a qualified and competent coach is essential. Only such coaches can help executives reach where they need to be and coach them to identify the change that will make an impact on the organization. Source: www.forbes.com