What is Executive Coaching
As you start to explore what executive coaching is, it is helpful to understand the definition of coaching. The International Coach Federation (ICF), a governing body that sets standards and ethics for professional coaches, defines coaching as a partnership between coach and client that results in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires the client to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaching is a client-driven process that’s distinct from other service professions, such as counseling, mentoring, consulting, and training.
What Is an Executive Coach?
An executive coach is a professional who creates a safe and confidential relationship with individuals in leadership to accelerate growth toward a desired future state. The executive coach plays the role of co-creator with their client to navigate a path toward that goal, allowing the client to experiment with new behaviors to facilitate change in the shortest amount of time, typically six months.
Organizations that sponsor coaching for their leaders benefit from having a leadership development partner; someone who is often a guide for high-potential and high-performing individuals on their way to progressive levels of leadership.
Once hired, the executive coach engages in the process of getting to know their client in the context of the organization. The coach, client, and organization work together to create goals and a shared vision of the client’s success.
During the process of coaching, the coachee works toward goals by becoming aware of strengths, potential blind spots and experimenting with new, more effective behaviors.
What Executive Coaching Is Not
It is easy to confuse therapy, mentoring and coaching, but these are three different professional disciplines.
A Therapist is an expert who holds the answers and techniques to fix a client’s problems. Therapy generally is concerned with events or thinking that arose in the past. The intended outcome is to provide therapeutic results aimed at fixing the client’s problem.
Mentoring is a mutually beneficial relationship between two individuals, typically designed for career advancement, where the mentor does most of the talking and offers advice. Mentoring typically exists where a more experienced person guides a mentee through experiences that the mentor has already been through.
Executive coaching is a collegial relationship among equals. Coaching is focused on the future and aims to move someone from performing well to performing at an even higher level. Coaching can be effective at more quickly moving a coachee to a preferred future that they are able to articulate. The coachee is empowered to uncover and develop their own path to achieving their goal and does the majority of the talking.
What to Expect
Although coaches have different backgrounds and styles, most will use a coaching model for each engagement. There are several steps that coaches generally employ to work effectively with their clients.
These steps included:
Initially, there may be a series of discovery conversations between the client (sponsor or organization) and the coach. These sessions are held to gain an understanding of why the organization wishes to retain a coach and what outcomes are expected.
Provided there is a good fit, the coach and organization contract for an engagement. The organization sets overall goals for the engagement, while the coach sets expectations for how they and the coachee will work together. Limits on who will receive what information will be established ahead of time. Although periodic check-ins may be held with the sponsor, confidentiality between the coach and coachee is vital to ensure open and transparent coaching.
During an assessment phase the coach and coachee aim to understand the coachee’s skills, styles and behaviors, as well as, how they are perceived by team members, peers or managers. These data allow for a baseline to be set against which progress can be measured and provides insight into areas for exploration with a coach. There are many different assessment types (i.e the Genos Emotional Intelligence assessment, Wiley PXT Select, Gallup Strengths, etc.) and coaches are certified in the assessments they offer.
Following the assessment(s), the coachee will set goals and action plans with their coach. Coaching takes place during the development of this co-created plan and throughout the ongoing sessions. Coaching often brings about greater coachee self-awareness and perspective. The coachee and coach meet regularly to practice new behaviors, adjust and make progress toward the goals.
A sponsor check-in usually takes place toward the end of the engagement, during which the coach and coachee assess progress and discuss achievement of goals with organizational stakeholders.
Finally, the coach and client (sponsor) terminate the engagement, and the coachee transitions to life without the coach. During the final coaching sessions, the coachee sets post-coaching goals.
Coaching can last for six months to many years, but most take place over a minimum of six months to achieve lasting behavior change.