Executive and leadership coaching–far from seminars and meetings a manager has to attend–is a gift that executives want to receive from their companies. According to the article Coaching Comes Into The Light published in the May, 2014, edition of TRENDS online magazine, being coached is now “an investment that companies make willingly in their leaders.”
Approaching $2 billion in value, coaching is a “growth industry,” said the International Coaching Federation (ICF). By 2012, there were 15,000 executive coaches in North America alone.
But even though it’s expanding, coaching is also changing, due to rapid “changes in leadership itself.” Executives who once oversaw dozens–or hundreds–of employees through the sheer force of their personalities, must now, themselves, learn new technologies and operating procedures virtually overnight. “Leading matrix, global and team-led organizations,” emphasized Coaching Comes Into The Light, means today’s managers must become experts at “collaboration” and “influencing”–but not in heavy-handed ways.
“Highly customized” coaching is highly “behaviorally focused,” stressed the article. Executive and leadership coaches seek out, and help their clients emphasize, “behaviors that will make the person more effective.” In other words, successful managers can be helped to become even more successful. Coaches build upon strengths, not simply “correct weaknesses.”
Executive and Leadership Coaching
Today’s coaches have a thorough understanding of a client’s industry–so much the better to coach to “the future strategy and direction of the business.” This makes the coach–as well as the coachee–“efficient and outcome driven.”
In working to link a manager’s “mindset, attitudes and behavior,” the leadership coach listens professionally and intuitively and guides that manager to “go deep inside” to discover what he, or she, has “the courage to be known for.”
In becoming more and more self-aware, the client becomes more and more clear about his/ her “noble purpose in life,” explained the book BECOMING A RESONANT LEADER, by McKee, Boyatzis and Johnston. “Noble purpose” is linked with understanding one’s “core identity” and “career stage” deeply enough to command the energy and vision to make “a positive contribution to the world.”
In engaging self-awareness, executive and leadership coaches may pose questions like:
- If you could “make an important contribution to your work,” what would it be?
- If you could “change something in your work,” what would it be?
Contact us to secure the type of leadership coaching that will enhance your self-knowledge, industry understanding and team-building spirit.
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