10 Benefits of Executive Coaching
“Everyone needs a coach. We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” – Bill Gates.
If you turned around the stones trying to figure out the implications of coaching a few decades ago, you’d be greeted with rolling eyes. What was once treated with blank stares and questionable scepticism is now treated as a pillar of growth in companies and organizations.
Yes, I am talking about Executive Coaching.
Do you know what changed between the two decades? Thought leaders, CEOs, superiors and even world leaders realized that it works. Executive coaching is one of the most valuable tools that an organization can leverage.
However, I understand that not every level of curiosity is answered within a day. It is a work in progress but knowing about the benefits can seal the deal. So, in this article, we will highlight some of the most potent benefits of executive coaching and why you need it too.
What is Executive Coaching?
An executive coach is a trained and certified professional who works with the company leaders (CEOs, CFOs and even Senior Managers, etc.) to ascertain company goals, vision, gain self-awareness, come up with working strategies and unlock the optimum potential of the employees and themselves.
This is often done with a group or one-on-one meetings in a safe and comfortable environment with transparent conversations. Executive coaching also helps the leaders in the company understand themselves better and how their actions are being perceived by other employees.
What are the Benefits of Executive Coaching?
Not many people realize this but an executive coach helps you connect better with your emotional intelligence. This helps with self-reflections, self-growth and an enhanced sense of collaborative behaviour within a company.
If you are looking for a better understanding of executive coaching, knowing about the top benefits of executive coaching can help:
1. Enhanced work motivation
Executive coaching pushes an individual to unlock their full potential to eventually churn 100% improvements to their work. Witnessing the consistent success of the efforts drive better motivation in an individual to work harder and smarter.
Reports suggest that self-awareness translates to intrinsic motivation. So, once you are made aware of your drawbacks and your hidden potential, it becomes a lot easier and structured to implement that knowledge to introduce enhanced changes to the company’s growth.
Motivation also drives workplace satisfaction in the employees, making every day more enjoyable for them. So, it is without a question that the right executive coach can improve the satisfaction rate in a workplace.
2. Harbor self-awareness
One of the pivotal areas that executive coaching focuses on is instilling self-awareness. Given that self-awareness is the catalyst towards self-growth, it isn’t a surprise that more and more company leaders are actively leveraging executive coaching to take their company up the ranks.
Let me give you an example. So, you know and feel that you had a bad day. However, would it matter in the end if you didn’t know why you had a bad day? And, not knowing the WHY makes it difficult for you to fix the issue.
The same goes for self-awareness and executive coaching. It helps leaders understand their loopholes and work on them to drive growth.
Even research shows that we have a hard time perceiving ourselves. And, since self-awareness is directly tied with organizational effectiveness and profitability, it isn’t surprising that indulging in executive coaching is an absolute must.
3. Have a clear vision of others
Not just our own self, executive coaching makes it easier for one to understand others in the company. How often has it happened that companies have fired good employees because they couldn’t understand their potential? Well, this happens more than I’d like to point out.
An executive coach helps you understand and assess the people around you better. This helps understand other employees’ potentials and drawbacks, helping them structure a better decision that supports the company’s growth in the future.
4. Navigate change
Change is inevitable. This is a phrase that almost every human being lives by and only a few adapt to. When it comes to business, witnessing organizational changes can be difficult to process and even more difficult to implement. These kinds of drastic changes are not just rough for the general employees but also for the senior leaders in the company.
Executive coaching helps everyone adapt to these changes, understand the reasoning behind them, and also acclimatize one’s skills to churn the maximum benefit out of the same. It helps managers and superiors in the training hierarchy to lead their teams through the change.
5. Optimize cognition at work
Executive coaching has promising benefits in elevating one’s emotional intelligence. This enables the leaders in the company, including the senior managers, leaders,, and directors to understand things from their employee’s point of view.
This might not sound too appealing in the beginning. However, when the leaders analyze a situation from someone else’s point of view, their minds become trained to be a lot more flexible than standard. This has direct benefits in optimizing cognition and churning positive outcomes at work.
6. Develop empathy
The feeling of empathy is often perceived in a “negative” sense, making people believe that it makes them weak and vulnerable. That is possibly the farthest thing from the truth. However, developing empathy in executive coaching helps the leaders in an organization understand their subordinate’s feelings and their struggles at work.
When you show empathy to your employees and colleagues, they are more likely to respect you and seek your counsel when they are stuck somewhere while they are working.
7. Learn new ways to respond
When one is working in a senior and executive position, it is crucial for them to respond in ways that distinguish them as a leader while being supportive. No one likes working under a micromanaging leader. However, at the same time, no one takes someone seriously if they aren’t actively partaking in the role of a leading entity in the company.
Executive coaching helps an individual identify those specific leadership skills and bring a positive shift to one’s mindset. This kind of coaching trains people to identify the skills that they can implement to churn maximum productivity from the employees without needing to cross-verify and enable them to work independently.
Typically, the main purpose behind executive coaching is to enable the right leaders in the company to understand their power and position and utilize their “tools” to drive better change.
8. Get objective support and feedback
Although the entry-level employees are backed by their team leaders and managers for the right support and feedback, it is the senior-level team that lacks that benefit. Understanding their position in the company and the implications of their decisions can be a tough affair. This is where an executive coach comes in. They typically take on the mentor/coach role for the leaders in an organization.
The sessions and discussions enable the thought leaders in the organization to have a safe space to discuss their job role in confidentiality. This enables them to brainstorm new ideas, work on their professional, emotional conflicts and take the right decisions that drive the growth of the company.
An executive coach works with the leaders to provide them with the backend support and the constructive feedback they need before they make a decision. They help them analyze the pros and cons, the implications of the decisions, and the reasoning behind the choice before putting them into effect.
9. Improved self-regulation
Struggling with emotional conflict (even at a workplace), is a common human trait. However, when one is in a senior executive position, showcasing a burst of emotions at the workplace isn’t considered ideal.
Ideally, the best way to exercise control over one’s emotions is to know the causes behind them. The sudden bout of irritation and irrational anger could be from an unfinished project that you are stressing about. Executive coaching identifies those loopholes and enables leaders in an organization to gain better control over different aspects of life.
Not just work, proper practice of self-regulation also reflects on the work-life balance and proper time management in the lives of people.
10. Improved social skills
Workplace relationships demand optimal social skills. The majority of the teams in reputed organizations are composed of employees and leaders that project immaculate social skills and advanced level emotional intelligence. More often than not, executive coaching plays an integral part in that.
Executive coaches work with the senior executives and leaders to improve their communication skills, expand their Frame of Reference to get across their thoughts without sounding dominating. Part of their social skills also focuses on networking and negotiation with hierarchies and clients in question.
Practicing proper social skills also reflects well in team collaboration and projects their leadership skills in front of their team members. These reflect well on the overall productivity and performance of the company.
Final Words
Executive coaching in London and across the world is now extremely coveted. Industry leaders are availing this to sharpen and polish their leadership skills to further propel the growth of their company in the right direction.
If you are looking for a virtual session or even one in-person, Matrrix has the right solutions for you. Dr Paras is an ICF-certified coach with years of professional experience across numerous fields. Leave us a line or book a free consultation with Dr Paras today to introduce tangible transformations in your life.
You can reach out to us via https://www.coachdrparas.com/contact to make an appointment today. Don’t delay and take the right step towards a brighter career today.
