Executive and leadership coaching is one of the most effective means to improve leaders' talent, skills and motivation so that they can better run the business.
Having been in corporate management for over 20 years (and counting!), I’ve come to accept how challenging the business environment is. I realise it had become even more challenging when the pandemic started in early 2020. The pressure for businesses to survive, let alone sustain and thrive is overwhelming for many to say the least. On top of this, there’s also fierce competition from market players wanting a piece of the same pie. Focus, dedication and hard work are key ingredients to help businesses stay on track.
Although there are many ways to develop leaders so that they can better run the business, executive and leadership coaching is one of the most effective means to improve their talent, skills and motivation. Executive and leadership coaching is able to accelerate individual performance, lead better teams, and impact a higher level of success for the business they’re working for. Executive and leadership coaching helps the individual personally, who in turn helps the business, and that’s a win-win situation!
So how does executive and leadership coaching impact business performance?
Impact #1: Coaching Helps To Shape The Culture Of An Organisation
Culture is the bedrock of an organisation, which will help the organisation achieve its goals and objectives. Culture, which is the common beliefs, values, and practices shared in an organisation, is heavily influenced by the behaviour particularly of those who belong to the top executives, and they are instrumental in shaping the success or failure of a business.
Executive and leadership coaching can shape company culture by helping leaders identify what strategies and plans need to be in place in order to reinforce positive behaviours that support the organisational culture. With executive and leadership coaching, leaders can be more adept at establishing everyday habits within the enlarged organisation that lead to better business performance. With everyday habits established, soon a common and unified goal for everyone in the organisation would be created and the organisation would have taken its major step forward towards achieving business performance improvement and success.
Impact #2: Coaching Helps To Increase Self-Awareness
As coaching conversations are able to evoke awareness on the part of the coachee, it functions as a vital catalyst for personal and professional growth. Leaders will never know how well (or how badly) they’re doing personally and for the team, until they actually have that more profound level of self-awareness.
Through coaching conversations that facilitate this realisation, leaders will have an increased awareness of their own habits, whether or not these habits are serving and contributing to their performance, which in turn leads to whether or not the organisation succeeds. If they become aware that the company norms aren’t contributing to the overall success of the organisation, stop doing it immediately and start doing something else instead. Leaders may even consider institutionalising suitable changes when they have greater awareness stemming from the coaching conversations.
Impact #3: Coaching Helps To Challenge Personal Assumptions And Limiting Beliefs
People see things using their own lenses and make decisions based on their own beliefs. This means each person’s reality is unique and there’s no wrong or right, just different.
A coaching conversation is a safe setting where the coach can safely stretch and challenge the coachee’s reality, including the assumptions and beliefs surrounding it. When that happens, the leader’s perspective of matters will expand, resulting in more holistic decisions that will mutually benefit the leader, others and the organisation. This is key as improvement in business performance lies heavily upon the making of better and more profound decisions.
Impact #4: Coaching Helps To Improve Team Performance
Although executive and leadership coaching is a personal and private affair between the coach and the coachee, the benefits of coaching doesn’t stop with the coachee.
Benefits that the leader may derive from the coaching conversation can and should be brought back to positively influence the whole team. When done effectively, the leader will be able to improve the overall team performance and hence unlocking new possibilities for the business.
Is Executive And Leadership Coaching For Everyone?
While organisations have no qualms in investing in their leaders, executive and leadership coaching requires time, effort and commitment on the part of the leaders. It’s not about engaging an executive and leadership coach and keeping the fingers crossed that it’ll translate to good business results.
Leaders must be willing coachees, otherwise the coaching process will not proceed smoothly and the full benefits of coaching won’t be achieved by the leaders. Also, while coaching is able to change the perspectives of leaders, without any willingness to move things forward, it’ll merely be a change of perspective. Leaders not only must be willing but also committed to take action.
And that’s when the magic happens!
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