Leveraging a growth mindset needs practice. To integrate it and to make it flourish it is essential to make a real switch. Leaders need guidance to do so and who better to turn to than a leadership coach?
Executive leadership coaching is essential for supporting a leader to work with vision, purpose, and confidence. This garners improved performance, greater productivity at work, and better engagement with teams and stakeholders.
Benefits of working with a leadership coach:
Some of the tangible benefits of working with an executive leadership coach are:
- Coaching is a safe space where leaders can express themselves uninhibited which leads to the emergence of new ideas and possibilities.
- Leadership coaching enables leaders to deliver their maximum potential at work.
- Leaders identify their inner strengths that builds resilience and improve productivity.
- An effective leader is also an effective influencer who encourages teams, peers, and co-workers along with supporting organizational goals.
- Leadership coaching brings both perspective and self-awareness which helps in dealing with difficult emotions and uncomfortable thoughts.
- Goal setting and plans for goal achievement are ably supported by coaching.
- Coaching teaches self-compassion and self-appreciation for the leaders’ journeys.
- Leadership coaching challenges negative beliefs and presents illustrations of inspiring growth.
- Leaders manage stress effectively and reduce burnout possibilities.
- Executive leadership coaching sheds valuable light on the sharpness of communication in relational situations and politically demanding environments.
Leadership coaching is not a magic pill. It takes time and effort from both sides to see valuable results
Demystifying Coaching:
Entering coaching with realistic expectations results in realistic results. It is useful to know what coaching is and is not.
A coach and a leader together explore the nuances and layers of a situation rather than a coach simply advising the leader on the next steps.
While an outcome of coaching could be identifying a happy space it clearly doesn’t mean coaching automatically helps a coachee become happy, confident, or motivated. Coaching has to be seen as a process that supports the game of life and in turn leadership. Goals to be achieved are definitely tracked in coaching that helps a coachee move forward, but the more pertinent questions are how the said goals tie into the value system of the coachee’s lives and careers.
A coach is not a doctor who hands out a prescription, instead, a coach walks with a leader to bring out ideas, connections, and insights. Coaching serves as a guidance space in which the leader makes the choice of what to change and how. Coaching is a partnership and a collaboration where it is the leader who owns the goals. The leaders are held accountable to examine actions that worked or didn’t work.
An important work of a coach is to hold space and be a container for the coachee to express themselves. It is not always a professional chat, there are problem-solving conversations that allow a leader to leverage the coach’s thinking. Leadership coaching is much deeper than individual training because coaching is inherently a deep exploratory process where it is not just a teaching-learning relationship between the coach and the coachee.
The coaching process:
The final step after understanding what leadership coaching provides and peeling off the myths surrounding it is to get an idea of how the coaching process works.
Discovery session where the clients and the coach learn about each other. Both sides can make an assessment of the other if they are fit for each other and are comfortable. Clear goals are set and a contract for the work together is set in motion.
Patterns are uncovered and an attempt is made to understand the coachee’s thought process. Their belief system and value base are often the focal point. Conversations range from the challenges being faced to goals contracted to awareness of the inner self and move towards uncovering a new understanding of the self and opening up of a new world of possibilities.
Reviews and assessments keep happening along the journey at different stages along with post-session assignments. The coaching journey might end with a coachee but never the relationship with a coach.
Conclusion: Coaching creates acceleration in any leader’s journey. Keeping a long and effective career in mind a leader who enters coaching is providing themselves with scaffolding for support as well as challenges that will get them to stretch.
The Article is written by SailajaManacha
Author Bio:
SailajaManacha is a Master Certified Coach ( MCC) from the ICF. She is an accredited psychotherapist and a leadership coach who conducts various leadership programs and has been coaching for 16 years across multiple industries. She has also authored in the space of women and leadership an Amazon best-selling book of 2019 called ‘Step Up’. She is a contributing author in the book Growing Groups into Teams which was launched in October 2023. She is the founder of Physis, an organization that offers leadership coaching services and training programs. You can access her blogs at https://physis.co.in/blog/
