Did you have a great coach that supported you as you were growing up? If you played sports, were in music, theater, or a club, you probably had a coach.
Many people stop seeking coaching when they step off the playing field or stage. However, engaging a coach to support your development and growth can be highly valuable regardless of life stage, business field and goals.
What Is an Executive Coach?
In a professional context, coaches are often called an ‘executive coach’. This is because many organizations only think about this kind of support for their Executives. But what if everybody had access to a highly qualified and well-trained professional who is able to leverage their executive experience to coach leaders? Coaches can help leaders develop stronger communications, clarify goals, and achieve objectives. They can also help work through mindset blocks and challenges that may be holding you back. This work can benefit the leader, their teams and their organization today and long into the future.
Why You Should Hire an Executive Coach
Here are six reasons to consider engaging an executive coach for your leaders (and their teams!):
1) Executive Coaches Can Benefit Anyone
Quite simply, we all have room for personal and professional improvement. Coaching is a process. It can yield tremendous results for anyone and everyone. Even the most senior leaders in an organization who often believe their development days are behind them can work with a coach to identify potential blind spots, unhelpful habits, and new ways of working with their teams.
2) Executive Coaches Help Clarify Goals
The primary benefit of hiring an executive coach is to ensure you’re setting clear goals and are effectively communicating them. A coach can help you take the myriad of things that you want to do and help you establish priorities. Then, your coach will work with you to turn those priorities into goals that your organization can work to complete together. The hardest thing to do as a leader is to say ‘no’ to more goals, which is why a coach can help you keep your team focused on the most important tasks.
3) Executive Coaches Improve Communication
Inefficient communication will hinder innovation, stifle growth, and discourage teams. Even when you know your internal communication needs improvement, it can be difficult to determine where to start.
A coach can help you lead the way in getting your teams to communicate more effectively. Often, the first step is breaking down silos to establish a collaborative environment. Having an outside perspective can help you identify gaps, facilitate discussion with your team on how to optimize, and help you redefine a new communication standard.
4) Executive Coaches Help Leaders Build a Culture Of Innovation
If you are not innovating, your growth will be stifled. An executive coach can help you foster innovation within your teams and organization. This starts from working with you as a leader. Are your actions reinforcing innovation or are you inadvertently putting the brakes on your team? Coaches can also help you work through key tasks and help you evaluate your full process from product definition to delivery. The right executive coach can help you take a step back and rework the areas that need another look.
5) Business Coaches Can Identify Areas Where Customer Experience Can Be Improved
Your strategy be focused on serving your core customers. With the vast amounts of change that organizations have experienced in the last few years; your core customer may have changed as well.
An executive coach can help ask the right questions and steer your teams in the right direction.
- What problem do you solve?
- Who experiences the problem you solve (target audience)?
- Do your processes support your customers?
- Do you have a way to gather customer feedback?
A good coach will help you answer those questions, help you define your target audience(s), and develop feedback loops that foster innovation.
6) Business Coaches Bring Outside Perspective
If you open Google Maps and zoom in as low as you can on your house, it will look like a mess of blurry pixels. Zoom out, and you can see it’s a home. Zoom out more, and you can gain a full bird’s eye view of your neighborhood, town, and place in the world.
While you may know your organization better than anyone, there is a great value in gaining the perspective of someone outside of your team. They will be able to ask the right questions and foster effective dialogue.
Your organization’s success hinges on your ability and the ability of other leaders to build positive connections among your teams and empower them to achieve extraordinary results.
Coaching can help you achieve these results. Whether improving organizational design, developing an innovative culture, breaking down communication silos, or ensuring that all systems are focused on providing the best customer experience. Coaches can help you tackle the big challenges.
Do you have more questions about Coaching? Leave us a comment.
You can join our coaching programs at https://teamesandco.com/grow-your-business/360-leader-team-development/360-leadership/
