Do I Need an Executive Coach?
Are You Ready to Be a Champion?
Wherever I go, I get asked the same questions, “Why executive coaching?” “Why should I hire a coach?” The answer is both simple and layered.
Let’s start with a metaphorical approach: a sports analogy. Although the ultimate success of a team is dependent on the skillsets and mindsets of its players, from the pee-wees to the professional leagues, teams employ coaches that can recognize, capitalize, and enhance each individual player’s strengths. A masterful coach can impart the vision of how effective interaction, communication and trust between teammates creates a team that is greater than the sum of its parts.
This transforms what would be just a talented group of individuals into true champions. Similarly, executives hire executive coaches to achieve championship-like results. They want to be winners in leadership, executive presence, team-building and positive growth. In a nutshell, executives hire coaches to help them through a great deal of intrapersonal work in order to master all of the dimensions of being a positively transformative executive.
Uncover Hidden Truths.
A talented coach provides an invaluable resource: the perspective of a professional interpersonal communications expert on how “the coachee” is perceived by others. It is through this “perspective translation” that an executive learns about the often hidden truth of the status of his or her executive presence. If you think about it, a sports coach provides the same expertise in teaching players how to read the game, other players and sync up with her team. Highly skilled athletes will all tell you that physical conditioning is critical but the “mental game” is the difference at the top. Ted Middleburg, who wrote Transformational Executive Coaching, believes that the following behaviors/actions/abilities are critical for positive leadership:
Establishing safety and trust
Building relationships
Enhancing the feedback environment
Thinking in systems
Sustaining change
Carve Out Some Time to Work On You.
Being able to execute the list above requires a leader to possess a high level of emotional intelligence. Working with an executive coach helps carve out the time to learn to lead with true executive presence, which, at its core, is the ability to authentically display oneself as personally and professionally genuine, relevant, confident and tuned in on all levels. Additionally, coaching is about:
Creating the awareness needed to remove blind spots
Working through challenges in a safe and supportive environment
Learning new leadership strategies
boundaries in ways that increase productivity and reduce the stress of the hectic, often push-pull lifestyle of a busy executive
By working on all of these leadership facets, an impactful positive leader evolves.
Building Champions.
Professional coaches, regardless of the type, help build champions. Whether in the boardroom or on the playing field, the goal is the same: maximize the strengths and potential of all of the players, build a strong team through evolved communication styles and there will be winners all around!
For more information about Executive and Leadership Coaching with Kimberly Putman, please contact her at Kimberly@KimberlyPutmanCoaching.com.
