Why Coaching Works!
Coaching is a structured process of helping executives and business leaders improve performance, develop new skills, and achieve goals. The coaching works best when the client is willing to change and motivated to put in the effort. The coaching typically focuses on helping executives to develop the skills and strategies needed to succeed. In my view, the top reasons why executive coaching works are:
Executive coaching provides a safe and supportive environment for leaders to reflect on their behavior and learn from their experiences. Coaching helps clients build self-efficacy and a growth mindset.
Coaches give non-judgmental feedback and challenge current assumptions and ways of thinking that helps leaders to discover new perspectives and possibilities.
Coaching helps clients gain new perspectives and insights that can help them navigate complex and dynamic environments.
Executive coaching helps leaders clarify their goals and develop action plans to achieve them. By working with a coach, leaders can better understand their strengths and blind spots and create a personalized development plan.
Executive coaching helps clients with leadership development, strategic planning, and decision-making aligned with their goals and values.
Coaching helps clients hold themselves accountable for their progress and take ownership of their development.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions and the emotions of others. It involves being aware of and able to manage your own emotions, as well as being able to empathize with and respond appropriately to the emotions of others.
Emotional intelligence is an important skill in many aspects of life, including relationships, work, and personal well-being. People with high emotional intelligence tend to be more successful in their personal and professional lives, as they are better able to navigate and communicate with others, and are more self-aware and self-regulated.
There are a few key components to emotional intelligence:
Self-awareness: Being aware of your own emotions and how they affect your thoughts and actions.
Self-regulation: Being able to control and manage your own emotions, rather than being controlled by them.
Motivation: Being motivated to achieve your goals and pursue your passions, rather than being driven by negative emotions such as anger or fear.
Empathy: Being able to understand and respond to the emotions of others, and to see things from their perspective.
Social skills: Being able to effectively communicate and build relationships with others, and to navigate social situations with grace and tact.
There are several ways to develop and improve your emotional intelligence. Some strategies include:
Practice mindfulness: Being present and aware of your emotions in the moment can help you better understand and manage them.
Reflect on your emotions: Take time to think about your emotions and why you feel the way you do. This can help you become more self-aware and better able to regulate your emotions.
Seek feedback: Ask others for their perspective on your emotional intelligence and listen to their feedback. This can help you identify areas for improvement.
Learn from others: Observe people who have strong emotional intelligence and try to learn from their behaviors and strategies.
Seek support: Consider working with a therapist or coach to help you develop your emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is a valuable skill that can benefit you in many aspects of your life. By developing and improving your emotional intelligence, you can become more self-aware, better able to manage your own emotions, and more adept at building and maintaining positive relationships with others.
Coaching evokes self-awareness and converts learning into actions.
Coach is a trusted partner
Coaching, training, and mentoring are all great tools to develop people, and each plays a different role. Coaching in the workplace is a personal one-to-one intervention that uses a collaborative, goal-focused relationship to achieve outcomes. Coaching is a fundamentally different relationship than either a teaching or mentoring relationship.
Training is about transferring knowledge from teacher to student; therefore, it is a hierarchical relationship. Training is usually structured and formal and is about telling rather than asking. The purpose of the exercise is to teach new knowledge and skills. Research demonstrates that generally, participants lose roughly 50% of the information received after 1 hour, and a week later, 90 percent of the learning is gone.
Mentoring is a long-term relationship based on trust, respect, and a desire to gain wisdom to lead the individual towards specific objectives. Like training, mentoring is also a hierarchical relationship. The mentor is generally a highly experienced individual and provides guidance or career advice to less experienced mentees.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines the act of Coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaching enhances, supports, and facilitates individuals to step in and be actively engaged in their growth and learning. The core of Coaching is different from both training and mentoring. There is no hierarchy in this informal, safe and confidential space. The coach partners with the coachee to deepen their self-awareness in areas of growth or strength, working through “blind spots” along the way. The coach helps the coachee design powerful, intentional actions to move them towards their goals.
Coaching is not about telling people what to do; it allows them to examine what they are doing concerning their intentions. The key to the coaching relationship is that the change is ultimately owned, driven, and done by the coachee. It is their desired change that matters. The space created during a coaching engagement is intentional, co-created, and led by thought-provoking questions that allow the coachee to be active in their learning.
The coaching relationship helps the coachee create a positive cycle of thinking, learning, action, reflection, and course correction. This cycle repeats over time and develops new knowledge. Thinking is critical for defining intentional and commitment-worthy actions. As an individual learns to harness their potential in the coaching process, it instills and creates positive action, reflection, and outcomes.