Personal development for you the executive
A successful company. This forces you as a manager to always make the right choices and do the right things. Much is at stake. As an executive you want to make the right decisions and do the right thing. Improving and maintaining one’s own performance and the impact as a leader is important to be and remain successful.
The executive coach guides and stimulates the personal development of the executive, in order to increase his or her effectiveness and strengthen leadership qualities. Specifically, developing and maintaining leadership, management, social, and soft skills.
What are the benefits and gains of executive coaching?
- Clarifying and realizing personal goals and ambitions,
- Strengthen and accelerate your personal development,
- Identify your blind spots,
- Breaking through your patterns that stand in your way,
- Increasing personal effectiveness,
- Cope better with stress, change, conflict, or crisis,
- Objective and independent feedback,
- Work on yourself in a safe and confidential environment.
Who is eligible for executive coaching?
Executives include: board members, executives, director of major shareholder, supervisors, supervisory directors, and top managers. These are professionals who already hold these positions or who have the ambition to fulfil it and want to be well prepared.
How does executive coaching work?
An executive coaching process typically lasts six to nine months, but can take longer and even years. This time frame makes it possible to try and/or apply changes in the field. It takes time to integrate changes.
In this time frame, usually between nine and twelve sessions take place. Spacing between sessions is important, so you can test new approaches and behaviours you committed to in the previous session, then debrief, and build on in the next session.
Phases
A coaching process consists of a number of fixed phases.
- The initial phase: is used to shape the coaching relationship and to investigate and clarify the learning and development question of the executive. This is to determine what they want to achieve (goal setting) and what the approach will be to achieve these goals (by means of a concrete coaching plan). The coach plan is, as it were, the ‘route’ for the executive’s learning and development process, which determines the direction for the next phase.
- The middle, the follow-up phase: is the heart of the coaching process. In this phase, the executive gets more clarity about his or her complaint, problem and/or wish, and how it arises. Subsequently, the coach and executive work on changes in behaviour, attitude, thinking, or even way of being. It is also possible that new competences are learned. This is the phase of overcoming resistance, learning, developing and taking steps. The executive is given exercises to become proficient, all aimed at the (sub)goal or goals to be achieved.
As already indicated, this phase follows the coaching plan that was drawn up in the initial phase. Along the way, the route can be adjusted of course and even the goal or goals can be adjusted if necessary. - The end, the last phase: occurs when the goals are in sight or have been reached. It is positive for the development process to complete a coaching process the right way. Evaluating and closing is very important. Not only to reflects on what has been done and achieved, but also to anchor the changes within the person.
What is the return of investment of executive coaching?
A frequently cited survey by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Association Resource Center found that the mean ROI of coaching was seven times the initial investment. That’s because the effects of executive coaching are far-reaching. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) reports that “leaders who participated in coaching saw 50 to 70 percent increase in work performance, time management and team effectiveness.” And the benefits multiply. With strong leadership teams, companies increase their capacity to scale. They benefit from higher productivity, engagement, and retention rates, which all profoundly contribute to bottom-line results.
Measuring
It is important to note that while many of the benefits of executive coaching are intangible, they are not immeasurable. That is important because metrics give you the advantage to track and evaluate your progress and provide measurable outcomes. It is optional to extend these measured values with a 360° feedback assessment. Stakeholders (between 8 and 20) are interviewed to capture qualitative and quantitative performance feedback of you. This gives the opportunity to do a baseline measurement and the same measurement after the coaching process. To clarify, the outcome of the feedback never directly determines the direction of your coaching process. It is only intended to provide insight into how others experience you and your behaviour plus competence. For coaching it is about what that feedback tells you, what it does to you, and what you want to do with it for you own goals and functioning.
