Why have an executive leadership coach?
Can you name a high performing sports star, athlete, singer, dancer or artist that doesn’t have a coach? Coaches can provide a leaders and managers with a myriad of assistance in developing their leadership, critical thinking and problem solving skills. Here are 7 ways an executive leadership coach can help your leaders improve their ‘thinking, feeling and doing’ within a business.
1. A Leadership Coach Will Drive You To Higher Performance And Success.
Every leader can benefit greatly from having an Executive Leadership Coach. To consistently get the best out of others and produces improved results, high-performing leaders work with those that can get the best out of them, provide alternatives and hold them to their targets.
2. A Leadership Coach will work with you to develop the skills required to lead people, in a way that suits you
Positive and engaged workforces don’t happen by accident – they are created by consistently leadership practices over time. Low engagement leads to dissatisfaction, low retention, productivity and poor performance. As a leader, part of your role is to ensure that your people stay engaged and happy. A happy, healthy and engaged team produces consistently high results, even through adversity.
Importantly, there isn’t a ‘one way’ or ‘right way’ to lead a team – it varies depending on the leaders and teams ability, drive, culture, experience and business circumstances. A good executive leadership coach will tailor their coaching approach to suit you and your strengths and weaknesses to ensure that you are successful in managing and leading your team.
3. A Leadership Coach will support you in developing and achieving your purpose.
Great leaders understand their purpose and can visualise and articulate a vision of the future that can inspire others – their friends, their peers, and those that work for them – to work together in producing results that bring that vision to life. A leadership coach can work with you to develop your purpose and achieve clarity of your vision, and the core values that assist you in achieving it. In addition, they can help you articulate your purpose and vision in a way that is both meaningful to you and engaging for others, getting your team ‘on board’ rather than driving them away.
4. A Leadership Coach will encourage you in the right direction and hold firm when you falter.
Everyone has moments when they doubt their purpose, their ability, their drive and their results.
A leadership coach is your most unreasonable friend – who encourages you and cheers you on when you need it, and provides a helping hand or push when you are just about to give up.
A good executive leadership coach can work with you to explore alternatives and options you hadn’t thought of, or didn’t feel you had the confidence or expertise to implement. They will support you in finding the right direction and work along side you to stay the course.
5. A Leadership Coach will listen without judgment when you think you are not doing well.
A good leadership coach is a good listener first and foremost. They know that it can be lonely in a leadership position – you can feel unable to share your thoughts, doubts or stresses without feeling judged. A leadership coach can provide confidential counsel for leaders to open up and discuss the areas you struggle with; the doubts, the fears, the negative thoughts. We work with you to navigate a path out of doubt to self-assurance, and provide practical tools and models to assist when it does get hard. Of course we offer much more, but it starts with listening and understanding.
6. A Leadership Coach will offer a different view / path when you think you can’t move forward.
Successful leaders always look to the next level. For coaching to work, there needs to be a desire to go beyond your current state. An executive leadership coach will support you become aware of the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, and map out a plan and goals to help you achieve it.
7. A Leadership Coach will cheer you on following the little wins and challenge you to do more.
Leading a business to achieve a goal takes thousands of little tasks and interactions with your team, customers and providers. It can be easy to forget what you have done, how far you have come and what impact you have made – there is always one more hill to climb or one more task to complete.
A leadership coach celebrates the little wins with you, and encourages you to stay on the path for achieving your goals. Leading a business can be lonely and there will be few that understand the trials and task that you complete to achieve your role as a leader – an executive leadership coach will recognise the small wins that others may overlook and cheer you along for the work, the effort and the long term wins.
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Could an executive coach be of benefit to you as a leader?
Why not find out? At the Institute of Management & Leadership Development, there are two ways you could ‘try before you buy’ in regards to executive coaching.
- Call and discuss your needs with one of our Executive Leadership Coaches. You can confidentially discuss your needs, what is working and what isn’t, and one of our highly skilled Executive Leadership Coaches can discuss the process and likely outcomes with you. Or,
- Call us to complete a Velocity Leadership CheckPoint – our leadership assessment tool. Not sure what your leadership strengths or weaknesses are? Looking to get some guidance on what to improve? The CheckPoint considers 25 behavioural leadership traits, focussed in 5 distinct leadership capabilities, providing you with a ‘snapshot’ of your current leadership performance, and allowing you to make an informed decision on an proposed coaching initiative.
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