How to choose an effective Executive Leadership Coach. Question 4 – What is your own coaching style? Again, this might seem like an obvious question, but ‘fit’ is a greatly overlooked component of coaching – and will the coaches style fit the way in which you like working or like to be coached?
Great Executive Leadership Coaches Have Their Own Style
Many leadership coaches follow a formula, a step-by-step guide to coaching that they have learned through an institute, school or other coach. Having a system or a process is important – but you don’t want to work with someone who can’t adjust their format / process / style to meet your immediate needs. If you want to work on a pressing issue that impacts you right now, you shouldn’t have to wait for ‘Lesson 17 in Week 10’ to learn and discuss how to deal with it.
In addition, have they developed their own lessons from experience? An effective coach has learnt from what they were taught, adapted from their experience and developed their own material. Would you rather work with a leadership coach that can adapt to your needs and discuss an appropriate lesson from personal experience, or someone that needs to refer and check with the book?
Executive Coaching & Executive Leadership Coaching
Developing Leaders coaches all bring their own style to the coaching process – which could include transformational coaching, ontological coaching or other backgrounds. Key for all coaches is the ability to apply executive leadership coaching – often a blend of coaching and training focussed on leadership skills, gaps and development, as well as executive coaching – focussed on adapting to the client need at the time working with them to provide further understanding of a problem or developing a solution.
While the nuances between coaches styles is more a discussion for the coaches, the key take-away is that an executive coach should have their own style of coaching that has been developed through experience, multiple clients and multiple circumstances.
What Questions Should I Ask a Prospective Executive Leadership Coach?
Ask:
- ‘What models do you use to aid your coaching?’
- ‘Can you outline the type of lessons / learning we can cover?’
- ‘Have you written your own models / lessons from experience?’
Listen to how they discuss their work and consider the following questions for yourself:
- ‘Does this sound like it will aid in my development as a leader?’
- ‘Will this person’s style compliment my own’
A credible and experienced leadership coach should be able to provide you with solid, concrete examples of their coaching style, how it changes depending on the client they are working with, and what they have noticed is more or less successful with their clients.
The 9 Questions To Ask When Choosing An Executive Leadership Coach
These 9 simple questions will help you identify the good from the bad, the amateur from the professional, the executive leadership coach worth paying for compared to the one that is an expensive waste of time.
- Question 1 – Do you have a coach yourself?
- Question 2 – Are you an accredited coach?
- Question 3 – What is your experience as a leader?
- Question 4 – What is your own coaching style?
- Question 5 – Who else would you recommend?
- Question 6 – What recommendations and success stories do you have?
- Question 7 – What resources and tools do you have at your disposal?
- Question 8 – What leadership assessment tool do you use?
- Question 9 – How will you challenge me (and yourself)?
If you are talking or engaging a coach that can’t answer these 9 questions effectively – walk away! There are plenty of highly effective executive leadership coaches who can – and you deserve to work with someone that can back up what they say with action.
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP COACHING
Focussed, personal, confidential, honest and practical – all words that have been used in testimonials to describe the Developing Leaders Executive Leadership Coaching. If this sounds like something that could be useful for you or a member of your team, get in touch with us today for a confidential chat about your needs. If you would like to read what other clients experienced and gained through the Executive Leadership Coaching process, check out our LinkedIn recommendations, reviews and testimonials.
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