Given the pace of change organisations are going through, you as a leader are formulating strategies that differentiates your organisation in the market. The nature and type of initiatives that you are executing are different from what you have experienced in the past and may not have a precedence to leverage from.
You are in a constant endeavour to build the future that you want yourself, your organisation, your people and your customers to be in. This is not an easy journey and you as a Leader have a great appreciation for this business context. There usually is no dearth for sufficient business acuman with in the organisation. Inspite of such prowess, time and again leadership and the boards continue to experience that business results could have been better if not significantly better. It is difficult to pinpoint the reasons for this situation; it somehow seeps through the porous of actions and competing priorities. It is neither possible or practical to expect you to posses or exhibit all the required competences, identify priorities and take actions required to achieve such business results.
Organisations usually take the route of engaging consultants to over come such situations. Consultants are extremely helpful when the need is for providing specific solutions, share market best practices, bring in competency that is not available in the organisation. Inspite of all the support and assistance provided by the consultants, there still lies a gap between the expectations and actual results. They are not equipped to execute the change you need or motivate your employees do their best or make decisions on your behalf. This is due to the fact that they do not have a complete grasp of your operating environment, they do not understand all the intricacies of your business, they would not have appreciation for internal power struggle and more importantly the lack of power base to influence. Simple put, they don’t own your business.
This is when executive coach come into play. He/she can, with the help of a structured process, relevant tools, techniques, and being objective can help you identify to work on the most important areas to achieve business results. It may be a new competency that you want to build, a noticeable behaviour that will enhance your relationship with your fellow leaders and team, building a better working culture to hold each other accountable for commitments, or empowering teams to make decisions.
Executive coach helps you unearth objectively the causes for gap between intent vs actions, perceptions vs reality, personal ability vs actual demonstration, generality vs applicability and many more. It is all about what you want to focus on, what your priorities are and what business results you intent to achieve. It is observed via various surveys conducted by International Coach Federation and HBR that organisations that have leveraged executive coaching (be it an in-house or external coach) have significantly benefitted to achieve the desired results.
Executive coaching is an effective process (not just asking leading or intelligent or logical questions), that, when strictly followed, yields desired results that are long lasting. It all depends on what the gap is and what results, you as a leader, want to achieve. There is no one-size-fit-all solution. Nevertheless, the guiding principles of executive coaching are consistent irrespective of the framework applied.
As part of this process, executive coach will introduce you to tools and enablers that will help you stay focused to achieve results.
Only if you answer to the following questions is “Yes”