- Coaching Benefits CEOs and Organizations - NowWeAreTalking.Photos:Creative Commons
Organizations improve their performance by starting at the top using executive coaching. Executive coaching links the organization, the organization’s top executives and an executive coach in a process that sets out to achieve defined goals as outcomes of the coaching performed.
As consulting firm Executive Coaching Network describes this often complex process: “Coaches serve as facilitators, motivators, consultants and sounding boards, dealing with business goals, people interaction and self management issues. While behaviour change will often be a key focus, the coach's role is not that of a therapist. It is not about unravelling personalities, but often involves people doing things differently to achieve desired results.” [1]
Executive coaching requires a close interaction between the coach and the executives being coached. It does not provide operational assistance to the executive and generally takes place outside of the framework of the executive’s performance of his or her duties in the business.
Executive coaching can also be used to groom someone for a new and more challenging role "up the ladder" in their organization.
What Executive Coaching can Achieve
Executive coaching is nothing new. It has undergone extensive development in the first decade of the 21st century and much is now known about both what comprises successful coaching techniques and what outcomes can be expected.
Late in 2005, Dr Gavin Dagley, supported by the Australian Human Resources Institute, instigated a research program to investigate the experiences and perceptions of HR professionals who had used executive coaching.
The HR professionals surveyed identified the following coaching benefits for executives, listed in order from the most to the least common [2]:
- Clearer understanding of own style, automatic responses and the issues arising from these (every practitioner indicated some gain in this area)
- Improved communication and engagement skills
- Improved coping with stress / robustness
- Clearer understanding of own professional performance
- Clearer understanding of organisational issues and how to resolve or overcome them.
- Improved ability to deliver feedback
- Improved professional relationships - with directors/managers
- Improved professional relationships - with subordinates
- Improved decision-making skills
- Improved assertiveness / self-assurance / leadership strength
- Improved professional relationships - with peers
- Improved motivation in role
- Clearer career plans and actions
- Improved work/life balance
- Clearer strategic perspective
- Quicker to move to action in dealing with issues
- Improved change agent skills
- Improved measured personal performance
- Improved delegation abilities
- Improved work throughput
External Coaching Delivers the Best Results
In smaller companies, executive coaching can have a positive and almost immediate impact on the performance of a senior manager. In larger organizations the impacts of executive coaching can begin at the top and over time reach down through many layers of the management structure.
The coach can, in fact, produce results far more quickly and effectively than someone inside the business because of their independence and unbiased perspective that is concerned solely with the executive’s development.
A comprehensive study of executive coaching and its effectiveness concluded: “All participants agreed that it was more appropriate to use an external, rather than an internal coach. This view primarily related to issues of the suitability of internal coaches, and confidentiality.” [3]
Rather than a two-way interaction between employer and employee, executive coaching should be seen as a three-way affiliation of the business, the executive, and an external source of guidance – the coach, who has the best interests of both the organization and the coachee in mind.
Executive Coaching Must be Given the Time it Needs
Executive coaching is not a series of regular training sessions that have as their intention the communication of a predetermined volume of information. It is best seen as a developmental process that depends largely on the ability of the executive to absorb and utilize the coaching being given.
Because so much of the success of the coaching engagement is reflected in the performance of the organization itself, it is often only possible to analyze executive coaching outcomes using the financial results of the business. Because of this, an engagement duration of twelve months or even more can be considered reasonable.
Why Concentrate on Just the Top of the Organization?
It can be argued that focusing on top management is too narrow; that it benefits an individual more than the broader organization and neglects too many decision makers at lower levels.
Not so, according to executive coach Alan Fine who is head of InsideOut Development LLC in American Fork, Utah. Fine, who has spent time working with both top golfers and tennis players, equates outstanding business performers with professional competitors: "You coach and support the top athletes because that's where the greatest ROI is." [4]
The past few years have seen the development of new organizational cultures and structures that place extremely high importance on the top executives of enterprises, both public and private. With this importance come new levels of responsibility and expectations of performance that can isolate these executives and leave them in a "sink or swim" position.
Executive coaching is a way to help top executives meet these responsibilities and expectations, which will in turn benefit their organizations as a whole.
Sources:
[1] "What is Executive Coaching?" execcoachnetwork.com.au, accessed June 2, 2010.
[2]" A Guide to Using Executive Coaching," Australian Human Resources Institute, ahri.com.au, accessed 2 June 2010.
[3] Paige, Helen. "Examining the Effectiveness of Executive Coaching on Executives." International Education Journal, Vol 3, No 2, 2002.
[4] "In Their Corner," entrepreneur.com, accessed 2 June 2010.
Philip Keeffe - Phil Keeffe is an Australian journalist originally from California who has lived in Sydney since 1968. His communications background ...
