5 Proven Ways An Executive Coach Can Make You More Successful

When one reaches the position of a CEO or a high-ranking executive at a business it is considered a great achievement. The company trusts you to make the right decisions and to lead them into the future. Despite having made it to the top, there is always plenty of room for growth.  The world and our environment are dynamic systems that are constantly in flux. As leaders, we must stay abreast and continue to adapt, grow and evolve with the changing environment and world.  We set an example, to those we lead,  by continuing to improve our skills and set higher goals.

A supportive and nurturing way to do this is by hiring an Executive Coach, that can help you navigate your bigger role and responsibilities and prepare you to deal with increasing challenges that come with the bigger role. Ultimately the executive or life coach will help you to be the more successful and well-balanced leader in every aspect of work and life. 

As an executive, one must manage many different elements of the organization – People, strategy, vision and mission, organizational culture, competition, and communication. It is almost impossible to do this without the right support structures around you. In the past, the best thing one did was create a team of great people around you. Yet the best thing to happen in leadership development is a greater acceptance of an executive coach as part of the support structure. This is the secret weapon to ensuring that you lead your team and company in a progressive direction while ensuring your personal well-being is taken care of too. 

Over the last 30 years, executive coaching has become more popular and executive coaches have been highly sought after. What is causing this big shift?  It is because the benefits far outweigh the time and money one invests in executive coaching engagement.  

5 Proven Ways an Executive Coach Can Make You More Successful

• Develop Greater Self-Awareness: Self-awareness is self-knowledge. An understanding of who you are as a person, individual, and leader and how you got where you are today.  In a world of doing, many people don’t find the time to pause and reflect on their internal world. What are the thoughts, beliefs and behaviours that guide our daily living and being? What has made you the success that you are, and how have your values and strengths driven that success? What are your blind spots and areas of potential growth?  Research has shown that self-awareness in leaders is linked to greater profitability, organizational effectiveness, and employee engagement. People are naturally drawn to work with someone who can see themselves clearly and is open to others’ perceptions. An executive coach will explore how others view you along with their own observations of you to help understand yourself better.  A good coach will help you to get curious about your own assumptions, beliefs and help you to be a or objective witness of yourself.
• Improve Relationships: A key part of a leader is fostering good relationships with colleagues and team members. Good communication skills, empathy, and the ability to connect with others are important elements of a good leader. Much of what a leader does is about managing others and leading through influence. This requires excellent relationship management. An executive coach will help you develop more emotional intelligence, mindfulness and self-regulation which will allow you to collaborate and lead others more effectively. 

• Develop New Perspectives: An executive coach can help you consider and open your eyes to alternative perspectives and business strategies. Executives are expected to not just keep the company where it is but they are trusted to be able to lead the company forward into new heights. Executive coaches can facilitate a higher level of strategic thinking, that will you and your company grow.

• Capacity building and Strengths managemtn: Sometimes we have a hard time seeing our own innate strengths and talents and thus they end up being underappreciated and used. Alternatively, without self knowledge, we can be overusing our strengths and causing distress to ourselves and others along the way. An executive coach will help leverage and develop your strengths resulting in greater productivity and the enhancement of well being. Your strengths will help build capacity to manage your new bigger role and responsbilities

• Achieve Your Goals: Goal helps everyone connect a coaching engagement with clear business, talent development, and/or cultural needs of the company. It helps you answer crucial questions about your future and where you are headed. What goals do you currently have for yourself? What goals do you have for those who work around you? What goals do you have for the company? What is your plan to achieve these and by when? It can be hard to develop these goals and dreams on your own. An executive coach can guide you to setting the right goals and then turning them into a reality.