Finding a qualified coach is the key to having a successful experience. You may worry about choosing a coach who lacks professionalism, ethical practices, certification, and trustworthy training. You need to understand and outline what, exactly, you want to accomplish with your coach. You also want to make sure you have a rapport with your coach and the basis for respect and trust. Here are some questions to consider asking yourself before committing to the engagement:.
Once considered unconventional, coaching has grown much more prominent in the past three decades in the development of outstanding business leaders.
Science has played a part in this change, offering advanced insight into the functioning of the brain with tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI that allows the decoding of brain activity.
Unfortunately, the working memory in the prefrontal cortex where change is initiated tends to become tired quickly. For that reason, people automatically push as many thoughts, behaviors and activities to the basal ganglia as possible.
As a result, habits settle in that part of the brain, and it can be difficult to change them. The basal ganglia manages many simple work activities and personal habits. Often, people are completely unaware of how many activities they do that are completely automated by their basal ganglia.
In essence, the more your basal ganglia automates important thoughts and activities, the more you are a passive participant in your life. To change these automatic habits, a person needs to find a way to forge new circuits in the prefrontal cortex.
Carving out these new circuits or passageways in the brain happens through a process called myelination. With enough attention and focus, we can rewire our brains with our thoughts. The more a neural pathway is used, the stronger it becomes. Every time we repeat an action, a fatty covering called myelin coats the neural pathway, making the connection stronger and more secure. Focusing on changing thought processes and habits is extremely difficult to do on your own.
Current executives. As coaching clients, CEOs, in particular, may be unaware that the competencies that have gotten them to the top may not be the ones that will ensure their continued success. Moreover, CEOs tend to be very dynamic people who are not always receptive to unsolicited feedback. Staff members may avoid saying what needs to be said, fearing a "kill the messenger" response, reprisal or exclusion from the inner circle.
If C-suite occupants perceive coaching as a practice that comes with the territory, they may be more likely to be receptive to it, making it an effective tool in addressing their development. Executive coaching is a practical, goal-focused form of one-on-one development. C-suite coaching clients are typically looking for a thinking partner with whom to discuss decision options, expand perspectives, balance work and home activities, and strategize through difficult or unusual circumstances.
Strategic coaching should integrate organizational and personal needs. Each engagement should be custom-designed, focusing on a leader's particular development goals.
The CEO typically needs six to eight months of one-on-one coaching to ingrain new behaviors. Practice, observation and feedback are key to changed behaviors. Potential executives. Many individuals who currently hold executive-level positions are nearing retirement.
Organizations want changes in leadership to occur with as little disruption as possible. To increase the chances of a smooth transition, companies are using coaching as a means of developing the next generation of leaders. Factors such as an individual's outstanding achievement of development objectives, positive assessment from the coach, and the coached individual's ability to take on new tasks are also recognized benefits of executive coaching.
In light of this looming change in executive-level positions, the funding traditionally directed toward senior leaders has begun to shift to first- and mid-level management. See Developing Organizational Leaders. Supervisors and managers are on the front lines of organizational performance and need to develop skills to motivate collective effort. Sometimes, supervisors and managers lack necessary people skills, such as skills in setting goals, delegating, providing accountability, delivering effective performance reviews and even coaching itself.
Coaching can help them develop such skills. A manager probably has succeeded at a supervisory level and been promoted or hired into a higher level.
Accordingly, the manager may benefit from coaching on big-picture issues or may need polishing in a particular area such as delegating work, time management, team-building, performance management, hiring, or communication or negotiation skills. Similarly, a supervisor is often a person promoted from the rank-and-file and, as such, may benefit from coaching on how to effectively transition to the new role of being a boss. See What tips can we offer for new managers who were formerly peers?
Coaching can be an important developmental approach for HR professionals. Perhaps the most pressing reasons HR professionals seek coaching are to help them become more effective in:. Coaching can also be an effective tool to support an organization's diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, although organizations must take care that such efforts do not amount to unlawful discrimination.
Diversity-based coaching activities might focus on:. As the business world continues to evolve in a global marketplace, executive coaching takes on a new dimension: cross-cultural perspectives. Whether company leaders are dealing with cultural changes through mergers or acquisitions or working with a workforce of different ethnic and national viewpoints, values and expectations, coaches can be effective in helping executives navigate cross-cultural environments.
In this age of consumer-directed health care, health coaching is taking on a more prominent role in educating and empowering employees to make smart health care purchasing decisions—and smarter decisions about their own health. Studies show that individuals who participate in health coaching are better able to navigate health care services and ultimately reduce health care spending. Coaching can also be applied to a variety of other situations, including internal transitions such as:.
A successful coaching career requires a combination of skills, credentials, experience and business acumen. To qualify for a regular position as an executive coach, a person might well need to have a graduate degree in organizational development or leadership development. For HR professionals with the right background and credentials, coaching can present significant opportunities. Coaching careers usually involve external consulting.
Getting one's foot in the door for independent consultants is an exercise in self-marketing, networking, website establishment, credibility establishment with the corporate community and an ever-expanding list of coaching success stories that one can write about and share with prospective clients.
Virtually all coaches offer additional services such as consulting and training. While the profession continues to grow, it has currently outpaced its research base demonstrating the return on investment ROI and return on expectation ROE delivered from professional coaching services.
The development of consistent metrics that clearly communicate the value of the services is currently one of the challenges to the growth potential for the profession. While most coaches are external contractors, internal coaches are becoming more common, especially for mid-level employees. Some large organizations employ coaches on their regular staff. Book: A Manager's Guide to Coaching.
Building strong coaching cultures for the future. This was also coupled with a decrease in self-limiting thoughts and beliefs. Self Leadership - Leaders reported that as their self-development, knowledge of themselves and self-confidence grew so did their awareness of their own self-leadership. How they lead themselves and the expectations they set themselves were highlighted through the coaching work and explored within it.
For some participants, unrealistic expectations were uncovered and through coaching they were able to develop their ability to lead themselves with more compassion and self-acceptance.
Leadership Style - Coaching directly impacted how the leaders thought about their leadership behaviors. It developed their awareness of their leadership style and gave them the opportunity to reflect on it and be more thoughtful going forward with regards to their approach to tasks and goals.
Relationship To Line Manager - Coaching appeared to help clients explore their existing relationship with their line manager which had many benefits. Some clients were able to identify things they were not satisfied wirth within this relationship and change it. For others, coaching offered a place to explore what they were satisfied with and what within that relationship they valued and found helpful.
Although external behavior may change; it needs to be supported by changes in their internal thought processes. This is often where coaching is most effective. Managers should not underestimate the impact of coaching on their people as it frequently creates a fundamental shift in their approach to their work. For example, increased self-confidence enables employees to bring more of themselves into the workplace.
This results in employees being more resilient and assertive.
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