Executive Coaching - The Five Key Things to Make it Valuable

Executive coaching requires five things to be valuable or it can be a waste of time, money and resources for an organisation as well as potentially discouraging people from potentially experiencing its value at another time.

1. It requires a mutual agreement that both parties feel comfortable working with each other.
2. It requires a commitment that an issue, concern or problem exists and that the coachee is comfortable with being coached in a process that may take some time to get the best results.
3. It is a series of in depth discussions - enabling a person to fully engage in the process of discovery and development without the fear of recrimination, intimidation or embarrassment at any level, and without bias of any kind.
4. The coachee must be willing to listen, respond, participate and importantly demonstrate with evidence what they are doing to implement new strategies and ideas. The coachee must be open to further comment without being defensive but actively taking part in the discussions.
5. Both parties must nominate at the earliest possible time if they feel the process may not be working and that another course of action or intervention may be necessary.

Becoming an executive coach is not about intent alone. Wanting to support and develop a person over time by helping them through skills and processes is a great start but does not qualify one to become a coach. There are a number of core skills that are required and perhaps the most important is astute listening skills and the ability to reflect back situations and events with accuracy and remembering details.

The role of the coach is to help the person find the best case scenario solution themselves without providing the answer. People who are more direct, and want to provide a solution is indeed doing the coachee a disservice because a) the person is no better off or confident to make decisions themselves in the future and b) it compromises the whole process by taking a short cut to the answer that could well be a different one than the coachee would have found.

While the executive coach can help the coachee paint a compelling pathway that is right for them, the coachee must also have a set of criteria they are looking for in a coach before they commit to the process including:

1. Do I respect and want to work with this person?
2. What am I looking for in the coaching process?
3. What are my expectations of the process and how will I measure whether I am getting a return on the investment in time and money
4. What will happen if I find this approach is not for me
5. What support do I want from the coach in between sessions, and has this been discussed?

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