You are the executive CEO of a successful owner operated enterprise in Surrey, your business generates over $500K EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes), you feel like there is potential for more and you intend to take your company to the next level? If this is you schedule a call with one of our executive coaches to estimate the ROI of executive coaching for your business.
Business coaching vs executive coaching
True leaders deploy employee engagement to nip fear in the bud
Managers shoud do their best to destroy fear in the workplace. According to Edmondson, 2002, managers that assist team members develop purpose in their function within the team do not experience fear among their team members. When a cohesive, vision-focused taskforce collaborates and deploys team members’ strengths toward common objectives and targets, the accomplishment gets accelerated. According to Nelson et al., 2002, employees improve performance when they sense purpose, recognition, morale, significance and overall job satisfaction. Managers should practice improving effective communication skills in every interaction daily. Modeling these skills, as a manager or leader, will set the expectation for the entire organization and reduce fear within the team. According to Jonsdottir & Fridriksdottir, 2020, practicing active listening, in particular, will help communicate respect and attentiveness to team members and their needs giving no grounds to any fear to develop among the employees.
How to find a leadership coach
When timing is right for leaders to trigger self coaching within their teams
Leaders should use their active listening skills to really get to the bottom of an employee's answers, and ask follow-up questions when necessary as well as learn more about their unique strengths. The key for true leaders is to encourage team members to share their honest feedback or input with the leader, and welcome them to ask the leading change questions as well. As a matter of fact, workplace coaching usually happens unscheduled outside of formal coaching sessions. At times it just happens in brief exchanges, for example when a managing leader in charge might respond to a request for guidance by posing a single question, such as “What do you already have in mind?” or “What could be the solution?”. A manager just cannot have all the right answers that might occur. When managers increasingly end up asking good questions in such kind of interactions, the team will notice that it is on the right track.
How much is coaching for leaders?
Why coaching is an important management skill not only for managers
Great leaders help minimize the “noise” and distractions that are getting in the way of someone’s capability to analyse what is happening and which action to take to solve the issue. Great leaders know how and when to ask the right question at the moment, when to give feedback, when to advise, how to get the person to focus, and how to gain dedication. Managers can do this, but they have to waive of a few limiting beliefs and implement a few mindsets and skills. Effective coaching skills serve every level of employment. Enhanced compassion and empathy in each operation reduces friction points and replaces those with human growth potential. Difficult situations and tough conversations become easier to digest when coaching skills are well implemented and regularly executed. Nowadays employees have and need a lot more autonomy. But just as a coach helped the employee set objectives that gave the employee a purpose and shared timely feedback with him/her and recognition to encourage the employee, so should the manager.
Executive coaching vs leadership coaching
How to develop leadership qualities that provide leverage
Managers need to be are equipped with coaching skills that enable them to respond when team members ask for guidance with huge, messy, confusing sometimes badly defined and poorly described issues that often extend far beyond the company's initial briefing. With such coaching skills in place, managers now have become better at recognizing complicated challenging situations in which they don’t have to provide the answers. They know that in such cases, they are able to offer more value just by listening attentively, asking the right questions, and supporting team members as it is their responsibility to come up with the best solution. Great leaders just know how to dig out the right answer and providing space for the team members to think for themselves.
Who is the best executive performance coach?
What are the top leadership skills to improve?
One of the best ways to improve a manager's nondirective coaching skill is to try conversing using the GROW model, devised in the 1980s by Sir John Whitmore and others. The GROW model seems easy to conceptualize, but it’s harder to execute than some managers might imagine, because it requires training to think outside the box about what the manager's role and value as a leader are. The foundation of nondirective coaching is listening, questioning, and withholding judgment. Coaching managers contribute to draw wisdom, insight, and trigger creativity out of their subordinates they’re coaching, with the intent and objective of guiding them learn to resolve problems and cope with complicated situations on their own. It is an approach that can be highly inspiring and empowering for those being coached, but it does not feel natural to most managers, who tend to be more comfortable with just their authoritative “telling” leadership style.
Where to find a great executive coach?
The fine line between leading change and managing change
A coaching relationship tends to be mutually beneficial. Both parties gain valuable insights from the sharing process. In opposite to a manager, who hires and has power and control over the staff, coaches and coachees choose each other deliberately. A coach's authority derives from the coachee's esteem. Such relationships often form organically in the workspace, with coaches and coachees getting more than just acquainted. The fundamental acceptance of coaching however must come from the top. Developing new leaders in the team can assist with convincing senior leadership if needed. For the purpose of getting managers in mid-level management to accept coaching this spark must come from the HR/leadership partner campaign: explaining the business related reasons for behavioral change needed to someone in the team and then requesting their assistance to lead a cultural change that is needed. For an individual, getting this communicated directly is normally the best, especially when the stage is set from leading management that a particular new business guideline is a requirement instead of a suggestion.
How to find an executive coach
The right questions indicate best leadership quality
Managers need the space and time to actually manage. Managing people is tough, really, really tough. Employees ask for the managers' trust and compassion, so managers need to be able take the time to establish trust, starting conversations off with questions like, “How are things going?” and, “How can I help?” Such open questions potentially trigger a diverse and remarkable dialogue on various subjects, including but not limited to progress, improvement engagement, culture, productivity and performance. And, probably most important, they help identify the fires before we’re at high emergency alarm status.”. Reality-focused questions to ask are for example “What are the key things we need to know?”. The leaders should hone into what their team members have as a reply. Are the leaders missing something important? Are the managers talking about operational problems but missing out on the human side of things? Or the other way round? When coaching managers get their subordinates to slow down and think this way, they often lose themselves in contemplation and then an idea comes along, and off they go, engaging with the issue on their own with new inspiration, fresh energy and a new perspective. This step is crucial, because it stops team members from overlooking pertinent moving parts and leaping to conclusions. The manager's job at this point is just to ask the right questions and then get out of the way.
Is business growth coaching worth it?
Leadership team building and coaching skills for managers and supervisors
It is cheaper to provide coaching/training than to constantly have to fill positions because people quit due to poor management. For achieving that managers and supervisors can become effective coaches of employees. Coaching is a mutually beneficial relationship with the purpose of developing a specific skill rather than just achieving a task; Typically it takes a year or even longer. Managing is nothing more than a professional relationship used to achieve operational results on demand. That relationship is normally indefinite in duration, depending on the organizational structure. The type of leadership relationship the manager has with a team member - whether coaching style or directing style - should be based on the results and objectives the company is looking to achieve.
What are the top executive coaching firms?
When timing is right for leaders to trigger self coaching within their teams
Leaders should use their active listening skills to really get to the bottom of an employee's answers, and ask follow-up questions when necessary as well as learn more about their unique strengths. The key for true leaders is to encourage team members to share their honest feedback or input with the leader, and welcome them to ask the leading change questions as well. As a matter of fact, workplace coaching usually happens unscheduled outside of formal coaching sessions. At times it just happens in brief exchanges, for example when a managing leader in charge might respond to a request for guidance by posing a single question, such as “What do you already have in mind?” or “What could be the solution?”. A manager just cannot have all the right answers that might occur. When managers increasingly end up asking good questions in such kind of interactions, the team will notice that it is on the right track.
Where to find a high end life coach?
The advantage of coaching management style
Non-directive coaching implies listening and asking questions that lead to insights on their own versus telling and instructing. The real benefit comes to light when this cooperative leadership style ends up asking challenging questions and listening as the employee or team member starts thinking for him- or herself and solving his or her own issues.
How to find an executive coach
How to replace bad leadership qualities with good ones
More professionals sense the need to coach their teams in order to get the best performance of their team members. Like in any relationship, coaching is built on mutual respect and trust. The employee must trust the manager to guide him/her though a strategic mental process. That thinking process becomes more beneficial when information is shared openly. Studies have shown that nine out of 10 executives have the intent to assist their direct report improve performance. On the other hand role-plays simulating a coaching situation demonstrated much room for improvement. Cooperative Coaching leadership style involves listening and asking opposed to authoritative leadership style consisting of just selling and telling. But that coaching approach is contrary to the manager's instincts because deep down the managers have already made up their minds about the solution to a specific issue well before the managers even begin looking at the problem together with the employee. So often those coaching efforts get quickly reduced to just trying to get agreement on what the manager had already in mind and decided. This cannot be construed as real coaching and therefore the outcomes are no better than when authoritative leadership is deployed.
Looking for a coach for executives?
Coaching in scenarios of crisis or conflict
A possible work scenario might be when a manager can navigate a team through a crisis thanks to his effective coaching skills. Regardless of the magnitude of the specific event, a skilled manager will approach the situation differently than a manager without leadership skills. Leadership coaching assists leaders with challenging employees and managing customers effectively. Coaches enable and train managers in role play scenarios to learn to deal with conflict and crisis. Such a training helps them in real world scenarios to deescalate situations before they become a real much bigger problem. Coaching is also about assisting to prevent career derailment or to reduce friction and stress or other emotional factors that might get in the way of effective performance and solutions. It might also involve extinguishing conflicts between team members or resolving company politics related issues.
How to select an executive coach
Building individual competencies that arise from collaboration with employees
Effective leaders typically lay the foundation for achieving objectives with each member of the organization. according to Burdett, 1998, creating an environment that nurtures individual growth inspires the entire organization to show up as their best version of themselves. Managers should deploy their staff using a strengths-based approach for the further development of each team member. As a result managers and their teams can perform much better in the workplace when the employees can build rather on their strengths instead of their weaknesses.
Specialised executive coaching for startups
Why developping strategic leadership skills is important
Managers should seek ongoing training. If the leader wants his team members to engage in constant ongoing improvement of skills, then the manager is going to have to lead by example and educate him- / herself first. The manager should consider seeking out training to improve his / her leadership skills, whether it’s one class, a leadership certification program, or completing a more formal executive education or coaching program. Nowadays the manager has various options to get higher education be it through an online or a presential program or a combination of both. Getting more educated leads to better qualification and once these fresh new skills are implemented and shared with the team the effects will be noticed.
