You are the executive CEO of a successful owner operated enterprise in Leominster, 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.
Leadership coaching vs executive coaching
When using coaching as a leadership development tool
Coaching managers should perceive coaching as something broader than just the efforts of exterior coaches who are hired to help executives build their personal and professional skills. That work is important and sometimes vital, but it’s temporary and executed by outsiders. The kind of coaching managers should implement is the one that establishes a real learning organization with ongoing coaching that is executed by people inside the organization. It is an activity that all managers should participate in with all their subordinates on an ongoing basis, in such a manner that helps define the organization’s culture and its mission. An effective coaching manager as a leader asks questions instead of providing answers, supports team members instead of judging them, facilitates their growth and leadership instead of dictating what has to be done, asks for ideas from all team members on how to solve the situation instead of just relying on own attempts to solve it individually. A coaching manager with cooperative leadership style can approach any obstacle with a calm, objective and clear focus. A deeper understanding of issues and solution-focused fact finding creates the blueprints for resolutions.
Insights from professional executive coaching
The fine line between situational leadership and executive coaching
Situational coaching represents the otimum zone to be in in the context of a manager as a coach. All managers should pursue to become expert at situational coaching. Situational coaching involves balancing between authoritive and cooperative leadership style depending on what the current situation requires. Managers as coaches should first focus on and become really good at non-directive coaching, until it becomes almost an instinct, and only then start to mix that newly strengthened capability with the implementation of management by objectives and directive coaching.
Who are the best small business coaches?
How managers can trigger a coach within every employee and unleash hidden potentials
Great leaders tap into the potential coach within every manager and team member. Hidden within many employees is a source of information and knowledge waiting to be conserved and shared with the broader team. A great leader can encourage his own team members to become coaches and trainers themselves by enabling them to hold their own mini-seminars on an important topic or skill. If the company offers a virtual platform or chatroom then this represents means of leverage where team members can create and share their own learning content, guidance, insights, stories, and tips for where to access the best training to get the job done. Great leaders should ask themselves whether the team member has the capacity to accomplish the objectives and get the job done. Four common bottle necks are time, skill set, tools, and personality. Great leaders determine how to remove these bottle necks and whether or not the team member needs the leader's help to remove the barriers. This is key in the role of a coaching manager.
Tailored coaching for entrepreneurs
How can managers ask the right questions for appreciative inquiry
A manager on the path to becoming an effective coach for his / her employees coaching cultivates commitment to improving the organization without imposing an issue based orientation or sense of a general feeling of pessimism or despondency on employees. Instead, employees are recognized for what they already do well and encouraged to apply these strengths in such a way that facilitates performance and growth. According to Nelson et al., 2002 targets are met faster when a vision-focused, cohesive taskforce collaborates and deploys the employees' best sides, talents and strengths toward a common objective. Job satisfaction, good morale is key. According to Edmondson, 2002 the manager needs to do his / her best to get rid of fear in the workplace by assisting employees generate purpose within their role, function and responsibility inside an organization.
Where to find a great 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.
Where to find good business coaches for entrepreneurs
Coaching your team to higher performance and responsibility
Great leaders implicitly have internalized the transferability of emotions. This process is also known as emotional contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1993). Great coaching managers are careful with their reactions in times of crisis or emergencies. They wait for better opportunities to generate empowerment, inspiration and excitement when a new momentum is needed within the team and become proactive in avoiding fires they have become used to put out themselves. Ongoing crisis management cannot be an effective leadership style. A better approach to work is to delegate authority using cooperative leadership style and put trust into the team and let the team members learn to handle complicated situations themselves.
Great coaching for performers
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.
The best executive business coaches revealed
How to build management leadership competencies
It’s easier said than done to become a coaching manager because a completely different mindset is required to pull it off as an everyday pattern throughout all management levels of a company. At most firms, a big gap still yawns between aspiration and implementation. Bridging that gap is key. Great leadership does not happen from one day to the other. Instead great leaders are made through dedication, commitment, and execution. By taking the initiative and proactively working to become a better coaching manager, the manager will not only elevate his own performance, but more importantly the one of his team members, and by extension, his organization. Even though it is easier and faster to just do telling and commanding taking the coaching route is really worth the effort. In the beginning coaching tends to be slower because it requires some patience and time to begin with, and it takes deliberate exercise in terms of learning by doing to get really good at it. It is an investment in human resources that has a higher return than any other management skill. Team members learn, grow, develop, improve performance and results, subordinates gain more recognition, and organizations increase their bottom line. Entities that choose to take that route should first focus on how to develop coaching as an individual managerial capacity, and then on how to turn it into a company wide one.
Great coaching for performers
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.
What are the top executive coaching firms?
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.
Which are the best leadership coaching companies?
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.
Which is the best coaching company?
How to ensure a new manager transforms into a brilliant leader
Each time a brilliant employee gets promoted to the next level within an organization without the coaching support and leadership training he / she needs, the organization makes a huge mistake by leaving the new manager's performance and success up to chance. They have a 50% chance that not only will the new manager fail, but having missed out on leadership coaching this will cost their organization a little fortune to press play and repeat until a new manager randomly really outperforms with his / her team. Effective coaching skills do not only serve the new manager but also each and every level of employment. Increasing empathy and compassion in every function reduces friction and stress and replaces both with growth potential within the team. Tough decisions in tough situations with normally tough conversations become easier to maneuver when coaching skills are in place and well implemented and performed.
What to expect from business executive coaching
How to motivate your team as a leader instead of a commanding and controling manager
Successful executives must increasingly complement their sector specific knowledge and functional methodology with a general readiness and willingness for continuous learning and they must reflect that capacity in the people they supervise. No longer can managers simply rely on telling and control. Simply rewarding team members mainly for executing flawlessly on things they already knew is not enough any more. Instead, with full headquarter support, they need to reinvent themselves as coaches whose mission it is to trigger energy, creativity, and learning from the team members.
Insights from professional 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.