You are the executive CEO of a successful owner operated enterprise in Shawnee, 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.
Where to find good business coaches for entrepreneurs
Has coaching become the sixth management function?
Everybody involved in management should know about the five management functions. French mining engineer Henri Fayol defined the role of a manager as consisting of five functions of management: planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling. Another theorist, Luther Gulick, chunked commanding and controlling into one function being directing and added staffing, reporting, and budgeting, also known as POSDCORB, which is still used nowadays in management. So, how does coaching and leading fit into all of this? Leadership is one of the most vital management functions completely overlooked by these theorists. For the realisation of a mission an effective leader has to provide clarity, guidance and purpose. Without it any mission is set for failure. This can be accomplished best by switching from commanding and directing to a non directive leadership style.
How much is coaching for leaders?
How to develop strategic leadership skills
The manager's task is to assist his staff more broadly and more deeply. Sometimes it is sufficient to ask something as simple as “If you had a magic wand, what would you do?” to open up the conversation and put everyting on wide-angle. You’d be surprised how freeing many people find that question to be—and how quickly they then start thinking and generating fresh, productive ideas. Once they’ve opened up their perspective and discovered new options looking at things, the manager's job is to prompt them to deepen their thinking, perhaps by making them explore the upside, the downside, and the risks of each approach.
Insights from an executive business coach
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.
Who are the best leadership coaches?
How do coaching and mentoring contribute to leadership development
As a coach, it is helpful to clarify the role beyond just being a manager. For a manager to be effective in coaching his team it is necessary to specialize in professional and executive presence, as well as to improve strategic communication and presentation skills. According to Mouratidis, Vansteenkiste, Lens, Sideridis studies on the self-determination theory has shown that feedback loops motivate intentions to continue pursuing targets and fosters dedication and commitment.
Insights from an executive business coach
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.
How to motivate a losing team
How to improve leadership abilities
Coaching is better than repair. Providing positive feedback and honest suggestions for improvement early and often yields higher results, better outcomes, and stronger bonds and better relationships than any retroactive action or progressive rule ever will. Managers generally get this, so getting them to buy into this is not a rocket science. However making them implement how to document coaching conversations can be challenging. Managers should continuously look out for new opportunities to coach team members. They shoould benefit from the opportunities to inspire and motivate employees or educate them further and enable them with new skill sets. On the other hand managers should make it a habit to connect and ask for feedback from team members to assess situations and create solutions. Managers should invoke conversations with team members by asking guiding, open-ended questions, that are not closed yes and no questions. As a result such questions will encourage team members to provide honest, thoughtful answers about their view on things. Such conversations and feedback loops will enable the manager to establish beneficial relationships with the the team member.
Which is the best coaching company?
The superior power of ongoing job performance coaching
Coaching provides an invaluable space for personal growth and leadership development. Managers are frequently confronted with employees struggling with low confidence and low performance. The traditional approach would be to send them to a training hoping that this would solve the issue. The employee learns new methods of communication which may improve confidence and performance short-term. Very ofteh though after a while the employee falls back into his thinking patterns and as a result in isolation these trainings rarely generate a sustainable yield in confidence and performance. Although external behavior may change for a while, for changes to manifest long term they need to be incantated. The goal of performance coaching is not to make the team member feel bad, nor is it done to show off how much the manager knows. The only objective of coaching is to collaborate with the team member to solve performance issues and to enhance the results of the employee, the team, and the organization. To achieve leading change ongoing coaching has proven to be most effective.
Which is the best coaching company?
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 is the best executive performance 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.
Great coaching for performers
How to improve leadership qualities
The coaching manager outperforms the directing manager because leaders can schedule a one-on-one conversation with team members to hone into their concerns and struggles. This setting enables the coaching manager work on solving those struggles and concerns without interfering with team members' progress. When a coaching manager is open to making mistakes, it also gives the subordinates to push themselves to the next level and learn the lessons from their own mistakes. It is crucial as a coaching manager to provide constructive feedback so that subordinates know how to refine what they should keep doing. It is clever to begin a critique by describing what a team member did well. When a coaching manager starts a conversation on a positive note, it opens the senses and guides the transition into constructive criticism. Each team member already has enough ups and downs in their lives without a director that adds on. Great leaders are consistent in their communication, nature and character, messaging, availability and mission. Just like advertising, an ongoing continuous, cumulative approach is highly effective at establishing and leading change and improvement.
What results coaching can do for you
The benefits of coaching sales leaders
When sales coaching triggers the sharing of valuable sales-knowledge this leads to having the entire sales team deploy successful methodology instead of just one top sales person using it. This can be easily accomplished by using tools like Salesforce-Chatter, Slack or any other chat-rooms or forums. When knowledge can be transferred easily within an organization this exchange engages, motivates and energizes the rest of the entire sales team. On top of that this content can become a resource to be repurposed in sales trainings.
Executive coaching vs leadership coaching
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.
What are the effects of leadership coaching?
The implications of shadow coaching style of leadership
Typically managers think they are already coaching when in reality what they are doing is a lot of telling, instructing, directing, teaching, advising, and in the worst case, micromanaging. They use the phrase 'coaching' to describe just about any conversation they have with a team member although it does not really apply. First managers need to learn the definition of coaching. Here is the secret of coaching: Allow people to perform on their own and give them space for doing so. Like this managers give team members permission to do their jobs and do them well. People will rise to the expectations the management has of them.
The best executive coaching companies revealed
Ways to implement the leadership coaching process
When Human Resources hires an external coach it is primarily focused on helping managers address specific issues and challenges. Some companies hire such external coaches to assist with further leadership development. Human Resources staff have a significant and unique chance to expand their function in coaching management. Compared to a personal development journey, any growth requires time, commitment and dedication. Even though a coaching training is always a good move, great leaders can start improving these skills today, independent from any budget restrictions or limitations.
