Executive coaching doesn’t differ all that much from coaching a sports team. All involved are working toward a common goal being winners through a team effort. The big ‘U-Rah-Rah’ speech only goes so far before it becomes clich and hokey. Being an effective executive coach takes a special kind of person with special skills and traits.
What does a good executive coach need?
Take a close look at yourself and see how many of these apply to you. How many of these traits do you already possess and how many do you seriously need to work on?
- Have more than just one answer at the ready – if there is anything in this world that is constant it is change. Stuff happens! Knowing how to roll with the punches sometimes means changing things up a bit. Improvisation, quick thinking and foresight allow a coach to react to situations in not only a timely manner but in an intelligent one as well.
- Be sure that explanation and simplification are 2 of your skills – using a metaphor or a diagram isn’t enough. The ‘team’ you are coaching will get nothing out of it if they have no idea where it is that you are coming from. You already understand the concepts. You must find a way to explain them to others and sometimes that means having to simplify them to a more comprehensible level.
- One size does not fit all – your powers of innovation are essential in order for you to be able to provide different solutions to differing situations. One solution does not solve every problem. Your strategies must work, be credible and practical all at the same time.
- Understand the business you are coaching as well as its trends and employees – you, as a coach, possess practical and theoretical knowledge. Gain an understanding of what concepts have been successfully applied in past situations and how the current staff at hand can improve upon those concepts to solve the current problems at hand. For example, in the MLM industry, it used to be that leads are generated around the sales person but now, new trends have shown that buying MLM leads can boost the career so coaching should be done based on niche and their trends.
- Be confident – it’s going to be next to impossible to get the owner of a business (much less its employees) to believe in you if you do not believe in yourself and in your abilities as an executive coach. You must deliver your approach with the utmost in confidence and believability.
- Everything isn’t always coming up roses – it’s true, you’re the good guy and you’re there to help. Thing is however, people will not always see it that way. You will hopefully have some good news for the people of the company you are working for but the other side of the coin is unavoidable here. Delivering good news is easy. You must be as good at delivering bad news as you are at delivering good news however.
