By meeting one-on-one with the top managers or leaders of an organization (such as a director, a vice president, or a member of senior management), the executive coach provides a safe, structured and reliable environment in which to offer support to the person. Executive team coaches will train leaders on how to lead their teams and teams on how to be better employees. This regimen includes a combination of training, teaching, facilitation, mediation and positive psychology. If every member of the team receives advice, the entire team can see improvements in their performance, communication and collaboration.
Executive or leadership coaching is professional training that helps business leaders to promote crucial skills, personality traits and habits. It challenges people in positions of power to become more effective leaders and, at the same time, helps to lay the foundations for a healthier, happier and more profitable company. The founder of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, has said that the famous coach Tony Robbins is fundamental to the company's success. However, unless these executive coaches have been trained in the dynamics of interpersonal relationships, they can often abuse their power without wanting to.
However, it's worth noting that executive coaching is probably not a place for psychologists who aren't interested in business (Foxhall, 200). With professional coaching services, leaders are better prepared to make decisions that facilitate change. The best way to overcome anxieties and doubts is to practice, preferably with expert techniques and the guidance of a professional leadership coach. Aimed at senior executives, Columbia Business School's advanced executive education management program provides participants with an individualized training experience, as well as the opportunity to learn and grow alongside other dynamic and experienced professionals.
To better help their executives, companies must draw on the expertise of psychotherapists and executive coaches with legitimate skills. Given this significant investment in coaching, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of executive coaching. In one of the few longitudinal studies, Smither and his colleagues (200) analyzed the effectiveness of executive coaching by following more than a thousand senior managers over a two-year period. If Mirabella's coach had been less motivated by sports or had been better versed in interpersonal psychology, he might have anticipated that all the erudite bluster in the world could never prepare Mirabella for the role that was assigned to her.
Remember that the main function of a coach is to help you develop the skills and awareness needed to find the answers on your own. Without guarantees that prevent coaches from training people whose problems are not due to lack of skills but to psychological problems, executives who receive training and the companies they work for will be affected. For example, psychotherapy focuses on clients with mental health problems, while coaching focuses on managers who need business advice to be more effective in their roles. Personalized coaching services, such as ours at Strategy People Culture, are especially beneficial when it comes to challenging weaknesses.
Leaders have a responsibility to cultivate an executive team and a business culture that promotes safe environments and equal opportunities for all, and coaching can help them achieve this.
