Executive Coaching is a coaching-focused approach to professional and personal development which is geared at developing awareness, creating action, enhancing performance and facilitating positive learning and growth in its practitioners. It aims at enhancing performance through helping people to develop and maintain new attitudes, behaviors, skills and models. It also helps people to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, gain new understandings of how they can work effectively, increase their productivity and improve the quality of their lives and relationships. Through executive coaching, participants discover their inner strengths and learn to use those strengths in their daily lives.
Executive Coaching is different from traditional executive training and management consulting in many ways. Executive Coaching does not focus on eliminating problems or reviewing job performance. Instead, it helps you to create effective frameworks for handling job demands and performance situations. Executive Coaching is different from other executive development programs such as performance management, curriculum development and training in that it addresses the psychological aspects of the executive position.
Executive Coaching focuses on creating action plans, which are flexible yet comprehensive strategies that provide immediate results to achieve long-term goals. For example, if you are experiencing difficulties managing your own emotional health, you might do well to work with a behavioral psychological consultant who will help you create a behavioral plan that will help you to deal with your stress and frustrations without sabotaging your job performance. Once you have developed this behavioral plan, it can be used as a guide to successfully managing your emotions in the workplace. Your actions and reactions to situations, both in and out of the workplace, will be based on your understanding of your psychological makeup. For this reason, executive coaching can offer direct reports on how you can address specific problems more effectively.
Another key difference between executive coaching and traditional job performance and goal setting processes is that a coach offers feedback during the process. A coach will offer you feedback on whether you are meeting goals or not and if you need to adjust your behavior or approach in order to increase your effectiveness. A coach also offers assistance when you face obstacles or setbacks in the goal setting process. The coach will help you to identify your weaknesses and address them so you can become a stronger performer. In addition, an executive coaching program will teach you effective time management skills, develop your communication skills, coach you about your leadership style and coach you about your performance.
Finally, executive coaching and life coaching differ in the ways they deliver their services. Life coaches generally meet with clients one-on-one, conduct group discussions and offer support at the appropriate times. Executive Coaching on the other hand, delivers a personalized executive coaching session using an experienced coach, who will meet with you as needed and customize the services to fit your needs. The overall process does take some time but results are more effective and more sustainable because a coach uses his or her own experience and guidance with you to make sure you are reaching your goals.
So there you have it. Executive Coaching and Life Coaching are very different and their benefits are well known. With that said, if you have not yet considered these two paths to be part of your professional growth and development, I encourage you to take the next few weeks to learn more about them. You might find them to be perfect for you!