Do you remember having a great coach when you played sports as a child? They were your go-to person for ways to improve performance, explaining the intricacies of the game, and helping you pick yourself up when things didn’t go as planned. It was nice to have someone in your corner who not only supported you but also had the wisdom to help you course-correct as needed to meet your goals.
The myth of growing up and taking on these huge responsibilities in leadership was thinking that now we have to do it alone. You don’t need to take our word for it: today’s most effective business leaders never outgrew the concept of having a coach. We’re going to help you make the business case for finding that support with our Top 5 Reasons to Hire an Executive Coach.
Five Reasons to Hire an Executive Coach
People Strategy
Coaching and leadership is all about people. At Stratavize, we keep our eye on the business goals as we help you bring out the best version of yourself to get there – and that means focusing on your people. This often leads to a renewed focus and commitment to bringing out the best in your direct reports and peers. You can expect to see:
- Improved Interpersonal Skills: Coaches help executives communicate more effectively with their teams, peers, and stakeholders. If you feel like you’re speaking to a brick wall… or multiple brick walls… we have a solution for that.
- Conflict Resolution: Save the arguments social media: we’ll transform you into a Conflict Resolver known for fostering a collaborative environment.
- Positive Culture Development: Coaching helps shape and reinforce a positive organizational culture. This starts with you and impacts every area of the business you touch.
Business Strategy
Return on investment is high on everyone’s mind when it comes to coaching – sure, you might feel like you’re a better leader – or the person you hire a coach for is doing a better job – but how do you demonstrate this? It’s straightforward. You’re going to see improvements with how your coached leaders contribute to the following areas:
- Goal Setting & Achievement: Coaches help your managers set clear, achievable goals and develop the plans necessary to meet those goals.
- Accountability: Regular coaching sessions provide a framework for accountability, which means your managers will stay on track with their progress. Coaching doesn’t get you hyped for one day and then reality sets in and everything goes back to the way it was. Coaching is a better option for real, positive change compared to single-day seminars, books, podcasts, and training sessions.
- Long-Term Vision: Executive coaching helps leaders grow their abilities to hone their long-term vision. You’ll find them starting to contribute to the growth of the company in more meaningful ways.
- Measurable Impact: You’ll be able to see improved business performance and financial results. Start collecting data now and plan to do several checkpoints throughout the process to compare results.
- Competitive Advantage: Well-coached leaders drive innovation and growth. This gives each department head that receives coaching a competitive edge, which spreads throughout the organization.
Organizational Structure
We help our clients process change management – including the adoption of organizational initiatives and building change champions from within. Executive coaching is a powerful way to build those champions. With individual coaching sessions, you can expect to see improvements to:
- Navigating Transitions: Is there change on the horizon? Coaching can be the right solution to manage transition smoothly – like mergers, acquisitions, or restructuring. If there is something potentially controversial, an executive coach can help smooth things out and/or show you how to smoothly lead your team through this change.
- Employee Engagement: Coaching improves job satisfaction – both your own and with the people you lead – which leads to better retention rates.
- Succession Planning: You don’t have to do this forever and you should know who you can rely upon. Executive coaching helps develop middle managers to ensure a strong pipeline of future leaders.
Operations Optimization
Executive coaching helps with process improvement, operational effectiveness, and developing effective new standard operating procedures through improving your leaders. Bringing on an executive coach can help your team with:
- Aligning Values: Stratavize Coaches will ensure that the values of middle managers and executives align with the company’s overall mission and values.
- Adapting to New Roles: Executive coaching is also a great way to support people transitioning into new roles or responsibilities. You may consider bringing on a coach to help rising leaders adjust quickly and effectively.
- Creative Problem-Solving: Our executive coaches help you exercise your outside-of-the-box thinking. We’ll help you find innovative perspectives, new vantage points, and news things to consider as you lead your team.
The Human Side of Things
You genuinely want to do right by your employees, so this investment in your leadership practices needs to yield results for your team and the business, but…what about yourself? The intangible effects of executive coaching will improve your life inside and outside of work. By refining the way you lead, you’ll find yourself becoming the best version of you in all areas of your life. We often see executive coaching lead to:
- Better Stress Management: Our coaches offer techniques for managing stress and maintaining a healthy work-life balance that works for you (i.e., not our version of balance but a balance that fits your needs).
- Preventing Burnout: Stratavize helps executives recognize the signs of burnout and implement strategies to help avoid it.
- Self-Awareness & Feedback: Coaches are a safe place to be your open, honest self. There’s no need to sugar-coat how things are going with us: in fact, we’d prefer it if you didn’t sugar-coat it! We need to understand what is on your mind, your opinions, the feedback you’ve received from others, and what you need to process this information and turn it into something you can reflect upon and improve.
Executive Coaching: The Big Picture
As we were writing this article, we noticed things started to feel a little complicated. The operational optimization benefits of executive coaching go together with the business strategy, which is only as effective as your people strategy… Do you see where we’re going with this?
All these aspects of your organization are tightly connected. When you make changes to one area, you’ll see an effect elsewhere. We call this focus on both people strategy, business strategy, organization structure, and operational optimization the Transformation Model. By focusing on all four areas and getting them working in tandem, you’ll see what we call Whole System Change: everything improves together. One of the ways your team can leverage this improvement is through executive coaching.
Are you ready to explore your options for hiring an executive coach? Request a consultation now.
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