The business world is absolutely stuffed with training courses, self-help schemes and advice columns dedicated to making you a better leader, so what is it that makes executive coaching special and what is its purpose beyond the quick fix of a problem? Let’s take a look.
Show don’t tell
It’s absolutely true that you can attend a training course on painting and learn to paint, but you’ll just be the same person at the end, except you’ll be handier with a brush. Where executive coaching differs from this is that it aims to bring out of you your existing potential and maximise it, not just tack on an extra skill. You won’t necessarily learn anything specific, except how to learn better, how to think about problems differently and how to react to difficult situations – in order to make you a better leader in a way you can’t forget.
Discover your goals
Another way that coaching differs from training is that training generally has a goal in mind, while coaching is about the much more vital process of finding a goal. It’s easy to learn to do something, but it’s much more valuable to learn what you need to do in the first place, and executive coaching can help you learn to think in a way that will enable you to take a problem and turn it into a solution.
Silence the inner voice
When sporting legends learn their trade, one of the biggest benefits of practice is muscle memory. Being able to kick a ball perfectly without having to even think about it is what separates a good footballer from a great one, and it’s that memory that executive coaching achieves with your mind. The goal is to silence that inner voice that questions your plan, your actions and your every move, and gives you complete confidence in your ability to execute whatever it is you’re trying to achieve without too much effort. That way, you get more time to think about the things that matter, and less about the things that don’t.
Challenging the norm
Designed by coaching expert Tony Gregg, our director, our approach to coaching builds up by first breaking down – that is, breaking down the assumptions that might be holding you back. Leaders have often achieved success by doing certain things which may not be appropriate or useful at the higher levels of management, so we look to help you decide which behaviours are useful and which aren’t – to enable you to shed the old and adopt the new.
For more information on executive coaching, contact executive search specialists, Anthony Gregg.
