6 Benefits of Hiring an Executive Coach

Over 51% of senior executives report that they receive business advice from consultants and coaches. Browse through any social media platform and you will likely come across an advert from a coach promising to change your life. But can hiring an executive coach adds value to your career or business?

Many famous CEOs like the late Steve Jobs and Marc Benioff credited some of their success to professional coaching. Companies like Goldman Sachs also ensure that all their senior executives get individual coaching to grow their careers. So, there must be some value to hiring a coach.

Keep reading to learn about 7 benefits of hiring an executive coach.

What Is an Executive Coach?

An executive coach is a professional that helps business leaders achieve their personal and business goals. The best executive coaches have years of business expertise, leadership skills knowledge, and extensive training in human behaviour and psychology. This helps them identify the barriers to success faced by executives and their teams.

Executive coaching should be an ongoing relationship between a coach and their client. The two must-have frequent conversations that involve inquiry and deep listening to uncover any underlying issues the client may have. Read on for the 7 benefits of hiring an executive coach.

1. Achieve Your Authentic Goals

The most important benefit to hiring an executive coach is that they can help you achieve your goals and desires. First, a coach will help you identify or clarify your goals. Many of us have lost sight of what we want. The result is that we work hard to achieve societal goals that have no meaning for us.

No wonder many executives lack passion and experience depression or burnout. An executive coach can help you uncover your authentic vision and goals. They are trained to ask the right questions to uncover the hidden beliefs, desires, values, and needs that their clients have.

Once you identify your goals, a coach then works with you to identify the action steps you need to follow to achieve your goals. In business, this may take the form of a strategic plan to increase revenue, employee engagement, profits, etc. They may also help you discover any skills you may need to learn to achieve your goals.

Many people give up on their desires because they get discouraged at their perceived inadequacy. But a coach can help you see how easy it could be to achieve your goals by learning a certain skill or developing a particular trait.

2. Have an Accountability Partner

Another benefit of having a coach is that they act as your accountability partner. They will check that you complete your daily and weekly tasks to achieve your goals. You will work with your coach to identify the best strategies and actions to achieve your goals.

In case your actions don’t achieve the desired results, your coach will help you realize this, and get you to course correct. Lone-wolf executives are often blind to the fact that they are working hard on the wrong things. They often don’t take the time to reflect on performance and if they are on the right path.

Regular evaluations with your coach will help you identify if you are on the wrong path. Because of this coaches can save you a lot of time, money, and energy.

In case you lose steam on your goals or when you feel like giving up a coach can help you stay focused. They act as a cheerleader that reminds you why you chose a certain course of action and why you must stick to the process. The coach will help you clear any internal or external obstacles that block your way to success.

Coaches are objective, unlike friends, family, or colleagues. They don’t have any emotional baggage around the issues that you face so they can give you objective guidance, advice, and support. They can be honest with you and don’t spare your feelings at the expense of your goals.

3. Get Help With Decision Making

Adults make approximately 35,000 decisions a day, with executives making even more strategic decisions than other people. A leader’s success is judged on the quality of decisions they make so they must find ways to make the best decisions in all circumstances.

At the executive level, the wrong decision could have far-reaching consequences. The company may lose millions of dollars, important client contracts, and even human resources. Coaches help leaders to clarify their goals and values so that they can make congruent decisions.

An executive that is having a hard time choosing a course of action can suddenly develop clarity when their coach reminds them of their vision or values. A coach can also call out an executive that is making decisions contrary to the company’s stated mission or values.

If you struggle with decision-making, it may be a good idea to hire an executive coach to help you make better decisions. Coaches can see help you see all sides of an issue to make a better decision. They can also provide you with tools like a decision-making matrix that can help your decision-making process.

Leaders are often blinded by a limited view of their organization or environment. Coaches can provide a fresh look or perspective on situations facing leaders. Learn more about making better decisions and others at http://stevefarber.com/executive-leadership-coaching/.

4. Improve Your Performance and Results

The main reason why executives hire coaches is to improve their business performance and results. But without strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills, it is impossible to achieve significant success in the C-suite. An executive coach can help you and your executives develop the people skills and leadership skills needed to achieve your corporate targets.

Many leaders fail because they make incorrect assessments of their subordinates, superiors, and clients. For example, they may wrongly fire people that have the skills needed to advance their departments. A coach can help you properly assess your employees and develop the right leadership style to bring the best out of them.

There may be many reasons why you and your team aren’t performing to expected levels. You may have tried several different ways to improve performance without success. A CEO coach can help identify blind spots and suggest the right strategies you can take to transform your and your team’s performance.

5. Increase Business Revenue

Businesses exist to create value for their shareholders. So, one reason why businesses hire executive coaches is to increase revenue. Coaches continue thriving and getting business because they have significantly increased their clients’ revenues. One can see how this is possible.

Consider a sales manager that lacks self-esteem and hates making sales calls. Coaching could help develop their confidence and find pleasure in meeting new people and selling to them. This change in attitude could lead to millions of dollars in increased sales for the executive and their company.

Coaching could also help executives come up with creative solutions to flawed internal processes or client problems. Coaches can help executives gain a fresh perspective on any situations they are dealing with. This allows them to lead their teams and company to increased sales and profits.

6. Discover Your Blind Spots and Barriers to Success

At the beginning of every year, billions of people come up with new years goals and resolutions. Unfortunately, so many people fail at their resolutions that the whole exercise has become a cliché. Similarly, business leaders often have great intentions when they set their business goals but fail to achieve what they set out to do.

One of the biggest benefits of executive coaching is that a coach can help you become more self-aware. Our inner thoughts and beliefs dictate our actions and how we show up in the world. An executive that wants to triple their sales figures will be unable to do so if they believe that they are horrible at sales.

Becoming aware of such limiting beliefs and using coaching tools to combat them helps us achieve our desires and goals. A coach can help you see your thought processes and question assumptions and beliefs that you hold. They can also make you see how untrue or unhelpful those beliefs are and help you develop more empowering beliefs.

We also have negative reactions to certain situations and triggers. For instance, due to childhood trauma, an executive may have angry outbursts whenever they face an embarrassing situation. A coach can help such an executive identify why they react angrily to seemingly innocuous situations.

The increased self-awareness that the executive gains will help them become an objective observer of their reactions and triggers. Once unconscious responses become conscious it’s easier to control our responses to everyday situations that come up at work.

Hiring the Right Executive Coach

Hiring a coach can be very beneficial for you and your company but you will not experience any benefits if you hire the wrong coach. The increased demand for executive coaching has led to many people entering the coaching industry. But not all coaches are cut from the same cloth.

You can improve your interpersonal skills before hiring a coach by enrolling in a TED talk coaching leadership and communications classes. Classes such as these offer the opportunity to speak openly and with confidence. You should also meet with them to determine whether you two are compatible. Instead of talking about themselves, the coach should ask you questions and listen to your answers.

When choosing an executive coach, it’s also important to look at their credentials as well as their coaching tools and assessments. A good executive coach will have business experience, coaching certification, and training in human psychology and behavior. Many executives find it hard to progress beyond certain levels of their career due to psychological difficulties and unconscious conflicts.

For instance, a business leader may be having trouble with subordinates because of an undiagnosed narcissistic personality disorder or may fail to meet deadlines because they are clinically depressed. An executive coach that isn’t well versed in human psychology may create more harm than good in this situation. They may give the executive quick tips for how to achieve desired results.

But the root cause of the problem may create bigger issues down the line. The right executive coach will be able to differentiate between executives that need tools and training to perform better and executives that may get the best help from psychotherapy or counseling.

How to Get the Most Benefit From Hiring an Executive Coach

There are some steps you should take and considerations you must make to get the best out of a coaching relationship. Before hiring a coach you must be clear about what you want a coach to help you with. Perhaps your sales team is failing to meet their targets, so you want a coach to come in and increase sales.

Once you know your goals you must then shop around for the right executive coach for you or your team. Look at their credentials and have a meeting with them to assess their communication skills and your chemistry with each other. Once the coach is engaged, keep an open mind, and follow their instructions and advice for the agreed trial period.

Accept feedback from your coach and others as you go through the coaching process. Your coach may push you to face certain fears and operate outside your comfort zone so be ready to do so.

Learn the Benefits of Hiring an Executive Coach

You’ll never find a top athlete that doesn’t have a coach. Similarly, high business performers often hire a coach to help them stay at the top of their game. An executive coach will help you develop a vision and goals for your life and business. They then walk with you through the ups and downs of achieving your intended results.

Through this process, they’ll act as your mirror and help you develop the self-awareness and emotional intelligence required to overcome internal and external obstacles to your goals. For more advice on business coaching, check out the rest of our blog.