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Being coached can help you to identify new ways of improving your performance, supporting your organization’s objectives and finding solutions to strategic challenges. Following these top tips will help you make the most of executive coaching.
Choose Your Coach Carefully
Choosing your coach is a vital first step in the executive coaching process. Before making any decisions, it’s a good idea to do some research and draw up a shortlist of three or four potential coaches. Establishing from the outset exactly what you want to achieve from the coaching relationship and how you want your executive coach to help you will allow you to narrow your search down to coaches who can meet your unique needs and objectives. There are a number of well respected coaching directories that will help keep your search manageable, and should generate credible results. [1] Another great way of identifying a potential coach is by asking trusted colleagues and peers for recommendations.
Once you have drawn up a shortlist, ask each of your potential coaches some important questions to establish whether they might be the right executive coach for you. Finding out how much experience each coach has, the types of executives they normally coach, and how they like to conduct the coaching relationship can be extremely helpful. Having this kind of initial conversation will also give you the chance to establish how much rapport exists between you and each coach, particularly if you meet them face-to-face.
Make Coaching a Priority
Once you have engaged in a relationship with your chosen executive coach, you should give your coaching sessions high priority. When a coaching session has been booked, you should avoid changing or rescheduling the appointment unless you absolutely have to. Equally, when you are in an executive coaching session, you should give the coach your full attention; colleagues and team members should be asked not to disturb you. You may even wish to hold your coaching sessions away from the office. Making sure you are not distracted will help you get maximum benefit from your conversations with your executive coach, and will demonstrate your commitment to the coaching relationship.
Share Expectations
At your first coaching session, it is important for you and your coach to share and set expectations for the coaching relationship. This should include the roles and responsibilities each of you will have, and how the coach intends to conduct the relationship. You and your coach should also agree the logistics of the coaching relationship (e.g. whether sessions will be conducted face-to-face, online, over the telephone, or a mixture of both) and how frequently and at what time your coaching sessions should take place.
Be Prepared To Set The Agenda
It’s important to be aware that it is your responsibility, not the coach’s, to establish the learning objectives for your coaching relationship. To help you do this, you may wish to refer to your most recent personal development plan, or your organization’s mission statement or strategic objectives. Your coach might ask you to commit your learning objectives for the coaching relationship to writing in a formal coaching contract.
Before each coaching session, it is advisable to take some time before each coaching conversation to consider what you would like to achieve from it, and to advise your coach of this at the start of each session. Doing this will allow you to make the most of the time you have with your executive coach, and will help to ensure your conversations are productive and meaningful.
Expect to Be Challenged
An important part of an executive coach’s role is to ask challenging questions that encourage the coachee to reflect on their own actions, decisions and behaviors. These questions tend to be thought-provoking, and can sometimes be difficult to answer, as they may prompt you to think about issues you find uncomfortable. However, it is important to remember that your coach is asking these types of questions to help, not to offend or criticize you. If your coach asks you a challenging question, be sure to respond to it in a positive manner, and engage in some genuine self-reflection before answering. Of course, if a question makes you feel too uncomfortable, you should let your coach know this.
Be Open and Honest
Executive coaching conversations can only be truly effective when the coachee is prepared to share information willingly and openly with their coach. It is important to be as honest as possible when responding to your coach’s questions, comments and insights. Don’t worry about how long it takes you to formulate and articulate your thoughts; your coach will want you to take the time you need to genuinely reflect on what they have said and to respond honestly.
Don’t Expect Instruction
An executive coach’s role is to help you reach conclusions and identify solutions yourself by asking probing, insightful questions and offering constructive feedback. You shouldn’t, therefore, expect your coach to tell you what to do, or how to do it. However, your coach should be able to work with you to help you translate the outcomes of your conversations into objectives and actions. It is important that these are realistic and achievable; if your coach makes a suggestion you don’t feel is feasible, you should be honest about this and explore some more appropriate alternatives.
Complete Your Follow-Up Work
At the end of each executive coaching session, your coach may ask you to undertake one or two follow-up tasks in time for your next meeting. This may be in order to help you reflect more closely on an issue or subject, or to explore what your next actions should be. It is important to complete whatever follow-up work your coach asks you to do, as this will help you to continue learning and developing in between meetings. Your coach may also use your completed follow-up work as a basis for the next session, so you should always aim to complete this work on time.
Be Proactive
In addition to completing the work your coach might set you, it is a good idea to be proactive and look out for other learning opportunities that might help you to achieve your objectives. These opportunities might include attending training courses, completing relevant self-assessments or diagnostics, or taking part in networking or industry events. Your coach will be interested to hear about the outcomes of your independent learning activities and the impact they have had on your development or performance.
Review and Refine Learning Objectives
As the executive coaching relationship progresses, your learning objectives are likely to evolve over time. This might be because you achieve some of the objectives you outlined at the start of the relationship, or because you realize that your initial objectives weren’t quite right for the situation you are facing. It is therefore important to review and refine your learning objectives with your coach at regular intervals. Doing this will help you to ensure that your executive coaching sessions continue to be relevant, productive and helpful, and that the questions your coach asks you are appropriate to your needs.
Evaluate and Provide Feedback
It is important to evaluate the effectiveness of your executive coaching sessions and to provide feedback to your coach on a regular basis. To help you do this, it is good practice after each coaching session to make brief notes about the outcomes you reached, and to record how you felt about the session in general. If your coach doesn’t ask you to provide feedback, be proactive and offer to do this at regular intervals. Either way, your coach should welcome your input.
If you have any concerns about the effectiveness of the coaching relationship, it is important to feed this back to your coach in an honest and constructive way, and to come prepared with suggestions as to how the situation might be improved. If the coaching relationship still doesn’t work for you, you and your coach may decide to close it down. If this does happen, it’s important to reflect carefully on what exactly didn’t work, and what might need to change for executive coaching to be more successful for you in the future: does your approach to the process need to change, for example? Or should you conduct more research at the start of the process to make sure the coach you choose is the right one for you? Taking the time to think about these points will help ensure any future experiences of executive coaching you have are more successful.
