WHY CHOOSE A COACH?

Leadership techniques a coach may use

Although many coaches often act as a relatively passive “sounding board” letting coaches find their own answers and future courses of action, increasing, effective coaches are provided a stringer leadership development role and deploying a whole range of techniques and processes in the coaching process.  These techniques and processes help executives and managers to:

• Generate new business options
• Provide strong leadership
• Communicate clearly and decisively
• Get information quickly
• Innovative where needed
• Solve tough problems
• Lift revenues and/or reduce costs
• Find or penetrate new markets
• Deal with performance mediocrity
• Lift individual and team performance
• Make better business decisions of all kinds

Why use a professional mentor coach
 
A lot of organisations and executives jump into coaching and mentoring programs seeing them as a “quick fix”. Many jump into it but don’t provide the necessary planning to their programming, nor the necessary support and resources to make it really work. So a lot of organisations may have coaching and/or mentoring programs in theory rather than in practice.

It is important to remember that Executive Coaching does differ from Mentoring in a number of ways. Coaching is often focused on addressing specific development needs. Coaching can also include the development of coaching as a leadership style. Mentoring, on the other hand, provides guidance and direction in how to think about business issues, and competitiveness by using an exchange of experiences and scenarios that look at issues strategically. Notwithstanding this, mentoring and coaching are also frequently referred to interchangeably and appropriately overlap in the following areas to achieve the desired outcome sought by the coachee and the needs of the business: Both:

• require trust and commitment in the process and substantial interpersonal skills from the coach and the mentor
• aim for the individual to increase his or her effectiveness and apply it to the tasks at hand in a positive manner
• encourage stretch and provide support and challenge in pursuit of this
• focus on learning and development
• can include career guidance to review career goals and capabilities or a focus on the future of the business being driven by the coachee
• involve an exchange of life and career experiences
• both are collaborative alliances

We can think of Executive Coaching as working with Executives to enhance their leadership effectiveness, performance and career progression within a specific organisational context. This may include development and integration of specific mindsets and behaviours as well as a focus on identified requirements needed for the application of particular capability.

We can think of Mentoring for Executives as Guidance and direction from an experienced person such that the individual is challenged to explore and integrate new perspectives.

The leadership coach and strategic business issues

Put simply-in today’s ever more competitive and challenging business climate, we need more competent leaders. Here is where leadership coaching comes in.  To develop a leader, we need to continually develop them as a person – someone who has not yet tapped all of his or her potential, someone who still has many qualities to bring forward. Leadership Coaching helps leaders clarify their visions, beliefs, and values, and stretches their capacity to lead and influence positively.

The strategic benefits of Leadership Coaching are:

• Create clear goals and a success plan to get there
• Generate more decision options
• Accomplish goals/targets
• Attain greater job/career satisfaction
• Determine new/different career paths
• Develop a better balance between work and life
• Increase overall levels of productivity
• Achieve better performance reviews
• Enhance conflict management skills
• Transition effectively in to new position/promotion
• Become more assertive
• Increase self-confidence
• Make decisions easier
• Become more self-aware
• Know your road blocks/challenges and how to get through them.

Transition and the business coach

An effective business coach is often a key person in bringing about a major personal or organisational transition. As such, the coach needs to understanding how change transitions are often brought about and to thereby make the most appropriate intervention.

A good coach will always know that an individual can bring about a change by his or herself or he or she can be a “victim” of it (with very little choice about its what, when, and how). Resisting the change can slow it down or defer it for a while, but it will rarely stop it. If an individual wants to succeed in handling change of any kind he or she should learn to look on change as a valued experience or an experience which presents an opportunity for growth and improvement.

 

A business life coach

Business Coaching helps get individual, team and enterprise wise processes and people operating at optimal performance levels.  When working in a business coaching relationship, the aim is to get an individually committed to doing his or her best in work.

Better business focus, business motivation, business management and business results are all the ultimate goals when you are engaged in business coaching relationship.

Life Coaching, on the other hand, aims to help an individual with life in general (including the parts of it that take place outside normal working hours). When working in a life coaching relationship, the aim is to get an individually committed to doing his or her best in their life in general life.  

Better Life focus, life motivation, life direction, life management and life results are all the ultimate goals when you are engaged in a life coaching relationship

Of course, these two approaches and areas of focus do not always need to be separate or involve separate people in the coaching role. A single coaching relationship may successfully cover both of these aspects.