Coaching is a billion-dollar industry. Either companies are securing them for their executives, or individuals are paying out of their pockets to get this resource on their side. According to executiv+co, executive coaching—once looked upon with skepticism—is now embraced as the way to a more enriched workplace, and leaders have discovered that it works.
If your company invests in you in this way, you may see it as a perk; but in some cases, it is a way to correct management or leadership styles that may be veering off the tracks. No matter, coaching has been around for more than 30 years, and apparently, has only blossomed.
The Benefits You Can Gain from Executive Coaching
It’s a great EQ enhancer.
Your emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) is so incredibly important in leadership. Whether you are in the C-suite or a small business leader, it’s important to have keen self-awareness and awareness of your interpersonal and one-to-one engagement with your clients, your reports and others. Imagine, if you had a clearer understanding of self, what power you could unleash at work. An executive coach can do that. You’d know when to dial it up or dial it down. Self-awareness is key to emotional intelligence, and it will make you stronger with interpersonal interactions, thanks to the strengths assessments rooted in positive psychology that coaches engage. Knowing yourself is also a key tenant of authenticity, which will allow others to see you more clearly. You will also be able to see others more clearly. An executive coach with a keen cultural insight can also help navigate unconscious biases that may stand in the way of a company’s ultimate success because it can clear the way of filtered and sometimes inaccurate assessments of talent.
It increases empathy.
Executive coaches have the power to unleash empathy in leaders.
Understanding others or at least the capacity to understand can make you a better leader. According to some research, there really are three forms that we need to master as leaders for it to have an impact:
- cognitive empathy – where you can imagine what it’s like in your mind to be in someone else’s “shoes”
- social empathy – where you can immediately feel what someone else must be feeling in any given situation
- empathetic concern – where you not only feel it or think it, but you certainly can muster concern for the other person in the form of wanting to engage and help them
It makes your goals clearer.
If you’ve ever felt that you were bogged down in work and having a hard time reaching your goals, it could be due to cognitive clutter that day-to-day work can cause. An executive coach can help you in your quest to prioritize the important and delegate or discard lower-level tasks that bog us down.
It speeds up and fuels goal-crushing.
Executive coaches can help you reach or exceed your goals faster, and who doesn’t want that? But be aware, the self-assessment that is involved may not be as attractive to some. The idea of uncovering the strengths you have may uncover the weaknesses. If you are an executive coaching client, be prepared to put ego aside in order to do the real work that will allow you to crush it faster and cement your reputation for performance excellence.
It makes you a better leader.
As you begin to know yourself and others better; you will become a better person. Better people make better leaders. Better leaders make companies better, small or large. Empathy and EQ are key to that. You will build better power relationships, leverage your strength, and achieve what you want.
Listen to the brand new episode of The Culture Soup Podcast that launched Tuesday, May 14th called “The Coaching Corner.” L. Michelle Smith is the host executive and business coach. It airs every second Tuesday of the month and hacks your goals while tackling the pain points of corporate executives and small business owners. Smith is also an official business coach for BE FWD, June 19–22 in Charlotte, NC.
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