The principle of Continued Professional Development is not a new one, with many industries – those medical or technical in scope particularly – having strict governance in place to ensure practioners are investing time (and often money) in maintaining and enhancing their skills.
From a more general business or corporate perspective, we’ve seen far more focus on leadership skills and behaviours over the past decade, with many senior leaders not equipped with the natural ability to manage a large team or deal with individual conflict or the ever-present spectre of inner sanctum politics.
It’s no surprise then to see Executive Coaching growing rapidly over the past few years, with figures from iPEC Coach Training estimating the global industry to be worth over $4.5billion in 2023, a 62% increase from the data recorded in 2019. In the UK alone, over 370,000 people are offering coaching services on LinkedIn!
Uniquely, Executive Coaching is positioned as one of only a few industries best suited to a mid-career entry point. By that, we mean those individuals who have spent a significant amount of their working life in a corporate environment, with several of those years at a senior level. Ultimately, that’s the background we have at The Honeybee Group and why we decided to offer Executive Coaching as a core service.
What is the focus of Executive Coaching?
In contrast to mentoring or therapy, Executive Coaching is tailored to the development of leadership skills and focuses specifically on an individual’s professional goals and challenges. Generally, an Executive Coach is hired (or paid for) by an organisation whereas costs associated with mentoring and therapy tend to be personally funded.
From a topic perspective, the conversation can revolve around enhancing strategic thinking, improving communication, honing decision making or any number of targeted development opportunities. What’s important to distinguish however, is that an Executive Coach is not there to provide answers, they are there to guide a coachee through scenarios and frameworks that allow them to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
How does an Executive Coach hold a client accountable?
As above, this is not about providing neatly packaged answers to a client. Executive Coaching goes well beyond offering advice or sharing experiences (and in some instances this should be avoided altogether as it can inadvertently project a pre-existing bias onto the coachee). In a simple sense, the coach is there to hold the executive accountable for their actions and provide honest, transparent feedback.
Across a series of sessions (standalone, single coaching sessions are not recommended and that’s not us trying to generate additional income!), a good coach will challenge perspectives, encourage reflection, identify limiting beliefs or behaviours, highlight blind spots and explore new ways of thinking. With constant feedback (or feedforward), executives can create a clearer picture of their strengths, enabling them to make positive changes and drive performance improvement.
What sort of Performance Improvements are we talking about?
Unlike mentoring or therapy, Executive Coaching is designed to explicitly improve performance and achieve tangible results. The desired results should be defined at the outset of a relationship and a measurement framework put in place. They can be hard metrics (a department increasing revenue) or softer metrics (more positive feedback from teams or peers) but having a goal to aim at is critical.
We’ve worked collaboratively with executives in the past and present to identify obstacles in their career, develop action plans and implement strategies that improve efficiency and effectiveness in terms of their management of people, navigation through the organisation or handling performance dips. The value of Executive Coaching in these scenarios is to equip an individual with the tools, insights and self-reflective capability to achieve their professional goals.
How do I become more Self-Reflective through executive coaching?
Personal growth is equally as important as professional development but can often take a back seat. The reality is that most leaders got to their position because they were technically strong – a high achiever in the Finance Department or Marketing Department – and not because they are well-rounded, ready-made leaders.
Through the power of Executive Coaching, individuals gain more self-awareness by exploring their values, their strengths and (perhaps most importantly) their perceived weaknesses. This period of ring-fenced self-reflection can be difficult to achieve in an environment of constant meetings and demands, but allows alignment of actions to personal and professional aspirations. By doing this, gaps in style or approach can be identified and effectively addressed.
Is Executive Coaching right for me?
Many of the principles of Executive Coaching are shared with mentoring, but the distinction comes down to how the coach disperses information. In a mentoring environment, the primary focus is a more experienced individual sharing knowledge and advice, vs. the Executive Coaching focus on personalised guidance tailored to an individual set of goals and challenges.
The distinction with therapy is even more pronounced, where the focus on emotional and psychological areas to improve well-being is the primary target. Certainly for us at The Honeybee Group, we know our area of expertise lies in professional development and accompanying personal growth and as such would always recommend an alternative professional if we don’t feel we’re qualified to deal with a certain client.
But if you’re currently at a senior level in your organisation and looking for unique, targeted support in improving your leadership development, we believe Executive Coaching will be worth the investment. With the focus on accountability, feedback, performance improvement and growth, the independent help of an Executive Coach can accelerate your career trajectory or assist in unpicking some of the tougher conundrums you might be facing in the course of day-to-day corporate life.