A Research Paper By Rony Elklayany, Executive Coach, LEBANON
Executive Coaching Effect of Coaching on Performance
Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player ~ Bill Gates
How often have you seen certain players who possess incredible talent but lack motivation? (Wiley, 2020). The word “player” is not always related to sports; sometimes “player” is used in places such as business or similar fields…
Being coached is like being organized to lead the right way to achieve what you want and your vision the best way possible for a brighter future. The lack of coaching triggers performance and can cause failure in steps, since “Training is superior” as per Brian Gearity in 2016 when he explained how coaching is essential.
What Is Executive Coaching?
Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It’s helping them to learn rather than teaching them ~ Tim Gallway
According to research, executive coaching differs from mentorship, organizational development, counseling, and psychotherapy.
Executive coaching is a collaborative practice that aims to help people improve quickly and become the better version of themselves. It is frequently tied to work and sought to enhance performance or behavior. It’s a goal-oriented, individually designed learning for a busy executive. Believing that the client is creative and resourceful by nature, the coach focuses on providing support and guiding the client to hold accountable for taking productive steps towards improved high performance in achieving goals.
Executive coaching is characterized by a short-term, time-limited, fee-based, goal-specific, action-oriented, and individually designed approach to learning. It makes use of input and provides some objectivity. The study discovered widespread business misunderstanding regarding the theoretical and practical differences between executive coaching, mentoring, and various other one-to-one support approaches.
Why Introduce Executive Coaching?
The goal of coaching is the goal of good management to make the most of an organization’s valuable resources ~ Harvard Business Review
There is little in existing research evidence why companies may introduce executive coaching. However, five baseline motives were identified highlighting why organizations were so excited to use them. Keeping in mind that many other reasons might also be behind or develop from them, we will be listed below the main as follows:
- Accelerated Development
Executive coaching helped the organizations prepare and appoint “high potentials” to be ready for higher responsibilities and roles. Coaches will help the candidates discover their competencies and find their way to effectively perform in the new role in the fastest way possible.
- Implementation of Change
It served as a supportive agent for executives and professionals throughout organizational changes and ensured the effective implementation of that change. While executive coaching involves changing personal behavior, helping the team own their actions and roles, it will help accelerate the time taken to implement the imposed new changes effectively.
- Critical friend
Senior managers need to re-motivate or refocus their efforts to achieve personal targets and organizational goals. However, researchers found it helpful and practical to have that external objective critical friend who can guide them through powerful questioning to find the best judgment for higher performance. Coaches act like that independent external sounding board and critical friend.
- Underpin Wider Programs
Executive Coaching focuses on challenging the executives and senior managers to explore themselves for better performance. Challenging aims for effective planning and execution of ongoing development programs and positive feedback channels, which will affect the efficiency and improvement of performance. And throughout this journey, executives and senior managers will learn to be more open to accepting feedback and challenge themselves by getting engaged in broader personal development programs.
- Keeping the best
Coaching is a performance and action-oriented process that helps people learn to do things effectively and efficiently. This process plays an essential role in promotions and rewards decisions, which will positively reflect on the company’s strategies for retaining highly skilled and critical staff.
Benefits of Executive Coaching
Executive coaching will come with benefits; the whole idea is to improve behaviors and human strategies to grow in the future. People will apply to learn and expand their knowledge on what they are willing to become and achieve. A Fortune 500 corporation sought to investigate the return on investment of executive coaching. They discovered that 77% of respondents said mentoring significantly influenced at least one of nine business metrics. They also found that overall productivity and employee happiness were the most positively influenced areas (impacting customer satisfaction, employee engagement, quality, annualized financial results, and more). Overall, their research found that Executive Coaching yielded a 788% return on investment (ROI). According to the analysis, discounting the benefits of staff retention, there was a 529% return on investment. (Executive Briefing: Case Study on the ROI of Executive Coaching, Merrill C. Anderson, Ph.D., MetrixGlobal, LLC).
Many studies have found how coaching is beneficial, and mostly it’s a must in organizations or individuals. Many others are studying the ROI of executive coaching additions to the organizations since many companies need to coach their employees or trainees to achieve and grow with the company’s beliefs; in that case, companies thrive with a thriving community that they have built from coaching. Some of the benefits that Harvard proved is that coaching can gain more job and life satisfaction for an individual since it can work on their body language during interviews or meetings and their behavior during working hours in the presence of colleagues/or customers. A person becoming more self-reliant, and that is by gaining the experience from an expert to succeed, can teach greater responsibility and accountability for actions and commitments. For example, some individuals have no responsibility at all, and it is like a bad habit for them, so they thrive on changing their routine to become better and achieve more and reach higher work ranks.
However, the benefits of coaching in the organizations are also high, and statistics are available below:
- Improved executive productivity (reported by 53% of executives)
- Improvements in organizational strengths (48%)
- Gains in customer service (39%)
- Increased retention of executives (32%)
- Enhanced direct report/supervisor relationships (>70%)
- Improved teamwork (67%)
- Improved peer-to-peer working relationships (63%)
- Great job satisfaction (52%)
Organizations empower employees to take responsibility for their tasks and jobs since they coach them on how to do the job if they are still amateurs and do the job their way, which leads to excellent individual performance. Coaching can identify the strengths of both the organization and individual whether they have good communication skills or behavior, push employees to be motivated and hardworking to excel in their tasks, and develop high potential employees, as mentioned before.
Challenges Facing Executive Coaching
The most common problems of lack of coaching start with time and distance. Sometimes, people must travel to certain places or offices to guarantee the coaching they need. It could sometimes lead to the lack of motivation to make all this trouble, especially when the time required to attend is longer than the actual coaching period. Nowadays, video conferences are taking place, and all coaches teach online. It could be a time-saver to many, but it is better off being visible or face-to-face since it could enhance their technique and skills.
The lack of objectivity is a different problem that is not only encountered in coaching but also different communication ways. The lack of detachment from the coach can cause a lack of trust. A successful executive coach works in an organized way to teach the clients and build a trustworthy relationship with them. How would you trust a coach to continue your life strategies when they don’t promise and deliver results that make you feel better and more confident. Disagreements can occur when there is no respect, interpersonal skills, and specific goals to follow. For example, life coaches must work delicately with their clients since they give them the help they need. They encourage self-reflection and self-confidence, so clients feel it’s time to work to become the better version of themselves. Respect always comes first for clients to feel comfortable and willing to continue their path.
A coach uses evidence as a “weapon” for building trust between him and their client; it helps the session become more apparent and more personal to each person. The lack of long-term planning is an issue faced by coaches and clients. A coach must set a time plan with the client to grow and benefit from all the learning during the sessions, and becoming the better version of yourself takes time and dedication. A study on 31 managers participated in eight-week, one-on-one coaching that detailed coaching processes tailored to the agency context. They found that while their training intervention with managers increased manager productivity by 22%, adding a one-to-one (8-week) coaching intervention after the training pushed productivity to 88%. Olivero, G., Bane, K.D., and Kopelman, R.E. (Winter, 1997). Executive coaching as a transfer of training tool: Effects on productivity in a public agency. Public Personnel Management, 26, 4, 461-469.
It will eventually depend on the company’s culture or the workplace atmosphere; if the coach is not supportive enough, clients would feel demotivated and unwilling to continue learning. Knowing the clients will benefit from it, they have to make sure the learning process is organized and well-planned. Creating a coaching culture is highly recommended where the company works toward embedding coaching in how people work daily. In other words, this development will lead to implementing a new culture providing coaching, formally and informally, at all employment levels, within and across functions and departments (BlessingWhite, 2009; Clutterbuck and Megginson, 2006, 2005a).
Executive Coaching Is a Path Led by an Expert Consultant to Help Clients
In conclusion, Executive coaching is a path led by an expert consultant to help clients achieve what they view as a weakness and turn them into strength and use their fear to become a better person in the society of their workplace. There are multiple behavioral techniques and methods to form a bond that will push clients to be better versions of themselves and lead people in their fields. Like all methods, there are pros and cons. Still, most studies show that coaching is an important way for organizations and individuals to enhance the work environment, better communication skills, and build responsibility.
Every person or organization must include executive coaching in their learning since it is essential for clients to improve and gain valuable opinions and feedback.
It will help clients acquire more know-how and learn the “how to move forward with it” to put them on the right path and help them become better professionals or experts in their fields. It also nourishes the fierce desire for whoever wants to learn something new and add more value to their knowledge.
Everyone on this planet will benefit from the help of others to learn something new in general or discover more about themselves in specific. Despite the need for guidance, each of us needs an experienced, qualified coach to help achieve this; studies show how the results and the effect of executive coaching are essential.
References
Merrill C. Anderson, Ph.D. “Executive Briefing: Case Study on the ROI of Executive Coaching”, MetrixGlobal, LLC
Olivero G, bane K D, Kopelman R E, “Executive Coaching as a Transfer of Training Tool: Effects on Productivity in a Public Agency”, Public personnel Management, Vol. 26, Winter
Executive Coaching: Inspiring Performance at Work, IES
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