How can you leverage your unique background and skills to coach executives?

Defining a niche as an executive coach is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, it allows you to clearly communicate your unique value proposition to potential clients, enabling them to understand how your expertise aligns with their needs. Secondly, having a niche enables you to focus your marketing efforts on a specific target audience, making it easier to stand out from competitors and attract clients who are specifically seeking your expertise. Thirdly, specializing in a particular area allows you to deepen your knowledge and provide more valuable insights and solutions to clients, enhancing your credibility and reputation.

To effectively coach executives, it is important to showcase your unique background and skills. This can be done by highlighting specific instances where your background has informed successful coaching strategies. It is also crucial to emphasize your ability to understand and navigate various industries, enabling you to tailor coaching approaches accordingly. Additionally, it is essential to communicate how your skills, such as communication, problem-solving, and understanding team dynamics, contribute to executive growth and the achievement of organizational objectives. By adopting this personalized approach, which is rooted in your distinct background, you can establish credibility and resonate with executives who are seeking guidance.

Rather than niche, I prefer to focus on the pressing needs within organizations that my unique background enables me to support. As a black woman who has spent over 2 decades leading global initiatives in Fortune 500 companies, in the tech, financial & professional services industries, and managing hybrid, multicultural teams that have spanned across 5 continents, I am uniquely advantaged to help organizations cultivate leaders who are more collaborative, confident and authentic and able to create inclusive spaces where diverse and underrepresented talent can thrive. And while I can and do support leaders from all walks of life, my lived experience enables me to also specialize in supporting high achieving women and leaders of color.

Identify Specialized Skills: Pinpoint unique skills from your background that align with executive coaching needs. Tailor Approach: Customize coaching strategies based on your specific background, offering a distinctive and effective coaching style. Cultural Sensitivity: Leverage cultural insights from your background for nuanced coaching, fostering understanding and rapport. Highlight Success Stories: Showcase how your unique background has contributed to successful coaching outcomes, building credibility. Continuous Learning: Stay updated with industry trends, combining your unique perspective with ongoing learning for a well-rounded coaching approach.

Identifying your coaching niche can be one of the hardest things to do. After all you have lots of cross over skills and lots of interests. So take a leaf out of your own coaching book, 'Start with the end in mind' Questions to ask your self are what skills do you tend to give away all day long without thinking about them? these are likely to represent you at your most authentic. What you really care about. And somewhere in all that will be where you find your 'Why.' For the majority of us we then have to find a way to monetise this and while sales and marketing may not be your strongest skill it's much easier to master this if you are passionate about your subject and can clearly articulate how you ease your client's pain.

Unconventional and dynamic, my coaching style is a fusion of high-stakes healthcare experience, tech savvy, and strategic consulting acumen. I'm not your typical executive coach. I thrive in transforming complex data into actionable strategies and steering leaders through tumultuous change. With a track record from Accenture to KPMG to Deloitte, I empower executives to excel in chaos, fostering resilient and adaptive leadership for today's relentless business world.

A unique background often brings diverse perspectives. Embrace it. In coaching, varied viewpoints are catalysts for innovative problem-solving and strategic thinking.

Como esse ponto é importante e quando aprendemos a utilizá-lo em nosso favor nos programas em que atuamos, aumentamos as chances de melhores resultados para o Coachee. Em minha experiência profissional anterior ao Coaching, trago na bagagem passagens sólidas com forma??o acadêmica pelo primeiro setor (governo), como empreendedor e também em ONG, onde atuei como captador de recursos e gerente de projetos. De todas essas experiências, trago ensinamentos e insights que fortalecem a prática do Coaching.

Es vital aceptar, trabajar y explotar la diversidad de cada uno para diferenciarse de la competencia. Tenía que haber sido paleontólogo y me dedico a las finanzas y a la financiación. Eso me hizo tener una visión totalmente diferente de las finanzas, de su conocimiento y de cómo trabajar con ellas. Un acercamiento no convencional, que funciona y facilita la adquisición de habilidades para los demás. Me apalanqué sobre esa diversidad, la puse en marcha, funciona y es bien recibida por mis clientes. Con ello, relajo a mi cliente, le hago un acercamiento diferente y sorprendente. Diferente.

Every executive is distinct, and so should be the coaching approach. Your unique background allows you to craft personalized strategies that align with the executive's specific challenges and aspirations. Executives open up when they sense relatability. Your unique journey establishes a connection. It builds trust, essential for a coaching relationship to thrive.

It's important to respond to the clients' needs; however, it's also wise to anticipate and proactively assess and manage client expectations throughout the coaching process, which could be as simple as anticipating potential challenges and offering alternative approaches. Also, instead of just being respectful and sensitive to context, add value by showcasing your understanding and expertise on matters relevant to your clients' cultural, organisational and personal contexts. Establish stronger rapport and credibility by offering insights unique to your background and experience.

De fato, a minha origem e experiência na Engenharia é uma espécie de “vantagem”. Os Coachee ficam mais confortáveis em tratar com um “colega”, que viveu as mesmas dores, anseios, desafios e necessidades pelos quais eles podem estar passando nesse processo de mudan?a e transforma??o.

An executive coach must respect the fact that his/her client are busy clients, with different needs and unique challenges. Being flexible and accommodating is key in executive coaching. I coach women executives, and hence I offer flexibility in my practice, whether they want the session online or offline, at night or early in the morning ..etc. to adapt to their needs - this builds rapport and trust in the coaching relationship.

Each of us is walking a unique journey in our own lives. Therefore, it can be said that everyone possesses distinctive experiences and, through those experiences, unique skills. In this sense, I hold the opinion that the uniqueness of one's background and skills doesn't determine the effectiveness of coaching. I believe the core principles of coaching lie within the trust relationship between both parties. Providing an environment where clients can freely express their experiences and opinions, believing in their potential, drawing out latent abilities, and, above all, standing as an ally for the client regardless of circumstances – I consider these stances to be the most crucial aspects for a coach.

As per Erickson 8 stages of psychosocial development, one's background is a prominent cause of biases. To coach others, be mindful whether your background is a strength or not with regard to the needs of the executives depending on you for advice. Next use the Problem Strategy Outcome (PSO) model to explain how your skills were relevant in problem solving and scaling career growth. Lastly don't stop learning.

Always seek feedback after you finalize your coaching journey with an executive, you can actually learn a lot about your audience and the type of challenges they currently face.

Our clients and the people around us are our biggest teachers. As executive coaches, we get the pleasure of working with leaders and visionaries creating a better world for everyone. Everything that you bring to the table as a coach comes from your lived experiences. The more you coach, the more you grow personally and professionally by learning from every single person you spend time with. This benefits your coaching clients because ultimately most leaders face many of the same challenges, and having a width and depth of experience gives you plenty to draw from as you work together to confront and overcome these issues together and find actionable, easy-to-implement solutions to their problems and help them with blind spots.

Having a back ground in adult education I totally agree. We know up to 90% of learning occurs through non formal opportunities and the greatest of these can come from our own mistakes and those shared by others. Considering how much a coach can learn from their clients this is an immense asset. I reflect on my earlier years facilitating substance misuse to groups and individuals who had much more experience of this than my academic learning. During this period I learned more about human behaviour than any PHD would have taught me. Anyone who coaches in the executive world will know the real corporate challenges and anyone who coaches teams will know that they see things very differently. This is why I disagree with tight niche coaching.

When you are an executive coach, you need to be careful not to fall into the role of a consultant. A consultant is hired to solve a problem. A coach is hired to help the executive solve the problem.

I would not be a coach if I don't leverage my four decades of rich and diverse experience. I am able to intuitively spot the concerns and issues clients have , relate it with my own experience and pick up a story and authentic methodology to guide the coachee. Ah, I feel lucky to do it effectively...

Imagine a potion that includes - About 30 moves - multiple countries - 8 educational institutions - 5 languages - leading a team with 70 nationalities - avid storyteller - intuitive behavioural science enthusiast What will you get? A bunch of life experiences in a bouquet of stories and human behaviours. Who wouldn't want to leverage such an experience and make it magical?

If your background spans various disciplines, leverage it. Executives often grapple with multifaceted challenges. Your ability to navigate diverse domains enriches your coaching toolkit.

La resistencia de los ejecutivos hacia el entrenamiento es un desafío común. Para superar esto, es esencial presentarles herramientas transformadoras que destaquen cómo el coaching puede elevar su desempe?o a niveles aún más altos. Mostrar casos de éxito, evidenciar el impacto positivo en habilidades clave y resaltar la conexión directa entre el desarrollo personal y el éxito organizativo son enfoques efectivos. Al utilizar herramientas que permitan una introspección profunda y la identificación de áreas de mejora, se puede persuadir a los ejecutivos de que el coaching no solo es beneficioso, sino esencial para alcanzar su máximo potencial.