Your client doubts the value of your executive leadership coaching. How can you prove its worth?

Executive coaching is a catalyst for enduring leadership excellence and organizational impact. It's not merely about quick wins but about cultivating a foundation for long-term success. Through coaching, leaders develop critical skills like adaptive thinking, resilience, and visionary leadership. These attributes are essential for steering through challenges, inspiring teams, and fostering innovation. By prioritizing continuous personal and professional growth, executive coaching ensures leaders are well-equipped to sustain and elevate their company's trajectory in a rapidly evolving business environment.

Progress happens in between the sessions and depends on your engagement before, during and after the sessions. The more effort you put in, the more results you will see. Being clear about accountability and timeframe needs to be clearly communicated.

As coaches we can get caught into explaining ourselves and feeling as if we need to justify our work. When we experience such feelings, hold those thoughts like a feather and stay in question-mode. Powerful questions are our greatest tools to help a client explore their progress. "How is this working for you?" is an important questioning. And "How else can I help you" is equally effective.

From the onset, it is important to set clear and realistic objectives. Coaching is not a quick fix, but a gradual transformation process. Making your clients have a clear understanding of this helps reduce expectations, appreciate your value and remove every form of doubts.

o assess the impact of executive coaching, establish specific, quantifiable benchmarks from the start. These goals might encompass enhanced team engagement, increased productivity, or more effective conflict resolution. Continuously monitor your progress against these targets throughout the coaching journey. Evaluate whether your leadership strategies are yielding desired results and if your interactions with team members have improved. This ongoing assessment will offer concrete proof of the coaching's value, illustrating its contribution to both your personal development and your organization's achievements.

Feedback is essential for growth in executive coaching. Soliciting feedback from colleagues at all levels provides a comprehensive view of your leadership development. Observations from peers, subordinates, and superiors can reveal how your adjustments are perceived and their impact on the organization. This holistic feedback not only confirms the progress made but also identifies opportunities for further improvement, ensuring your leadership style continues to evolve effectively and positively influences the organizational culture.

Conviene asimismo dar significado a las dudas del cliente. Hay que hacerle entender que dudar forma parte del proceso, que las emociones buscan conducirnos y en ocasiones nos desvían del camino trazado. Contextualizar la incertidumbre dará un marco de desarrollo óptimo para ese acompa?amiento eficaz que procuramos.

Great point! The horizon is sometimes farther than we think and inviting a client to look beyond today as they reflect on their progress is a wonderful approach!

Cultivating a growth mindset around your own personal leadership style requires deep reflective psychological work. Working from a place of authenticity, it is ideal to create the relationship for psychological safety to explore your own personal strengths and opportunities to grow and learn. The process should be both challenging and rewarding. The client should see an immediate mindset shift in their motivation, allowing them to translate this into practical initiatives for their team and the organisation plus more importantly into their personal endeavours. Executive management is a human endeavour and requires intentional focus on improving the skills of both cognitive agility and relational intelligence.

In my 10-plus years experience I have seen a lot of examples of progress for clients. Sometime they don't feel a shift or change in their behavior. I find that the initial sponsor meeting between the client and the supervisor holds amazing power, especially when juxtaposed with a final close-out sponsor meeting. The reflection between two professionals facilitated by the coach can elicit some wonderful joint perceptions and celebrations!