Why Work With A Coach?

As popular as it is for leaders to have a coach, there is still quite a bit of misconception about what coaching is and when it can be helpful.? Last week, I wrote a bit about what coaching is and what a coach does. This week, I want to write about why people reach out to a coach in the first place. To be more specific, a leadership or executive coach.?

First, let’s look at what triggers the call to a coach. The three most common triggers that I’ve seen are:

• New role with increased responsibility. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Whether we attribute that quote to Churchill, Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, or Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, most of us can agree it’s true. This is why one of the most common calls I get is triggered by a promotion. Either from a boss who says, “Scott, I’m promoting Julie to VP. It’s a stretch role for her, but I know she can do it—will you help her get her feet under her?” or from Julie herself: “Scott, I’ve just been promoted to VP. It’s a big role and I really want to get it right—can you help?” Responsible leaders feel the weight of their role and are willing to go the extra mile to ensure they can rise to the occasion.?
• Feedback from others. Usually, this call sounds like: “Scott, we recently finished our 360o feedback process and I had a pretty clear gap in X category; it’s important to me to address it.” I love these calls because they are an early indicator of a client who is serious about doing the work necessary to become a better leader. It shows they are humble enough to admit they aren’t perfect and courageous enough to ask for help—two important indicators of success.?
• Self-Assessment. This comes in many different packages, but the common denominator is that the leader has done some soul-searching and isn’t happy with what she sees. Either she feels like she should be further along in her career, she’s not satisfied with her effectiveness in a certain area, or she needs to improve a relationship with a key person in the organization. Again, these calls are great indicators of a leader who is ready to grow.

Certainly, there are other reasons, but these are the main three I see. Now let’s look at the types of things these leaders want to work on.?

• Clarity About Priorities. Sometimes the leader is running in too many directions and needs to figure out where to focus her time and talents. At the top of organizations, especially lean ones, this can be an ongoing and not-so-obvious set of choices.?
• Self-awareness. Often, leaders just want to reduce their blind spots. They want to understand how they are perceived by others and how that perception influences their effectiveness.?
• Situational Awareness. Another common area of focus is on having a clearer understanding of the organization, who the key stakeholders are, etc.—this is especially important when the leader is new to the company or the department.?
• Behavior Change. The most common work that I do is around behavioral change. Finding a behavior that, if improved, would have a significant impact on the leader’s effectiveness and therefore their organization’s success.?
• Improved Relationships. Strained relationships between key people or even whole departments can be crippling for leaders, so building or repairing relationships is another crucial area of focus.?
• Personal Accountability. To be clear, your coach doesn’t “hold you accountable,” but having a regular recurring conversation with someone about your progress often makes you feel more accountable. If it’s your coach, he's particularly well equipped to help you figure out why you’re not making progress.
• Navigating Change. Change is hard. For everyone. Having an unbiased, trained 3rd party to help you journey through it can be useful in helping you see things clearly and find tools to manage the change more effectively.
• Problem-Solving & Decision-Making. Trained coaches are great sounding boards when you are struggling with an important decision or problem that needs to be solved. They can help you organize your thoughts, check your assumptions, think of things from a different perspective and test your responses.

This is far from a complete description of all the ways that coaches work with clients. But, I hope that this has given you a bit of clarity about how coaching can be helpful to executives and other leaders.? I’d love to hear what questions you have—feel free to drop them in the comments or just reach out to me directly.