How to ensure results from executive coaching

Written by Zoe Lewis from The Leadership Coaches

Coaching is focused on people. Whether it’s coaching an individual or a team, it’s a process of supporting people to achieve more and reach their goals.

Executive coaching, however, has to go one step further. While at the core it’s about working with senior leaders to overcome challenges, or helping them to find the best way forward to reach their career objectives, it also has to factor in the needs of the business.

For executive coaching to be truly successful, then the requirements of senior leaders must be aligned with overall business goals, and this should lead to tangible results.

This is our purpose here at The Leadership Coaches. If you’re not getting the value you expect from executive coaching, then we have shared our five recommended steps to ensure you get results.

1. Sophisticated coach matching

We don’t think it’s right to use computer algorithms to match a coach with a coachee. People are complicated and can have varying needs. It’s best to take the time to explore who the coachee is and what they hope to get out of their coaching journey. Then it’s about making real, human decisions on which coach could be a good fit.

We always offer our coachees a choice.

Even though we’ll be confident that the match is good in principle, there still has to be the right chemistry. A coachee needs to be able to feel comfortable around their coach, and so spending a little bit of time with them first, to explore if the match is right, all helps to ensure better results.

2. Sponsored coaching

We always recommend sponsored coaching. This is using someone - who is typically a senior stakeholder - as the ‘eye in the business’ to provide honest feedback, to genuinely measure results.

Creating this triangulation of coach, coachee and sponsor allows for a feedback loop that is essential for aligning the coaching process with organisational goals, whilst also producing the advantage that the executive's development is visible and impactful.

The process enables a coach to tailor coaching sessions to address specific gaps and leverage existing capabilities.

By facilitating feedback from multiple sources, senior leaders can gain a well-rounded understanding of their performance and areas for growth, and the impact of this is seen and shared as part of the process, providing genuine transparency.

3. Transparent communications

There must be open lines of communication between the business and the coachee, so that everyone’s needs are met.

Executive coaching is normally outsourced to provide true confidentiality and impartiality, but a good executive coaching firm will also understand and address the needs of the business. This makes sure that the coaching delivers an overarching difference. This can only be achievable with open communication and trust.

4. Full support

Executive coaches should offer more than just coaching. There also has to be business support.

Working with The Leadership Coaches, we ensure that our clients get an account manager to help businesses manage the coaching processes. In addition to this, every coachee and sponsor will get a login to our portal, providing them with instant access to a range of supporting information, including extra materials to aid them around coaching sessions.

Senior leaders don’t have a great deal of time, and this important issue has to be factored in and worked around to ensure that it doesn’t impact results. If you’re not getting full support as a business, the outcome probably won’t be as strong.

5. Feedback and reporting

Coaching can be a wonderful experience.

Working with senior leaders to help them overcome challenges or realise goals can be truly rewarding for everyone involved. But at The Leadership Coaches, we feel strongly that coaching should be far more than just a nice experience. It must make a tangible difference.

Sponsored coaching provides results that can be reported on, and we get first hand feedback from stakeholders to establish if there has been positive change. More than this, though, we also offer stakeholder discovery calls to provide more in depth feedback.

The process of development doesn’t end when the coaching sessions have been completed. As people, we are always growing and learning, and coaching can always be relevant. Taking advantage of more in depth feedback like this will ensure that the business and its senior leaders are always moving forward in the right way.

Executive coaching results

How many of the five points here are you seeing in your executive coaching? If it’s not all five, then you could be getting better results.

If you’d like to explore The Leadership Coaches’ results focused approach, then please get in touch.