Are You A Good Candidate For Executive Coaching?

Many of the world's most admired corporations, from GE to Goldman Sachs, invest in coaching. Annual spending on coaching in the US is estimated at roughly $1 Billion Dollars.

Harvard Business Review

For years, CEOs of some of the most successful and largest companies have relied on executive coaches. Henry McKinnell, CEO of Pfizer, Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, and David Pottruck, CEO of Charles Schwab & Co., are just a few who rely on a "trusted adviser”.

The Business Journal

Very often, when you change your perspective, you see things differently, make different decisions, and get different results.

Brian Tracy

You are the CEO of your own life, start making executive decisions today.

Stephen Luke

If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you'll find you've done it.

George Bernard Shaw

• How often are you the best version of yourself?
  
  
•  Do you think you can work at higher levels of productivity and effectiveness?
  
  
•  Do you wish you had a confidential trusted advisor to share your innermost thoughts?
  
  
•  If you had an executive coach, what would be some of the issues, topics and problems you would like to resolve?

An executive coach can help you more consistently become the best possible version of yourself. Self-awareness is the master skill and an excellent executive coach can help you develop insightful self-analysis and actionable game plans.

But sometimes people seek executive coaching for the wrong reasons. If you’re considering working with an executive coach, check out this list of 15 ways people can fool themselves about what it’s like working with a coach.

1. YOU ONLY WANT ADVICE, OR YOU WANT YOUR COACH TO MAKE YOUR DECISIONS FOR YOU: In some cases, it’s good to hire a coach who is a subject matter expert (SME). Other times you need a coach who is simply an expert at coaching. You can learn from the experience of a veteran coach, but they should not be making your decisions for you. They can give you some advice, but you should be the final decision maker. A coach who is an SME can dramatically shorten your learning curve, but you will be the one doing the work outside the coaching session. The coach is your thought partner. They ask intelligent questions to get you thinking and engaging in self-reflection, leading to new vistas.

2. YOU DON’T WANT TO DO WORK OUTSIDE THE COACHING SESSION: Every January at the start of the new year people make all sorts of New Year’s resolutions. They’re going to go to the gym more often. They’re going to have a better diet and lose weight. They’re going to cut back on smoking and cut back on drinking. These are all wonderful goals. However, you cannot hire your personal trainer to run on the treadmill for you or to lift your weights. Improvement is a do-it-yourself project. During the coaching session you engage in a high-quality conversation with your coach to increase your awareness. Then, outside the coaching session, you continue that self-reflection and self-analysis to arrive at new self-understandings and decisions.

3. YOU DON’T WANT TO GET OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE: There’s an old expression, “People love new things, but no one wants to change”. You come to a coach to make changes in your life, your business or your academic pursuits. The behaviors that brought you to the coach are not working for you. Something has to shift. Your thinking has to change. Your behavior patterns need to be altered. The coach helps you with these, but you have to be open to these new ways of being. You need to be “comfortable while you are uncomfortable”. Ask yourself, “If I continue with my old ways, that is simply long-term suffering. I can have some discomfort when I try new things, and then I will leave the old suffering behind.”

4. YOU DON’T WANT TO LET GO OF WHAT YOU HAVE: If what you currently have is not working well for you, you need to be willing to release it. Someone said, “If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, all you’ll get is the same thing”. Change can be scary, but it can also be extremely energizing and exciting. It is absolutely mysterious and uncertain, because you really don’t know what’s ultimately going to happen. Engage your curiosity and increase your trust about life and the world, and you will see amazing results.

5. YOU COME TO A COACH PRIMARILY TO RECEIVE VALIDATION: I’ve had some executive coaching clients come to me and ask me to essentially give them my “seal of approval”. They wanted an outside, expert opinion as to whether they were on the right track, and doing things correctly. This is not the purpose of executive coaching, to have someone stand in judgment of you. The coach is there to support you 100%, and validate you as needed, but if validation is all you’re looking for, you won’t be making many significant changes. You ultimately need to give yourself your own validation. You want to use your coach as a change agent.

6. YOU’VE BEEN FORCED TO WORK WITH AN EXECUTIVE COACH: Perhaps you underwent a 360° review, or you were placed on a performance improvement plan (PIP) by your superiors, and as a result, executive coaching was a requirement. I have had many such clients come to me when they’ve been so mandated by their organization. This can be fine as long as the client is motivated to make substantive changes in their behavior and they see the value in working with an executive coach. However, when they feel they’ve been coerced into coaching, this does not work well. In our first coaching session, this is something I carefully manage so that the client is properly motivated.

7. YOU TAKE A PASSIVE APPROACH TO THE COACHING SESSIONS: You want to be an active participant in the coaching sessions. You should do far more talking than the coach. The coach will ask intelligent questions that get you to think and to review your behavior, but you will be doing the work in the coaching session, not the coach. This work involves introspection and being thoughtful about your answers. Come to the coaching sessions with some things you’d like to discuss, issues you’d like to work on, problems you’d like to solve and questions you have for the coach. That makes for a vibrant dialogue were both participants are well-engaged.

8. YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A QUICK FIX: Engagement with an executive coach does not need to last forever. In fact, it probably shouldn’t. If the client and the coach agree on a set of goals in a timeframe to achieve them, that’s the best possible arrangement. Executive coaching, when done properly, allows you to make big mental shifts that are sustainable. If you’re looking for a Band-Aid approach, that’s not a good use of your time.

9. YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A CONSULTANT, NOT A COACH: If you have a well-defined business problem, and you hire the correct consultant, you can resolve this issue with good effect. The problem may even be resolved relatively quickly. When you hire an executive coach, they are not your consultant or trainer. They’re your thought partner and advisor. They ask questions to get you thinking and reflecting. Reflection and self-awareness takes time. Self-analysis and introspection cannot be done with the snap of the fingers.

10. YOU WANT YOUR COACH TO BE A THERAPIST: When a client comes to executive coaching, they need to be emotionally and mentally available and present. If they have issues in their history that are plaguing them, these will block them from focusing on the matters at hand. If a client is too emotional or too mentally distracted or talks about their past too much, these are all signs that this client may need a therapist to help them deal with these issues. I have many clients that work with me in executive coaching who also have a psychotherapist they work with.

11. YOU JUST WANT TO VENT: As the client, you should be doing far more talking than your coach does. However, if you talk too much, and repeat yourself, or go off on tangents, this is not conducive to good coaching. It may be that you don’t understand how coaching works. However, it could also be that your speechifying is a method of avoiding doing the work. If you are dominating the conversation and not allowing your coach to come into it, you are keeping them at a distance and not utilizing them properly. Coaching needs to be a two-way dialogue.

12. YOU’RE LOOKING FOR TIPS AND TACTICS RATHER THAN STRATEGIC CHANGES IN YOUR THINKING AND BEHAVIOR: You can you find an endless number of tips, advice and tactics in any discipline by reading books, watching videos and listening to audios. However, only by working with an executive coach can you clearly examine your thinking, your values, your motivations and your behaviors. Your executive coach helps you highlight these to a degree that you never thought was possible. This awareness then allows you to make better decisions about yourself.

13. YOU WANT YOUR EXECUTIVE COACH TO TELL YOU HOW TO CHANGE OTHER PEOPLE: If you come to coaching to discover strategies and techniques for changing other people, you will probably be quite disappointed. If you are blaming other people for your situation, this means you’re not taking responsibility and being accountable. We are only able to control ourselves in this life. We only have partial influence with other people. Then there are other factors and variables that are 100% out of our control. These are the three buckets of control. When you come to an executive coach you will be focusing primarily on yourself and what you can control. To a degree, the coach can help you with strategies and approaches to influence people around you, but the only true direct influence you have is with yourself.

14. YOU’RE A PERFECTIONIST AND AFRAID OF CHANGE: Perfectionists can be extraordinarily high achievers, but they also pay an extraordinarily high price for all of that success. Perfectionists tend to be high strung and anxiety prone, and this plays havoc with their confidence levels. They tend to be future focused, and such workaholics that they have great difficulty in making contact with the present moment. Perfectionists work off of the deep unconscious belief that they have deficits that must be overcome by achievement. They may be afraid of coming to an executive coach because they will need to examine all aspects of themselves, both good, and not so good. For many people that’s too threatening. But when a perfectionist can let down their guard, and begin nonjudgmental self-analysis, they can open doors to self-growth they never imagined.

15. YOU WANT TRANSACTIONAL COACHING, NOT TRANSFORMATIONAL COACHING: If you want quick corrections, tips and suggestions for your problems, transactional coaching can be quite valuable. However, transformational coaching changes the quality of your thinking, raises your entire game and is far more potent and long lasting. Your executive coach helps you think at a higher level, remove mental blocks, see things you never saw before, and to help you create a vision for future success. That’s transformational coaching.

THE CHOICE IS YOURS

Existentialist philosophy reminds us that life is finite and uncertain. None of us knows how much more time we have on this planet, so it’s prudent to make the most of the time we do have. If, for example, we are attending a fantastic concert we shouldn’t sit there lamenting the fact that the concert will be over soon and we will be back to our regular lives. We should appreciate being able to listen to such a fantastic musical display. This is a large part of what executive coaching gives you, an awareness and new appreciation for your current life and a vision for how it could even be better in the future.

If there is one motto I have lived my life by, it’s this:

“Don’t have any regrets”.

I never wanted to look back on my life and to say, “I wish I had done that”.

I wish for you to have a very fulfilled life and to look back when it’s all done with great satisfaction. You don’t want regrets. You want memories.

How did it get so late so soon?

Dr. Seuss

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.

Mother Theresa

Bill Cole, MS, MA has held many leadership positions, ranging from starting and running his own ventures as President and CEO, as entrepreneur and businessman, and as an executive mentor, coach and trainer. He is an internationally and nationally recognized performance psychology expert and multiple Hall of Fame Honoree, an award-winning scholar-athlete, and has coached at the highest levels of the Olympics, major-league pro sports, big-time college athletics and corporate America.

"Bill Cole, President and Founder of the International Mental Game Coaching Association, says the key to achievement is enthusiasm for your goals. Cole coaches both Olympic and major-league athletes, and teaches his disciplinary techniques to corporate America."
WebMD

"Performance psychology consultant Bill Cole has counseled many of the world's top athletes and knows how to combat stress and anxiety."
Forbes Magazine

"Bill Cole is a leading Olympic sports psychologist and a world-renowned peak performance coach."
British Broadcasting Corporation (The BBC)

"Bill Cole is a leading author on sports psychology."
Yahoo! Sports

"Bill Cole is a renowned sports psychologist and 'mental game coach' who helps athletes cope with the demands of intense competition."
CNET Magazine

Bill has successfully adapted his innovative methods and techniques in peak performance to a wide range of business applications.

Bill has been an association executive for many years. He was on the Board Of Directors of The National Speakers Association for Northern California, and he is the Founder and President, and Chairman of the Board of Advisors of the International Mental Game Coaching Association:

https://www.mentalgamecoaching.com/index.html