Executive Coaching: How It Makes An Impact on Performance

Everyone in an organization looks up to their executives for inspiration and leadership. However, it’s a natural phenomenon to experience uncertainties and unprecedented times in an organization, where executives can be pulled in by many different directions to address these issues. In such situations, executives are expected to implement strategic decisions and provide tactical guidance for the organisation to perform towards feasible options.

As executives, working for long hours and fielding questions from different directions can be overwhelming and daunting altogether. But at the same time, not addressing these questions or delaying from taking the right step forward can also diminish the ability of executives to support the people they lead and impact the overall organizational performance.

This is where executive coaching comes in. Executive coaching is an exclusive “assisting procedure” taken by a qualified professional to work with individuals, usually executives, and high-potential employees or identified leaders, to help them gain self-awareness, clarify goals, achieve their development objectives, and unlock their potential. The end goal of executive coaching is to equip executives or high-potential employees with the knowledge, skills, and most importantly, behaviours they need to develop themselves in becoming effective in leading an organization towards improved performance and success.

When looking at the positive impact executive coaching has on performance, the following statistics reflect a favourable influence:

• Executive Coaching has produced a 788% ROI for a Fortune 500 company.
• Over 70% of individuals who received executive coaching benefited from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills.
• 96% of organizations that had an Executive Coach said they would repeat the process.
• A third of all Fortune 500 companies use Executive Coaching as a standard leadership development initiative for their executives and identified leaders.
• 77% of respondents at a Fortune 500 company indicated that executive coaching significantly impacted at least one of nine business measures. Productivity (performance) is the most positively impacted area.

Here are two key insights on how executive coaching makes an impact on organizational performance.

1. Reveals Personal Challenges, Obstacles and Limitations

While there are many variations on how executive coaching is conducted, it usually involves a series of assessments that helps executives reveal the challenges and obstacles that restrict them from doing what their role expects them to do, mainly in terms of leadership.

Executives may go through a 360-degree feedback assessment or a behavioural assessment to understand their strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, habit, and behaviours. In some instances, they may also go through targeted assessments that focus on conflict management styles and perceptions they have towards change. These assessments allow deciphering a clear outcome based on variations in the relevant elements that need focus over time.

All the data obtained from these assessments will break down the personal challenges that need to change or be tackled for an executive to effectively perform their expected job role is varied and uncertain business situations. It also gives the coach the required data to understand the key areas that need to be addressed to meet the expected outcomes of the coachee.

2. An Exclusive Personalized Coachingcaoching Approach

Based on the data obtained from assessments and similar methods, the coach then develops a personalized approach to mitigate the challenges, weaknesses, or hindrances limiting an executive’s performance towards the potential. Using this personalized approach, the coach works with the executive one-on-one, either in person or teleconference, for a specified period to help them apply their strengths more effectively and discover new perspectives and resources to meet and overcome uprooting challenges within an organisation.

The personalized approach will also comprehensively focus on handling the personal challenges or obstacles revealed in the assessment, which hinders the executives’ career success and the overall success of the business unit or operation the executive leads in an organisation. All in all, the personalized coaching approach will extensively ensure that the leader is ready to face the challenges of the role in a much effective manner with an enhanced sense of leadership.

Some of the leading challenges executive coachings is oriented towards addressing are how to handle a crisis, impersonal conflicts, work-life balance, how to improve clarity in sensitive issues, etc. Although the coach won’t provide solutions to these challenges, they help executives break through resistance, uncover assumptions, ask more thoughtful questions and find answers spontaneously in unexpected business situations.

When executives have better know-how on tackling and overcoming these personal challenges or obstacles, it upgrades their personality and capability to guide an organisation much more effectively with enhanced leadership attributes that will positively influence organisational performance.

About The Talent Enterprise

We are a global human capital management company providing extensive and exceptional insights into the intricacies of behaviour in individuals, teams, and organisations through our leading-edge technology-enabled talent assessment and capability development solutions. This makes us the first and only company in the world to pioneer the Science of Behaviourmetrics. Inspired by the GROW model, we have also developed the RISE coaching model, which uses a strengths-based approach derived from positive organisational psychology.

We have found that solid psychometric assessments like the Thriving Index and 360 Perspective Index help the coaching process by providing tangible data for formulating a development plan. Headquartered in Dubai, with a fast-expanding global network of offices and partners, we worked with over 250 clients across the Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, UK and Europe as well the Americas; partnering with policy-makers, employers and educators.