Business Management

Back when I first considered offering clients executive coaching services, I had a misconception of what it was. One I shared, perhaps, with many others: I thought it was the unquantifiable art of fixing broken behavior and personalities.
It’s not. It’s about business performance and how human behavior impacts your bottom line.
Executive coaching is actually the skillful delivery of effective feedback as part of a systematic application of proven behavioral science tools that identify, target, define, measure and incrementally improve human behavior, with the objective of advancing business performance.
There can be “touchy feely” elements to coaching, but no more so than in other areas of human relations — they’re called interpersonal skills.
Effective executive coaching is more methodical and process-oriented than one might assume.
Here are nine points for you as a business owner or leader to remember when assessing the need for executive coaching — for you, for a few key employees, or for a whole team:
1. Business objectives. First and foremost—it’s all about business objectives. If the coaching being considered is not explicitly aligned with the company’s overall business strategies and goals, it will neither be effective nor a worthy investment of company resources.
2. Key performers. Executive coaching should be considered for your most important people—and especially those in leadership roles. Effectively coached leaders can positively “infect” your organization with what they learn from their coaching experience and your “learning ROI” will increase exponentially. These primary performers must be in positions that carry out the behaviors critical to achieving the targeted business objectives.
3. Collective goal setting. You, alone, will not be dictating the process. Once the business objectives have been identified, and the key performers have been chosen, you, the performers and the coach will establish specific behavioral goals that lead toward those business targets.
4. Safe environment. A coaching program is most effective when delivered in a safe, open, honest, and supportive environment focused on organizational growth and individual development—not one fraught with punitive consequences and “do it or else” extrinsic motivational influences.
5. Change. Coaching is an effective tool to help human behavior adapt to change in an organization. If you are introducing cultural, organizational or procedural change in your company, coaching should be a part of that change event. New initiatives are more likely to fail if human behavior does not change to support the new way of doing things.
6. Expectations. Human behavior changes incrementally. We learn new skills and change our ways a step at a time. If you are considering coaching, have a frank and open discussion about expectations with the coach you bring in and with those who will be coached.
7. Not therapy. Executive coaching is not a form of—or a replacement for—therapy, spirituality or psychoanalysis; it’s a business tool.
8. Measurable. If you engage an executive coach, understand the process and how success is measured. Measuring change in desirable and undesirable human behavior is elemental in effective coaching and applied behavioral sciences.
9. Part of the whole. Coaching should be but one piece of the performance puzzle. Consider executive coaching as part of an overall people development structure in your organization that contains a strong 360-degree performance appraisal program; an effective rewards and recognition system; regular business skills training opportunities; employee feedback outlets; professional development seminars; and ongoing leadership enhancement initiatives.
Executive coaching works, but it is most effective when used for the right reasons. It’s a business decision.
And like all good business decisions, it should be about your business.