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#EXECUTIVE COACHING

9 Benefits of Executive Coaching

BY
The Highrise Team
August 28, 2022
Executives smiling and discussing benefits of executive coaching.
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Executive coaching is one of the fastest-growing industries in the last decade. In fact, it is estimated that about $2.35 billion was spent on executive coaching in 2017. With an expenditure this massive, one can see how valuable executive coaching services can be.

The process of executive coaching helps individuals learn and adopt new behaviors or skills to improve their performance and impact. Keep reading to find out the benefits of executive coaching.

Three executive coaching discussing benefits of executive coaching in an office setting.

Benefits of Executive Coaching

The benefits of coaching for leadership development primarily apply to the individual undergoing coaching, but they also extend to coworkers and the entire business. 

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1. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses

One of the primary advantages of an executive coaching program is identifying one’s strengths and weaknesses and growing in self awareness. Doing so offers fresh perspectives on building capabilities, working relationships, and more.

Executive coaching can also provide insight into the weaknesses in a business leader to help them be self aware. These might be reflected in the leader's experience or hinder the leader from taking positive steps.

It is impossible to maximize strengths and overcome weaknesses until they are identified. Coaching sessions provide that third-party perspective and allows individuals to identify their strengths and weaknesses to focus on improving them. Additionally, it can help an executive improve self awareness by better understanding both their strengths and where they have room for improvement.

Perhaps the most significant benefit is setting an excellent example for the rest of the team. If the executives take a step back and analyze their skill set, they set a tremendous example for the rest of the company.

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2. Set Goals and Develop a Growth Mindset

Executive coaching focuses on helping executives and leaders set goals and develop a more vigorous growth mindset.

A growth mindset is the philosophy where talents and abilities can be developed through dedication and practice. This perspective is in contrast to a fixed mindset, which is the belief that talents and abilities are predetermined and unchangeable and you can overcome seemingly impossible obstacles.

The coaching process involves adopting a growth mindset. This has been shown to improve performance, increase resilience in the face of setbacks, and increase overall satisfaction with life.

To set effective goals, individuals must be clear about what they want to achieve and why. Unfortunately, this is not always easy.

Coaching can help you better understand your goals and how to achieve them. The process begins with identifying one’s values, interests, and skills. Once these are identified, the coach and individual can work together to set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals.

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3. Improve Confidence in Leadership Situations

While not unique to business leaders, leading is one of the biggest challenges that they face. It is an incredibly difficult task that requires an executive to manage multiple variables and concerns. 

While it is one of the most challenging skills to learn, confidence is one of the most critical attributes for an effective executive. Fortunately, coaching can help improve confidence for those in leadership roles.

Executive coaching works to boost that confidence. A professional executive coach can help individuals learn to manage their emotions better, communicate effectively, and make decisions under pressure.

Each of these skills is essential to demonstrate influence in leadership. One of the advantages of executive coaching is the opportunity to develop leadership skills. This process begins with identifying the emotions that the individual experiences while leading.

Once these emotions have been identified, the coach and individual can work together to develop strategies for managing them.

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4. Improve Company Culture

Although leadership coaching focuses on helping individual leaders improve their skills, the benefits extend to the entire company. Through effective coaching, a leader can dramatically improve company culture.

Executive coaches can help improve communication skills, ensuring productive relationships with teams and customers are facilitated and maintained.

They can also offer stepping stones for building a clear vision for the company and instill values to align with it.

Improve the Workplace With Positivity

When coaching is implemented effectively, it creates a company culture that is more positive, productive, and successful.

Studies by organizations like the International Coaching Federation have found a positive coaching relationship delivers more advantageous outcomes for businesses. 

Moreover, leaders have the potential to develop their emotional intelligence, leading to a more positive company culture and improved change in workplace.

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5. Discover Blind Spots 

Blind spots are the bane of businesses because they hinder growth, perpetuate problems, and ultimately lead to stagnation. They are also notoriously difficult to identify because, by nature, they are easy to overlook. It often takes an outside perspective to uncover blind spots, and that is precisely what an executive coach can provide.

Executive coaches can help individuals discover blind spots to avoid these pitfalls. After all, they offer a new set of eyes not influenced by prior business experience or the company culture's push and pull. With this outside perspective, companies gain access to unique insights that might otherwise have eluded them.

Develop Strategies To Address Blind Spots

Once blind spots are identified, the coach will work with you to develop strategies for addressing them. They can also focus on improved self awareness, giving you a solid foundation to build behavior patterns to uncover blind spots in the future.

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6. Improve Empathy Towards Co-Workers

Positive relationships at work are vital for a leader’s success. Many employees complain about a disconnect between leadership and lower-level employees. This disconnect can have a disastrous impact on a business and lead to staff feeling devalued. When this happens, it could adversely affect productivity, creativity, and innovation.

Fortunately, empathy is a trait that can be learned, and executive leadership coaching can help individuals improve their compassion and empathy towards coworkers to create successful relationships in a business environment. Working with a coach can teach individuals how to better understand and relate to their coworkers while encouraging better self regulation skills.

Empathy Improves Communication

This understanding can help build trust and improve communication, which is essential for a productive and positive workplace.

By improving in these areas, a leader can increase job satisfaction and work engagement in their executive team and company-wide.

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7. Develop Social Skills

Excellent communication skills are the hallmark of a great leader, and social skills can make or break an executive. Without good social skills, it can be a struggle to interact with a team, lead effectively, and communicate with customers. Indeed, poor social skills can doom an otherwise effective executive.

Fortunately, these crucial qualities can be learned, with executive coaching providing support for developing and honing them.

Practicing social skills can often be difficult for executives because of the pressure they are under to perform and the fact that they are constantly under the microscope. Working with an executive coach allows leaders to practice their social skills without fear of failure or repercussion.

Get Team Members To Open Up

Furthermore, an executive coach will provide open and honest feedback, which team members might be hesitant to offer an executive. This feedback is essential for helping an executive identify areas where they need to improve their social skills.

By using coaching services to develop social skills, an executive can build the confidence to interact with their team, lead effectively, and communicate with customers.

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8. Improve Job Performance

Professional coaches can create successful leadership by focusing on personal development to improve the company's future with a leader's personal growth. At the end of the day, we all want to be the best we can be and desire to maximize our impact in our field to create a more productive workplace. Executive coaching offers concrete solutions for improving job performance.

Working with an executive coach can help individuals develop the necessary skills to excel in their roles. The coach can help the individual identify areas where they need improvement and work with them to formulate actionable improvement plans.

In addition, the coach can help the individual develop better time management, communication, and leadership skills. All of these skills are essential for the success of any executive and help them negotiate a job offer

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9. Boost Your Motivation

Even if an executive is passionate about their job, it can be difficult to sustain motivation and professional growth. This problem can arise when an executive faces challenges or setbacks.

When motivation starts to flag, it can significantly impact job performance and affect the entire team as well as impact people’s emotions. Fortunately, an executive coach can help individuals boost their motivation.

A coach can help individuals identify the root cause of their lack of motivation and provide feedback and encouragement. An executive coach's encouragement is one of the most powerful benefits of working with someone from outside a company.

Positive feedback and encouragement can be something of a rarity in the business world. The emphasis is on the negative and what has gone wrong. Unfortunately, the focus on negative feedback is devastating. Studies show that positive praise should be given at a ratio of 5:1 to negative feedback.

Coaching engagement can help balance out this ratio in favor of positive feedback.

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The Bottom Line

A good coach acts like a sounding board to develop a leader's listening skills with one on one meetings and by creating development goals. The benefits of executive coaching can tremendously impact a leader and their team. It can help improve communication and emotional intelligence, identify blind spots, increase job satisfaction, and reduce manager stress

Most importantly, executive coaching can help individuals learn how to manage their emotions better, communicate effectively, and make decisions under pressure - skills essential for effective leadership. If you want to improve your leadership skills, consider working with an executive coach. With candid communication, a tough but fair development plan, coaches can take a good leader and make them a greater success, with more confidence, new skills at solving problems in the work environment, all in a confidential space that fosters professional growth in the corporate world.

How Can Highrise Help?

If you are ready to work with an executive coach, check out Highrise. We offer executive coach solutions for leadership development. Highrise gives leaders tremendous flexibility, delivering several coaching styles and sessions to fit individual needs.

Highrise is here to help you manage your team, become a better negotiator, and improve your work-life balance.

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The Highrise Team
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