EXECUTIVE COACHING - HOW AND WHY DOES IT WORK?

Why use an Executive Coach?

These are some of the reasons you make so much more progress with a coach...

Blocks and blindspots

Coaching helps raise your awareness so you can see what is going on.

We all have our own patterns of thinking that are so natural to us we are no more aware of them than a fish is aware of water. Your thinking strategies have worked well for you - that's why you're successful.

But what happens if you encounter a new situation in which your 'second nature' ways of thinking are no longer serving you well?

• Perhaps you no longer enjoy your job. What's changed?
• Are you 'looking over your shoulder' - suspecting you will soon be "found out"?
• Could your own urge to 'win' be influencing your success in dealing with staff conflicts?
• And that 'desire for perfection' - the characteristic which serves you so well in your professional work - could it be sabotaging your efforts at finding quick, pragmatic business decisions in areas where there is no right answer?

Coaching helps raise your awareness so you can see what is going on. Often just the awareness is enough to allow you to change your thinking.

Sometimes awareness is not enough, and your coach can help you use Neuro Linguistic Programming ("NLP") techniques to help you "re-program" your brain so it works better for you.

So, you can change the beliefs and ways of thinking that keep you from your full potential.

Values clashes

A coach can help you identify your values so you know what you need to get from your work to be fulfilled.

If you don't really want to do all those things on your To Do List, your brain may be causing you to procrastinate.

For one of our clients, this happened when the large company she worked for required her to use bullying tactics on a smaller company with whom they were in conflict. That created such a conflict with her values that she unwittingly used procrastination as a defensive mechanism - no wonder she could never find the time to draft the proposed contract.

What is most important to you?

It is important to work out the reasons why you are not getting things done rather than simply using time management techniques to bulldoze your way through your work.

If you keep suppressing your values, you may feel increasingly empty and dissatisfied.

Find out your values

A coach can help you identify your values so you know what you need to get from your work to be fulfilled. You may realize that you have to carry out a task like the one above in order to keep your job and support your family, which is even more important to you than fairness. However being aware of the conflict and the reasons for your procrastination allows you to take control and make a conscious decision about what is most important to you, allowing you to feel at ease with yourself.

So, you make sure your actions are in line with your values, and they start to feel easier and more fun.

Accountability and long term thinking

There's nothing like a deadline to fire you into action.

Unfortunately many of the most important things in life don't have deadlines. So responding to the urgent demands of clients and colleagues often takes precedence over making a business plan or learning important new skills (or reading Case Law!)

At its extreme, this can get you into a situation where you are constantly 'firefighting'. You don't spend the ten minutes today that could save you half an hour next week and two hours the week after.

Often there are times when urgent client work does have to take precedence over everything else, and a coach who has worked as a professional will understand that. However if your whole working life is lived that way, you may eventually start to feel increasingly desperate and out of control.

Knowing your coach will be calling to ask how you are getting on with your agreed actions will help you do the things which matter. (You know the things your coach is calling about are real priorities because you took the time to establish this together.)

So, you think bigger, take action and get the job done, because you are accountable to your coach.

This is an abridged version of the Templeton Finn coaching article "Why does coaching work?"

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