What Exactly Is Executive Coaching (Coach Benefits)?
Key Takeaways at a Glance
An executive coach is a sounding board and accountability partner. Good coaches provide perspective and actionable strategies to help clients see through their blind spots.
The benefits of coaching ripple throughout an organization. When senior leaders commit to executive coaching, their teams experience improved productivity and a healthy organizational culture.
The right coach for you is a personal decision. Finding an ICF-certified executive coach is an important step. Beyond their certifications and experience, personal chemistry is essential.
Case studies and testimonials are important tools to help find an executive coach. Below, you’ll find some actual, real-life examples from my coaching experience.
Executive coaching services are powerful tools, helping senior executives and business leaders reach their full potential and better serve those around them. Executive coaching is a structured one-on-one coaching process that helps individual leaders pursue their professional goals and boost their leadership skills.
A successful executive coach is a trusted sounding board, providing clients with fresh perspectives and guiding them toward positive change. Executive coaching isn’t just for Fortune 500 CEOs and other key executives. Small business owners, senior managers, human resources professionals, and tech leaders can all benefit, as can an individual contributor preparing for a new role.
The role of an executive coach can vary based on the specific needs of the client, but the primary benefits of executive coaching remain the same: helping professionals perform at a high level.
Executive Coaching 101
The world of executive training has roots reaching back to the early 20th century, but the corporate boom of the 1980s and ‘90s brought executive coaching work into the mainstream. As companies scaled and became more complex, business executives turned to specialized external coaches to drive their leadership development and improve organizational culture.
Life coaches and career coaches typically focus on broader personal growth methods, while leadership coaching helps people improve their professional performance and achieve greater success as leaders. An executive leadership coach helps leaders apply best practices for professional growth in a way that lifts up the entire organization.
In short, a good coach helps leaders sharpen their core competencies, foster personal development, and refine their executive presence.
Who Can Benefit from Executive Coaching?
One of the major benefits of executive coaching is how adaptable the process is. The right coach can connect with people at different levels of their careers, helping everyone from individual contributors to senior leaders write their own success stories.
Business Leaders and Executives
Coaching provides practical and tactical tools to develop strategic thinking and emotional intelligence. With these skills, leaders can drive organizational change and help create a more effective and efficient company.
Senior Managers
For these contributors, business coaching can accelerate the path toward leadership roles. If you’re a senior manager eying a vice president role or C-suite position, strengthening your leadership and communication skills through executive coaching services is a great idea.
Small Business Owners
The right executive coach can help entrepreneurs navigate the challenges of scaling a company. Leadership looks different if you run a five-person business instead of a 500-employee company, and a good coach can help startup founders strike the right balance.
Individual Contributors
Anyone preparing for a career transition or new role can benefit from the coaching process. Climbing the corporate ladder requires the ability to inspire positive change, and executive coaching is a great way to develop this skill.
What Does an Executive Coach Do?
A good executive coach is a sounding board and accountability partner. We all have blind spots — an executive coach helps clients identify and overcome them. A coaching session is an open dialogue that gives individual leaders the tools to improve their decision-making abilities.
Professional coaches don’t just tell clients what to do. Instead, they collaborate with their clients, guiding goal setting and exploring new strategies for greater success — both in their personal leadership journey and in their broader organizational culture.
Whether they’re helping a VP strengthen their executive presence or guiding tech leaders to inspire their team members, executive leadership coaches provide actionable insights to help professionals reach the next level.
The Key Benefits of Executive Coaching
Executive coaching provides several important advantages that extend beyond individual performance, resulting in improved company-wide productivity and enhanced employee retention.
Becoming a better, more adaptable leader: Clients learn how to sharpen qualities like strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and communication skills, all of which are crucial for effective leadership. Coaching can also help develop new strategies to navigate business change and transition with agility and resilience.
Maximizing your positive impact: Leaders learn how they can influence organizational culture and inspire greater success across departments. According to a Harvard Business Review study, people who trust their company’s leaders are more productive and engaged. Executive coaching can help leaders generate and maintain this high-trust environment.
Personal and professional development: While executive coaching focuses less on personal benefits than life coaching, clients still experience a wide range of personal development attributes, including better self-awareness and increased motivation.
Next Level Coaching Case Studies
Real-Life Coaching Example - Adapting to Change and Developing Leadership Presence
A client who is an SVP from a major corporation moved into a new role after 20+ years with the company. Her new boss was someone she used to work very well with as peers, but in their current roles, they had different styles that led to clashes.
Her boss was direct and demanding, while she was more thoughtful and sensitive. She felt like she wasn’t being heard under his leadership, so we worked on developing the confidence to speak up in meetings, share her expertise, and be taken more seriously.
Another part of the problem was that she hadn’t worked directly with her new boss in the last few years, so he didn’t know what she had accomplished recently (which was the most impressive stretch of her career!). We workshopped ways for her to “rebrand” herself and fill him in on her recent achievements without sounding forced or arrogant.
Real-Life Coaching Example - Navigating Mid-Career Transitions
One of my clients was having trouble being strategic about his next career move. He has plenty of experience in important roles, but didn’t have a firm grasp of where he wanted to go from here. He also felt like his networking efforts were falling short, so I asked him what he was telling people when he spread the word that he was looking for work.
His answer? “I’m looking for something in leadership, maybe project management, maybe something in operations. I like working with people.” And I said, “No one’s recommending you for any positions because no one has any idea what you’re looking for!” Being too vague about the type of work you want to do is a killer in any job search or career transition.
We worked on defining the type of role he wanted in a crisp, concise, specific manner. By the time we finished the session, his new job-search elevator pitch was, “I’m looking for a Chief of Staff role in a small-to-medium tech-enabled services business. I like working for passionate visionaries who need help turning big ideas into real-world results.” Guess who found a great new role just a few weeks later?
Real-Life Coaching Example - Change Management in a New Organization
A client asked me for help navigating a tricky situation with a new employer. A flailing company brought her in to perform process improvements and change management. There was a lot on her plate from day one, including creating stronger teams, improving organizational culture, building processes (and cutting bloated procedures), and more.
I started by coaching her on “managing up” to help her boss and the board fill gaps and create a more agile company. She also had to develop strategies and plans, then communicate them to the executive team, key partners and vendors, and, eventually, the entire staff. In addition, prioritization was a major challenge. She needed to direct and maintain everyone’s focus on the biggest “bang for the buck” tasks, then divert the team’s energy, time, and attention to the next big thing.
Finally, we spent a considerable amount of time discussing how to manage strong personalities and “We’ve always done it this way” mentalities. Even though the company had posted declining revenues for several consecutive quarters, some people in leadership were still firmly stuck in their ways. Thankfully, once she started experiencing success — and clearly communicating those successes to her superiors — people started getting on board with her process improvements.
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Do these examples sound familiar to you? Are you experiencing similar challenges in your career? Reach out to schedule an intro call and determine whether I’m the right executive coach for you!
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Finding the Right Executive Coach for You
Some leadership coaches are better than others, and finding the right executive coach for your needs is important. First and foremost, you should focus on a coach’s credentials. If they’re certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), you know that they’re a qualified coach who follows strict ethical standards and best practices.
Qualifications are just a jumping-off point, however. Once you find a coach who has completed the ICF certification program, consider these additional factors:
A coach’s years of experience are important as well. Find out how much they’ve worked with business executives and senior leaders. Check out client testimonials and success stories to get an insider’s perspective on the effectiveness of their coaching process.
Does the coach adapt their approach to suit different needs, or do they offer a one-size-fits-all process? The best executive coaches offer flexible methods that suit a variety of professionals.
Always consider your personal chemistry. While there is a degree of objective quality between various coaches (some of them simply are better at it than others), don’t overlook the subjective nature of a productive coaching relationship. Do you trust them? Do they feel like the right choice?
Executive coaching is a relationship, not a transaction. Credentials will always be a vital piece of the puzzle, but developing a beneficial coaching relationship that suits your unique needs is just as important.
How Executive Coaching Works
While the exact format varies from coach to coach and client to client, a typical coaching relationship follows the following general structure.
Initial Assessments
Intro calls are the most important part of the initial assessment framework. The best way to find out if someone is the right coach for you is to talk to them yourself! You can schedule a few intro calls with various coaches to see if one of them stands out above the rest.
Just as you perform an initial assessment of them, your coach might have some assessment tools of their own. After all, the better they know you, the better they can help you reach your professional goals. Depending on the coach and your goals, they might use Myers-Briggs tests, DISC reports, or CliftonStrengths assessments (previously known as StrengthsFinder assessments).
Defining Objectives
The coach and client will perform collaborative goal-setting activities, clarifying career goals and touching on personal ambitions as well. An effective executive coach can set objectives leading to those goals and help clients overcome potential roadblocks.
Taking Action
This is where a great coach’s bread is buttered. The most successful executive coaches provide their clients with actionable insights and new strategies for more effective leadership. An action plan can have several incremental steps that allow the coach to review and refine it on the fly, driving sustainable results.
How to Get Started with Executive Coaching
If you’re ready to explore executive coaching services, your next steps are simple:
Find a qualified coach with relevant business experience.
Set up a quick introductory call.
Discuss your needs and their coaching methods.
If there’s a fit, great! If not, pick a different coach and start from Step 1 again. If you talk to a few qualified leadership coaches, you’ll find the right fit in no time.
The good news is you’ve already completed the first step! I’m an ICF-certified coach with decades of business experience from small startups to major corporations.
Schedule a free intro call and find out if I’m the right coach for you! We can chat about your goals and discuss a framework for achieving them.
About The Author
Emily Sander is an ICF-certified leadership coach with more than 15 years of experience in the business and the author of Hacking Executive Leadership. She’s been featured in several print publications, online articles, and podcasts, including CEO Today Magazine, Leading to Fulfillment, and Leadership Powered by Common Sense.
Emily has a passion for helping business leaders reach their full potential. Go here to read her story from seasoned executive to knowledgeable coach. If you want to send Emily a quick message, then visit her contact page here.