Today’s leaders are asked to produce results in fast-paced, dynamic and ever-changing environments. Executive coaching is a powerful tool to support leaders in developing their leadership skills, successfully navigate professional challenges and achieve success. However, to truly benefit from Executive Coaching, there are three key elements that must be in place for coaching to yield returns. In this blog post, I outline the three key elements that are required for coaching to deliver a return on investment.
- Belief in a growth mindset: One of the key requirements for executive coaching to be successful is a growth mindset, a term coined by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. A growth mindset encompasses the idea that individuals can, through dedication and hard work, improve their abilities, intelligence and talents. Contrary to a growth mindset is the fixed mindset, which is a belief that talents, abilities and intelligence is fixed, and cannot be changed. The belief that we can grow and change is fundamental to the success of executive coaching.
- Desire to grow and learn: In addition to the belief that talent, intelligence and abilities can be cultivated and developed, a desire and willingness to grow and learn is required for executive coaching to yield benefits. Growing and learning are sometimes uncomfortable, especially when we realize that what we believed to be true is in fact false. The courage, willingness and desire to let go of old ways of thinking and doing things is required for leaders to grow and change.
- Willingness to invest time and effort: Leaders are busy, with not enough hours in the day to get everything done that is required of them. And yet, growth and development requires a leader to step away from the day to day work and invest both time and effort in learning how to see and do things differently. In practice, this is hard when the day to day pressures of the job seem to consume all the leader’s time.
Executive coaching enables leaders to set specific goals, track progress, and establish accountability, but to fully benefit from coaching, a leader must be not only be willing to invest the time and effort required, but must also truly have a desire to grow and learn, and must believe that change is possible. A good coach will help a leader assess readiness before starting a coaching engagement, asking about what else the leader has tried, what makes them believe they are ready to benefit from coaching now and inquiring about beliefs about growth and change. A great coach can help a leader develop leadership capabilities that will enable the leader to navigate complex business environments more effectively but the conditions for success must be in place to fully benefit from coaching.
