Real executive coaching is rare and difficult.
Here’s how to be sure you’re ready for coaching:
Consulting involves doing specific tasks on behalf of a client, supplying a skill not present in-house and creating one or more work products. Consultants do things for you.
Mentoring is typically between a highly experienced and a new or less experienced person, where the former helps the latter navigate (for example) the unwritten rules of an organization or profession. The mentor may already be where the mentee is headed. Mentors take some responsibility for their mentee’s success and may be expected to give the mentee access to the mentor’s network of contacts.
Therapy is the healing of emotional injuries or learning specific emotional-health behaviors, and should be done with a licensed therapist.
Coaching is about improving one’s role performance, usually by the coach helping the coached person to increase their self-awareness, and then take action.
The coach is there to help you not just increase self-awareness, but also to help you change your “mental models” — because those are the things that constrain your thinking and limit your effectiveness. If you think you’re decisive and other people find you brusque and arrogant, your mental model is broken — it does not adequately reflect the ways you and others interact. By not seeing yourself as others see you, you are unable to work with those other folks as effectively.
I recently spoke with a CEO who had spent over 10 years fighting with his partner in front of his staff, under the mistaken impression he was defending the staff and building their loyalty — it was only when he was sued by two former employees that he discovered that everyone saw him as a bully. To his credit he is now working with a coach to improve his own self-awareness, build new mental models, transform his behavior and fix his corporate culture.
The biggest enemy of most CEOs is themselves. When they cease to be blind and start to see themselves and work on themselves, the results can be phenomenal.
Ready to look more closely at coaching as an option? Contact me.
Testimonials
I met Tom Cox when he spoke at a Job Seekers conference. A few months later, I was offered a job in a new industry with commissioned-based pay. I reached out to Tom for help. We discussed the risks of this transition, and mitigation strategies to balance the risks. In just a 30 minute phone call, Tom recommended specific actions I could take that resolved my concerns. Outcome: I was able to commit to this new course of action with confidence.
Please consult Tom if you need help in a similar crossroads of your career.
– Joseph L., Portland OR
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