6 Ways Executive Coaching Propels Productivity

When leaders don’t address issues standing in their way, their results will level off or decline. They’ll also see their consistency diminish, stress increase, and productivity suffer. There likely will be spillover effects on their broader team as well.

The key to leading a team or business productively goes beyond technical skills, specialized knowledge or an executive’s ability to impose their will.

Increasingly, it’s about mastering how to:

  • Cultivate and nurture interpersonal relationships

  • Deal with complexity

  • Make clear and confident decisions

This is where executive coaching can optimize performance. As part of National Executive Coaching Day, learn about the benefits of working with an experienced coach and six ways executive coaching drives productivity. 

What is Executive Coaching?

Coaching focuses on helping performers execute successfully at a high level with great consistency. Think about sports. Improving and learning are never finished. Athletes seek performance mastery in their craft as they strive to be at the top of their game.

All players, even the most elite stars, have coaches observe and critique them. Coaches help players build an accurate picture of their performance by examining their fundamentals, noting inconsistencies in their approach, breaking their actions down and building them up again.

In sports, coaches focus on optimizing the athlete’s execution of the performance—the pitch, the swing, the kick, the pass or shot—and building the mindset to elicit their and their team’s best and to deal with stress and adversity.

Executive coaching, at its core, does very much the same thing. It helps senior level leaders improve their performance and propel their productivity in the face of complexity. Whether it’s outer factors (capital, time or other resources) or inner factors (skills, behaviors, self-perception or beliefs) that are limiting results, executive coaches support leaders in addressing the real problems and challenges of making it on their own.

Working with an executive coach, leaders increase their effectiveness and executive presence through:  

  • Improved communication

  • Enhanced motivational techniques

  • Better teamwork, decision-making and leadership skills

Who Benefits Most from Executive Coaching?

Executive coaching concentrates on C-Suite and top-level leaders of an organization. Specifically, executive coaching will benefit and develop the following types of professionals:

  • Senior executives looking for a trusted advisor, accountability partner and sounding board

  • Up-and-coming “next gen” high potential talent

  • Newly promoted executives with an expanded mandate or who are facing complex leadership challenges

  • Leadership team members whose style is sabotaging their own or their teams’ ability to attain goals

  • Human resources (HR) professionals

According to a recent article, HR professionals are turning to executive coaching to improve their effectiveness and add organizational value. They’ve found that concepts and tools developed for coaching company leaders can be applied to common HR challenges.

Additionally, HR professionals can expand their functional effectiveness through bringing in a coach to:

  • Enhance the company’s talent development programs and succession plans

  • Gain a better balance in their focus on policy and compliance, with culture and organizational effectiveness

  • Objectively challenge if  long-held beliefs or values may not be serving the organization

Selecting the right coach can assist HR professionals in adding value beyond their core functions of compliance and policy enforcement, by committing to strategies including:

  • Supporting employees in their development

  • Creating collaborative solutions that focus on future performance

  • Implementing a 360-degree feedback process to raise a leader’s awareness of their reputation and how it’s enhancing or limiting their effectiveness

How Does Executive Coaching Propel Productivity?

Executive coaching helps leaders boost productivity by:

1.    Raising awareness to improve performance

Through intuitive listening, coaches increase an executive’s awareness of the beliefs, behaviors and practices that enhance or degrade their performance.

2.    Observing performances to improve effectiveness

Coaches can observe performance in real time, serving as an executive’s external eyes and ears. “You sounded mechanical in that presentation. What can you do differently next time?” “Your team seemed to stop generating ideas as you began critiquing them. How can you ensure their continued engagement?”

3.    Enhancing skills and strengths to consistently perform

Coaches help executives enhance their skills, build on their strengths and address their weaknesses. This enables them to perform with more consistency, greater leverage and enhanced effectiveness.

4.    Increasing emotional intelligence to hone communication skills  

Executive coaches help leaders improve their emotional intelligence and how they communicate. This includes speaking up with confidence at the right time and in the right way. It also includes listening more effectively with the intention to understand more and judge less before responding.

5.    Shifting mindset to drive opportunity

Coaching supports the executive in shifting their mindset from being anchored on past performances or struggles, to understanding how being “at choice” drives change and captures opportunities.

6.    Focusing on mastery to produce results

Coaches facilitate a shift from simply chasing KPIs, OKRs or other performance metrics to mastering the process for delivering targeted results with greater ease, efficiency and enjoyment.

Executive Coaching Success Story: Senior Sales and Strategy Executive 

Leading Edge Coaching & Consulting (LECC) coached a senior sales and strategy executive at a major technology company.

Early in the coaching program, the client shared how he prioritized his team members’ growth and development. He gave strong guidance and clear directions on how to solve problems and implement sales strategy programs. He always got a lot of nods and yesses, which told him he was leading effectively and giving his team what they needed and wanted.

To his surprise, his 360-degree feedback results showed something very different. His team members didn’t feel comfortable speaking up. The strength of his personality and conviction with which he put forward his ideas caused his team to hold back. They struggled with proposing their own solutions or asking questions for fear of having their ideas shot down.

As LECC debriefed his results and we worked through his team’s comments, he saw how his strong, dynamic persona constrained his team. He learned how his strength at generating and pushing for his ideas was a limiting factor of his and his team’s performance. Unless he changed his approach, the team’s productivity would never grow beyond his own capacity.

He wanted to become better at encouraging his team to generate and debate ideas. We prioritized developing his listening skills, while increasing his awareness of how often he was formulating responses instead of hearing what was being said.

The new focus was transformative for himself and his team. Meetings were more balanced and productive. “Quiet” team members began finding their voice. Idea generation and discussion flowed more smoothly than ever. His team’s engagement, activity and sense of ownership increased dramatically once he provided space for their input.

The client felt more effective and energized by the increased ease and reduced stress in the strategic planning sessions.

Achieve Results from Executive Coaching

Are the approaches you took in the past not bringing comparable returns today? Do you feel your or your team’s effectiveness and productivity slipping as complexity increases? Are professional relationships more tense and stressful than you want them to be?

If you answered yes to one or all of these questions, you could benefit from collaborating with an executive coach. Schedule a complimentary discovery session today.