Removing Barriers to Success in Executive Coaching Programs
Executive coaching has taken on new importance as stakeholders hold top corporate leadership, including directors, responsible for their decision-making.
- By Peter Scott
Corporate stakeholders are more vocal than ever before, demanding corporate compliance with legislation and governance regulations or challenging company policies and actions seen as unethical or socially irresponsible. One of the roles of directors is ensuring there is a risk management policy in place, in turn relying on executives to make good decisions that support the policies and contribute to corporate success in the future. From this perspective, executive coaching is a risk management program because it ensures executives are high-performers with enhanced self-awareness, able to make good decisions, prepared to minimize risks, and in cases of succession planning, ready to assume new roles when the time comes. Companies have a lot at stake in the success of the coaching programs, making it an imperative to fully understand what can trip any coaching program up.
People reaching executive positions are usually viewed as having already developed success competencies and knowledge. Does a Chief Executive Officer or Vice-President for Diversity and Inclusion really need to participate in a coaching program? After all, they are already top performers. The risk is that people who are top performers can still fail because they lack self-awareness and interpersonal skills that can turn top performers into strategic leadership. Top leadership may see their positions as proof of their leadership effectiveness, motivational skills, and ability to get the job done. If that were really true, CEOs would never get fired for making blunders or for developing resentful organizational workforces.
Soft Skills for
Hard Results
Executives can fail their organizations in many ways, from making outright bad decisions to refusing to recognize their limitations. It is safe to say that for most executives, soft skills (what some call the ‘touchy-feely’ skills) are not high on the list of needed competencies. Yet it is often the lack of executive soft skills that can drag down performance and results. For any executive coaching program to work, the people being coached must be willing to increase self-awareness and knowledge of personal capacities, weaknesses, values, and motives. An executive involved in a coaching program that refuses to accept that the fact successful leadership requires a willingness to better understand personal perspectives and traits is going to believe the program is not relevant to their role. The net result is a failed effort, and an executive with an even more entrenched idea that coaching to develop empathy and compassion has no relationship to a strategic vision.
Even if the coached person is completely open to increasing self-awareness, it will not happen unless the right coach is chosen. There has to be a good fit between the coaching skills and the executive’s needs. As a one-on-one consulting relationship, there must be some rapport between the coach and the executive. Even beyond the rapport is the need for a coach who is willing to provide honest feedback and has the skills to develop customized strategies that overcome leadership development barriers specific to the coached.
One of the first barriers executives must overcome is realizing that how people view them does not necessarily mesh with self-image. An executive may be surprised that other executives and managers hold the opinion she is uncooperative, abrasive, indecisiveness, and so on. What one executive considers to be thoughtful leadership, others may be calling lack of decision-making skills. The person being coached has to be willing to accept honest feedback on leadership style and qualities, but the coach has to be able to deliver the feedback in a productive manner.
Already Successful…So Why Change?
The main threat to coaching success is an executive unwilling to consider other people’s perspectives, the true status of interpersonal relationships, and level of open-mindedness. The executive who believes he is always right is likely to have ingrained habits that must be revisited to overcome resistance to feedback. A reluctance to admit weaknesses to others or to self is a natural response for people who reach high organizational levels. They did not get where they are by being weak. In many ways, the executive coaching program is like a personal SWOT analysis in which a coach helps the executive complete the analysis honestly and thoroughly.
The difference between leadership training and executive coaching is that the executive has already succeeded and values the personal characteristics that led to success. When power is earned and the pressures are intense, introspection can seem like a waste of time. Executives have to be motivated to change or feedback falls on deaf ears. It is difficult for executives to admit a leadership style could be ineffective in meeting new challenges. For example, a commanding leadership style may have worked in the 1980s but is ineffective in building a modern collaborative, global organization.
Coaching Program With a Custom Fit
That leads to a final point. The executive coaching program needs tailoring to the executive’s needs and individual style. That approach encourages full participation and produces the greatest results. It also harkens back to earlier advice on coach selection. Utilizing an effective coach and getting a leader to agree to pursue real change and improvement are the two most important qualities of a successful executive coaching program. Corporate governance plays an important part by making authorization of the program a component of a risk management or succession policy. Encouragement from directors sends a clear message that the coaching process is considered vital to corporate success and continuance.
A quality executive coaching program brings together intelligence from multiple disciplines that include communications, psychology, consulting, counseling, and transformative change leadership. It can improve business acumen, analytical thinking skills, relationships with other corporate leaders and staff, organizational skills, communication skills, and more. Participants in coaching programs often express surprise at how much they learn about themselves. Leaders assuming a “lonely at the top” determination are trying to face a rapidly changing marketplace with competencies and traits developed in the past that will not necessarily work in the future. It also explains the daily news stories of executives who are supremely qualified and yet are obviously failing. Think about it…