You will realize that learning is an important part of leadership and growth by the time you've reached...
senior executive status. And having the humility to appreciate that there is always more to learn is all part of the job. And it’s part of stepping up to the next job too.
In a world where anyone can be a “coach”, how can you be sure of the value that executive coaching can bring to your career and how can you ensure that it will yield a positive result for you?
Choose Your Coach Carefully
It’s important to choose the right coach for a specific circumstance. Ultimately, the benefits of any coaching lie with the skills and experience that the coaches actually have. That’s why here at CRC, we’re very open and transparent about the nature of our career coaching focus. It’s about accelerating already successful executives by coaching them to find and pitch for the very best roles.
Our coaches have years of very senior executive experience and I personally, was a top practitioner in executive recruitment. We all know what it’s like to be on the up and how easily a struggle can come. So when we coach people, it’s through the lens of their ambition to move on, sometimes in their current organization, more often to a role in a completely new organization.
Get What You Want
This is the bottom line. What are your career goals and dreams? A good coach can really help you work that out and be a useful support system on your journey - a neutral third party - unlike a family member or friend - who isn’t in any way dependent on your success. Someone who can be constructive, positive and honest about how you’re doing and what’s getting in your way. Your coach can introduce you to tools and techniques that will allow you to better reach your goals and create the career that you want.
Leverage Your Existing Strengths
A great coach can help you see and leverage strengths that you have - but could be grossly underestimating. In fact, some things come so naturally to certain people, that they seldom see their gift as such a stand out from the rest (and these skills are often worth a lot of money because they are rare and valuable).
See Yourself More Clearly
Because we work with many executives all over the United States and beyond, with a range of functional expertise and across the gamut of industries, we understand that many of our clients don’t see themselves that clearly and that it matters. We can help you understand how others see you and pattern the feedback into key themes, to help clarify your strengths relative to the alternatives.
Moving On Up
Coaching guru Marshall Goldsmith’s book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” is brilliantly titled because the statement is so true. It is so often the case that executives that have flown through their careers, start to feel inadequate and as if they have hit the buffers when they suddenly stop being the blue-eyed boy or girl, stop progressing or worse find themselves down and out. And it does happen - most often not related to an individual’s performance or lack of it. Sometimes quite the reverse. We all have a set of capabilities that may serve us well as mid-level employees but won’t help us in the echelons of senior leadership.
Building Networks
It is well accepted that leaders can dramatically improve their effectiveness by being willing or able to build strong relationships with the right kind of people. Failure to do so can dramatically limit their effectiveness. So applying these skills as a legitimate form of being open to conversations means building productive working relationships with a wider variety of people who might be looking for someone like you is mission-critical.
What is the ‘hidden job market’? Quite simply it’s jobs that pass without ever being advertised or turned into a recruiter or headhunter’s brief. The more senior you get, the more you’ll realize how many jobs are appointed in this way.
Buyer Beware!
I’ve seen literally hundreds of executives accelerate, find and successfully pitch for the very best roles in their field. So trust me when I say there are three caveats:
* Your coach has to be an expert in the thing that you are trying to achieve
* They have to be good
* You have to be coachable - which can be uncomfortable from time to time.
Coaching has become super popular in the last few years and there are a lot of people working as coaches who won’t necessarily be able to support you if you want to step up to a new role. Here’s a great set of questions to ask your prospective executive coach that will help you find out what you need to know.
But don’t forget there’s you. If you’re not willing to put in the work and do what it takes then you won’t benefit from having a coach no matter who they are.
If you want to try out the questions drop me a line at Tammy@BeyondJobSearching.com
