Written by Intepeople Executive Coach, Anna Gibbons.
“It’s not that someone needs a coach, it’s that everyone deserves one.’’
Coaching is no longer just for under-performers - it’s for the ambitious, those with dreams and goals of thriving to their full potential and being authentic leaders in their organisations.
Here are five great reasons for working with an Executive Coach on your own personal and professional development:
1. Increased Clarity and Perspective
We all know the saying when you’re in a situation, ‘you can’t see the wood for the trees’. When we’re rushing from home to work and juggling being a parent and a partner with our career, we simply do not get the time to sit, self-reflect and create change.
Sure, we can chat with our colleagues, friends and family - but it’s a very different conversation with an executive coach.
The quality of our conversations are crucial and a coach can help keep your clarity and perspective when discussing challenges and stressful situations. Our friends and family are great at offering empathy and sympathy, but a coach tends to hold the space for you to find solutions rather than jump into the pit with you.
2. Accountability
The brain likes to offer excuses when you’re trying to get out of doing the things you don’t like doing. But it’s the things we don’t like doing the most that usually have the greatest return or pay off.
An executive coach helps you to ‘lean in’ to these things rather than to ‘lean away’. When you have to meet with your coach to discuss progress and your actions towards your goals, you are no longer able to procrastinate and put things off.
3. Increase Confidence
Negative self talk is in everyone’s brain. Yes, EVERYONE'S! The main difference between successful and happy people is that they choose not to listen to it the same as unhappy people or unsuccessful people perhaps do.
The human brain is hardwired to keep us safe so it’s constantly wanting to bring the fear of ‘not being good enough’, or fear of ‘failure’ into our thoughts. However, we no longer have to worry about tigers chasing us, so we need to learn to control this negative self-talk. An executive coach can help you do this by building on your mental tool kit.
4. Creating your life
Having an executive coach isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself.
A coach will ask you questions you may never have been asked before. They will help you picture success and visualise where you want to be, what it feels like, looks like and sounds like. When the brain is in a positive and motivated state, solutions jump out at you and you can more easily make a plan to get where you want to go.
5. Faster Results
'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.'
A coach helps you to see the barriers that are holding you back from achieving the results you want. Barriers can be limiting decisions or unhelpful beliefs that no longer serve us. By reconnecting with our values and purpose we are able to work more efficiently and make better decisions.
These are just a few of the many reasons why an executive coach should be part of everyone’s personal and professional development plan. If you are tempted to find out more about Intepeople’s Executive Coaching services, contact us now.