Choosing a Great Leadership Coach

Choosing a Great Leadership Coach

By Mike W Bell

Coaching provides the opportunity for you to get direct, personal and focused guidance, teaching and support in the development of you leadership capability. It is vital that you get the best from your coach and build a relationship of trust as you tackle their real leadership challenges in improving organization performance.

For many leaders it is developing their 'character' and the whole range of personal and interpersonal skills that make it up, that is the key to unlocking more of their leadership potential: their creativity and imagination, their emotional flexibility, their capacity for building relationships and for taking decisive and courageous action.

Foundations of Great Leadership Coaching

As the client you should expect to be treated as a whole person complete with a vast amount of natural talent and potential. The aim should not be to 'fix' you but to help you develop and release what is already there. Each of us is on our own learning journey and there is no blame or judgment about where we are on that journey.

It is not possible to separate who we are from what we do. While the focus may be leadership in the workplace, coaching will often explore elements of body, mind, emotion and spirit and how they are impacting all aspects of your life.

It is up to you to decide what you want to achieve. The coach should do not set the agenda but help you to look beneath the presenting issues and to be really clear what outcomes you desire.

The coach is not the expert. They don't prescribe solutions and the best results come when the coach and client acknowledge their interdependent relationship and use this as a source of power and learning.

Each coaching relationship is individual. The approach and design evolves as client and coach understand more of what is needed to produce the desired results.

At the intake stage expect to establish a clear Coaching Contract for agreement and signing. It is also good to undertake an Expectations Exchange so both client and coach are really clear about what they can expect and not expect of each other.

What Outcomes can you expect of Leadership Coaching?

1. Sustainable Excellent Performance

You should expect to agree high measurable standards by which you, and your organization, can assess the outcomes of the coaching.

2. Self-Observation

Because of the coaching process, you should become more able to observe when you are performing well or not. You should learn to make the needed adjustments to your behavior without depending upon the coach.

3. Self-Learning

The coaching process should help you to learn how to learn. So the process of improvement continues when the coaching project is complete.

Wishing you a great coaching experience.

Mike W Bell has been a senior executive, leadership coach and organizational development consultant for over 30 years. For the last 15 or more of these I have been weaving an old wisdom tradition with the latest science and research to find more whole and balanced approaches to leadership and organization. My latest ebook, a modern fable entitled Leadership Intelligences in Action can be previewed at http://mutualinspiration.co.uk/leadershipintelligences/liaebook/

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