Leaders can be coached. Is it time for you to get an executive coach?

Coaching is all about skills development. May sound like an obvious thing to say, but the value of coaching seems to be often blurred and conflated with mentoring. Mentoring can be a subcomponent of coaching, but mentoring is mostly about sharing advice and experience with someone of less tenure in a given role.

In our view, the three primary skills that warrant an executive coach are: decision making, communication, and leadership.

Decision making directly impacts the operational tempo of an organization. And depending on where an executive sits in an organization, that singular human can bring the entirety of the business to a halt if they’re inconsistent or hesitant to make decisions.

Rachel Vilsack recently stepped into a new role as COO at Credential Engine, a non-profit whose mission is to map the credential landscape with clear and consistent information. The role of the COO is new to the organization, and Rachel was looking to develop her leadership skills, with a focus on decision making. For several months now, Rachel has engaged in coaching sessions with Bob at Pachydermos, LLC. “Working with Bob as my executive coach made a lot of sense, because he had experience with Credential Engine for other projects and already knew the people and the organization.” Through the coaching process, Rachel has the ability to meet with Bob to tackle and “meet the needs [she] has at the moment”. Access to her executive coach allows her to implement decisions quickly and continue to lead the team through a crucial period of growth and change.

Communications, particularly in remote or global models, can be the glue that holds the business together or the cancer that kills it. You simply cannot spend too much time focusing on executive communications. If you as an executive are not driving and nurturing the narrative for your team or business, you’re letting them down. Rachel credits her coach with inspiring her to shift the language the organization uses in regards to their work. “We were thinking of our work as project-based with conclusions. In working with Bob, and knowing we needed an organizational shift, I’ve used more customer-centric terminology and concepts.” The thinking and the verbiage has been well received by the team. With clear communication, the team can focus on partners and their needs, and the mission-based organization can really nurture relationships and build trust in order to bring new opportunities and ideas to their constituents.

In addition, the coaching Rachel has received has helped make communications with her leadership more impactful. “I’ve never worked this close to a CEO - without the coaching, I wouldn’t have known how to navigate my communications with him in order to drive problem solving and ensure I am in line with the vision of the organization.”

Some would argue that leadership is a state of mind more than specific tangible skills. But we’d suggest that leadership comprises a specific set of practices that can and should be taught. We’d even suggest that these skills be pushed down into the organization as far as possible to create leader-leader scenarios, versus leader-followers. Rachel has prided herself on her management of team members, with a focus on their professional growth. She says that executive coaching has, “given me the ability to practice and build my leadership muscle. I run my ideas past Bob and he helps me view them through a leadership lens, and I always leave my sessions with truly actionable strategies to implement.” As an added benefit, Rachel’s professional development complements the work she does to identify leadership and growth within her team members, and she feels team development is the “sweet spot” of her entire career.

Are you a decisive executive that communicates clearly and builds leaders? Let us know in the comments below how you feel about executive coaching for either you or your team members. Or, if you or your organization could benefit immediately from coaching, reach out to us at info@pachydermos.com to learn how we can help.