What Does Coaching Mean for Executives?
Often executives ask this question and here is the answer: Coaching for execs means making changes so you can evolve and improve. The result is managing yourself and relationships effectively.
Think about this in the context of executive impact: senior leadership casts the biggest impact on everyone in the organization, their families and friends and community at large. When employees share their work experiences, who do they talk to? Loved ones and friends, who are ultimately, the community.
The way executives create results is not by themselves; it’s through others. Specifically they create results by how they manage the relationship with others. Their results are reflective of the level of results. Here is an example:
Who do you go to most often at work with critical projects? You probably go to the leaders you like and with whom you feel most comfortable—probably those who are most like you, right? This is because it’s easy to relate and you have a good, strong relationship—you can trust them with critical work.
Now, what if they aren’t the best-suited for a particular piece of work? Someone else is, but you don’t feel as comfortable with them. This is human behavior; in a split second, you will still choose the other person and produce less significant results than you could have.
This happens because you don’t understand the person. You don’t understand where they are coming from (their motivational value system) and it differs from yours—simply put. Layering onto this tendency, humans veer away from relationships which, they perceive, are difficult. This brings up a recipe for mediocrity in the relationship, organizational results, and culture. No executive I’ve ever met or worked with, goes into the office saying, “Let’s go for mediocrity today!!” But that’s the result most get.
That’s where Velocity’s coaching comes in. We work with executives to identify the behavioral patterns that are blocking greater success. Specifically, helping executives know their motivational value system, and once they do, help them recognize and embrace others’ MVS. (Be advised, this is far different from coaching other companies offer, which is usually all strategic and work product related)
When you step into the executive role, you immediately transition out of creating results through your own actions, into creating results through others. You can be ineffective or effective at this, the key component being relationship management.
My question to you: are you going to step up and make changes to evolve and improve in managing yourself and relationships, or stay exactly the same and produce the same mediocre results?