What is Executive Coaching?

Executive coaching can feel like a mystery.

Clients often begin this process with lots of questions. “What happens in the three or six months that I’d be working with a coach?” “What happens in a session?” “What exactly is executive coaching?”

One of my favorite questions from prospective clients is when they ask, “if I’m bringing you the topics, how will you prepare? How do you know what to teach me? I don’t know what I don’t know. That’s why I’m coming to you.”

These are all valid concerns. Clients soon realize that coaching is a partnership between the client and coach.

The client is responsible for defining what they want to get out of coaching. And the coach is responsible for guiding the process to make sure the client is progressing.

A coaching engagement typically starts with gaining awareness of how the client shows up in the world.

Each of us has an idea of how we lead. That idea is influenced by the lens through which we see the world. The first discovery that happens involves the lens, as the client gains new awareness about themselves as a leader. We accomplish this awareness in two ways.

The first way is through a developmental interview. The coach interviews the client about the client’s life story. In this developmental interview session, the coach is looking for two foundational pieces of information.

The first piece of information is what the client’s actual experience has been, and uncovering how the client views themselves and how they view the world.

The second piece of foundational information the coach looks for is concrete information about how the client leads.

At Avenue 8 Advisors, we accomplish this discovery through various methods. The first method is through a psychometric assessment that predicts workplace performance. It is a grounded data-driven approach to understanding the client’s strengths and opportunities.

The second method we use to gain new data is through an interview 360 process. This method is a confidential process where the coach interviews the client’s colleagues. The coach then assimilates that information anonymously for the client, drawing out key areas of strength and opportunity.

The coach then delivers the feedback to the client. They explore how the emerging data-driven picture is similar or different to their own self-assessment.

Then the coach and client work together to form an action plan. They’ll agree on two to four key goals and their success measurements.

The coaching engagement then moves into active coaching. Typically, the client and coach meet every two weeks.

In active coaching, the client shares a recent situation or experience. Or they might request assistance with an upcoming situation.

Some of the more frequent scenarios we explore are when the client says:

• “I need to have a hard conversation with a colleague.”
• “I have a complicated conversation coming up with a stakeholder, and I’d like to prepare.”
• “I delegated a project that didn’t go well. How do I provide that difficult feedback?”
• “I’m struggling to make this decision. How can I identify key criteria for myself?

The client and coach partner to move the client forward through the difficult problem. For an example of this with a recent coaching client of mine, click here.

The coach will ask questions, provide feedback and observations and may share resources that can help the client address their specific obstacles.

The client then chooses what they’d like to do differently or how they’d like to handle a challenging situation. The coach then shifts to support the client as an accountability partner, and ensures that what the client has committed to at the end of the session takes place by the next session.

Over the course of several months of coaching sessions, these conversations create a toolbox for the client. The client gains tools to help them understand what they might do specifically in difficult situations. The client also collect a series of experiential examples that they can draw on to apply in similar situations.

The final part of the coaching engagement shifts to reinforcement. This phase of the process ensures that what the client has learned through their coaching experience stays with them past the end of their coaching sessions.

From awareness, to action plans, to active coaching, and creation of a toolbox and reinforcement, coaching in the workplace brings new levels of performance to a coaching client.

Executive coaching is a structured partnership between the client and coach, an ongoing conversation focused on the client’s development. At Avenue 8 Advisors, we follow a defined path to demystify the coaching process and ensure our clients get the results they want quickly and effectively.