Leadership coaching is a professional relationship between the coach and client that focuses on enhancing the client’s leadership capability so that they can achieve their short-term and long-term professional or personal goals.
The leadership literature reminds us that leadership is both situationally and contextually contingent. Therefore, leadership coaching is best conducted on a 1:1 basis so that an individual coaching plan can be designed that is tailored to suit the client’s organisational context or life circumstances.
Elite athletes engage the professional services of a coach to ensure they are able to reach their physical and sporting potential. It is now well recognised in the business literature that the professional relationship experienced and accredited coaches develop with their clients, through a process of active listening, dialogue and deep reflection, enables the coach to offer insights that can identify and address gaps in interpersonal or leadership competencies in their clients.
THE BENEFITS OF COACHING
The International Coach Federation published the results of a comprehensive study in 2014 entitled ‘Building a Coaching Culture'.
“More and more organizations have recognized the value in building a culture of coaching that offers employees at all levels—not just executives and managers—the opportunity to grow their skills, enhance their value and reach their professional goals”.
The report found that more than 40% of the organisations surveyed in the study employed internal coaches to work 1:1 on their employees and 60% of organisations made coaching available to their high-potential employees. More importantly, organisations that offered internal coaching programs were associated with high employee satisfaction and performance and increased business productivity. One of the key recommendations is that coaching should be made available to everyone as individuals of all ages and levels of seniority benefit from coaching.
An interesting finding from the Stanford Business School Executive Coaching Survey (2013) is that although 100% of CEOs surveyed in the study admitted that they would benefit from coaching or leadership advice only one third of CEOs (34.3%) were currently receiving this support.
THE NOBLE HOWES COACHING PROCESS
Dr Howes conducts a complimentary Discovery session with each new client followed by a Strategy Session to identify the goals the client wants to achieve, the barriers that need to be overcome and any training or skill acquisition that might be required.
The ongoing coaching relationship assumes a performance management approach that is action-oriented and solutions-focused. Clients bring issues encountered in their work or private life to the coaching sessions so that Dr Howes can facilitate self-learning and behavioural change in the client which enables the client to respond to these issues in a way that is most likely to achieve a positive outcome.
The sustainable leadership coaching approach adopted by Dr Howes for extremely busy executives and senior managers helps them be more discerning about where they apply their energies and decide which non-urgent and non-important tasks they can delegate or re-prioritise so that they can focus on important and urgent tasks. This enables her clients to increase their efficiency and productivity opening a window for relaxation and leisure activities which will improve the quality of their lives.
Please email Dr Tess Howes for further information.