Leadership isn’t an X-factor that you’re born with, but rather, a skill that you need to develop and hone for your entire life. Great leaders aren’t born — they’re made.
And the secret sauce for many of these incredible folks? Executive leadership coaching.
I’ve coached thousands of CEOs, entrepreneurs, and leaders, helping them scale their businesses by scaling their leadership and themselves. I’m on a mission to help every leader find success and happiness in their work and in their life.
Is executive coaching right for you? Let’s find out.
What is Executive Leadership Coaching?
Executive leadership coaching helps executives and professionals become better leaders. Through executive coaching, we create a development plan tailored to achieving your career goals and honing your leadership skills.
While they share some similarities, coaching is not quite the same as counseling or mentoring. A mentor acts as a role model, someone who’s been in your shoes and offers helpful advice based on their experiences. A counselor helps you work through your problems and feelings via introspection. Both mentoring and counseling can help learn more about yourself and your industry, but if you’re looking to really grow as a leader, coaching is the key.
A coach helps you set specific goals and get measurable results. Executive coaching helps you go from a reactionary leader, constantly putting out fires, to a proactive one who’s always one step ahead. It’s about honing your strengths and building upon your weaknesses to improve your performance for the long term, not just getting through the next week.
My executive leadership coaching services take a modern, forward-looking approach to leadership and self-development. I use evidence-based techniques to train the CEOs of today and tomorrow into more decisive, confident, and inspiring leaders.
And our work isn’t limited to the office. If you want to optimize performance on the field of play, we also have to optimize performance off the field of play. We look at the whole picture to help you become the best version of yourself — so you can succeed in all areas of your life.
Why Consider Executive Leadership Coaching?
Executive coaching helps you understand yourself better so that you can take action more confidently and effectively.
Here are the main benefits of executive coaching you’ll experience:
- Gain self-awareness and understanding of your strengths and weaknesses
- Improve your work-life balance
- Achieve your career goals faster
- Communicate more effectively with stakeholders and employees
- Inspire and lead your teams to greater outcomes
- Navigate changes in your organization and career with greater ease
- Stay accountable for making progress towards your goals
- Find more satisfaction and purpose in your life
- Fight burnout and manage stress to become a more resilient leader
Executive coaching doesn’t just help you, but also positively impacts your business and its employees. With a proactive mindset, you can identify problems early before they become bigger issues later on. You’re also better equipped to overcome any obstacles that do arise, and keep your team on track working towards common goals.
For more than 20 years, I’ve coached CEOs and leaders all over the world and helped scale over 100 companies to date. On average, my clients see a 300% return on investment and 83% improvement in their work-life balance, becoming more productive, happier versions of themselves.
Who Can Benefit from Executive Leadership Coaching?
Traditionally, executive coaching has been for struggling leaders, or reserved for leaders at the very top of the company. Today, anyone who wants to become a stronger leader can benefit from executive coaching.
Here’s how executive coaching can be a game-changer for people at all stages of their careers:
- Early-career Professionals: Fast track your career progression by developing key leadership skills.
- Mid-career Managers: Lead with greater confidence, manage teams more effectively, and improve your strategic thinking.
- C-Suite Executives: Maximize your impact, build stronger relationships with stakeholders, and improve your decision-making on an organizational level.
- Entrepreneurs and Founders: Build and scale your ventures with a growth mindset, manage your time wisely, and handle uncertainties with ease.
- Professionals Making Career Transitions: Skip the growing pains while adapting to a new or desired position.
- Professionals Facing Burnout or Feeling Stuck: Get a fresh perspective and reignite your passion for work so you get back on the right track.
Executive coaching helps you chart a course to get you to the next level of your career, no matter where you’re at in your professional journey.
Types of Executive Leadership Coaching
Your executive coach is there to give you one-on-one, personalized support tailored to your goals. Not every individual will benefit from the same types of coaching, so it’s best to find an executive coach who offers an approach best-suited to your development goals.
Consider the following common types of executive coaching:
Career Coaching
A career coach helps you find the right career path and plan your next career moves. They can also help you hone your interviewing skills, explore new career options, or adjust to a new job.
Life Coaching
A life coach helps you make progress in all areas of your life, including your career, relationships, health, finances, and more. If you’ve ever wondered, “What should I do with my life?” or felt lost, a life coach can help you figure it all out. Life coaching focuses on improving the quality of your life overall.
Organizational Coaching
An organizational coach provides guidance on how to improve your company on a systemic level. Like a doctor, they diagnose any weaknesses in your company structure or processes, and help your organization run more productively.
Business Coaching
A business coach helps you grow as a professional while also growing your business. They teach you how to make better business decisions, accelerate your career, and scale your business according to your vision.
Performance Coaching
Performance coaching helps you improve your productivity and efficiency at work. A performance coach provides actionable feedback to help you overcome challenges that threaten your success, such as poor work performance or major organizational changes or crises.
Executive Team Coaching
Executive team coaching helps executives become better team leaders, while helping team members become better employees. A team coach helps everyone on a team improve their communication and collaboration skills, with a focus on shared objectives and collective results. This approach can be highly effective for small business owners, executives heading up diverse teams, or leaders assigned to teams that were recently reorganized or assembled.
Executive Leadership Coaching
An executive leadership coach helps you develop your leadership skills and perform better in your role as an executive. Executive leadership coaching focuses on the individual’s professional growth as a key driver of corporate success.
This is a great fit for:
- Executives or senior managers who want to reach the “next level”
- Leaders joining a new organization
- First-time leaders
- Aspiring leaders
- Founders or entrepreneurs looking for external support
My approach borrows from all of these types of coaching, with a specific focus on executive leadership coaching. Drawing on my decades of corporate work experience and being a business owner myself, I specialize in coaching CEOs, founders, and leaders to reach their peak levels of performance.
The Executive Leadership Coaching Process
So, what does “coaching” look like in action?
First things first, you shouldn’t expect overnight results. An executive coaching program can take months to years to implement, so plan for the long haul.
Here’s what to expect when you work with an executive leadership coach:
1. Establish a relationship
First, you’ll complete an initial consultation with your coach to get to know each other better and build a relationship based on trust. Your executive coach will:
- Make sure it’s a mutual fit
- Learn more about you
- Discuss your goals and high-level action plan
- Assess your skills
If you’re a CEO or founder, it takes just a few minutes to schedule a call with me to find out if we’re a match.
2. Meet regularly for coaching sessions
You’ll meet with your coach regularly — I usually see my clients every two weeks.
During each coaching session, you will:
- Check-in with your coach on your progress from the last session
- Set specific goals for the current session
- Receive actionable advice from your coach
- Determine what to work on before your next session
3. Take action between sessions
In between sessions, you should be implementing what you learned from your coach. Practice new strategies, mindsets, and behaviors until they become habits.
Take note of specific actions that you take and their outcomes, to discuss at your next session. What were your wins? What did you struggle with?
Remember that setbacks aren’t failures! Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were the best-led companies.
How to Choose the Right Executive Leadership Coach
Anyone can claim to be an executive coach on paper, but not all coaches are fully qualified. Just because they’ve held a leadership position before or have a coaching certification doesn’t mean they’re the right executive coach for you.
Here’s what to look for in an executive leadership coach:
Experience
An executive coach needs to have experience leading a company as an executive, to prove that they understand what it takes to hold a high-level leadership role.
While I was recognized as the “CEO of the Year” in 2019, I’ve also been in the trenches — battling fierce competition, working long days, and struggling with tough decisions.
That’s why I firmly believe that experience is the most valuable (and irreplaceable) quality any executive coach can offer. There’s no better coach than someone who’s already been there and done it all — and can help you replicate that success on your own.
A seasoned coach can offer more actionable advice and realistic solutions than someone who’s only studied leadership strategies from a book.
Credentials
An executive coach doesn’t need to have professional certifications, but they can show that they’re committed to their craft and up-to-date on current best practices.
For example, I’ve completed a coaching certification with the High Performance Institute, as well as a coaching certification and apprenticeship with Professor BJ Fogg, who heads Stanford University’s Behavior Design Lab. While my experience as a CEO demonstrates I know how to lead, these credentials prove that I’ve also learned how to coach as well.
Holistic Approach
Look for an executive coach that helps you on all fronts, not just “the business.” If you want to create long-lasting change, you have to look at the whole picture, starting with yourself.
I coach executives in three pillars of excellence: you, your leadership, and your business. We can’t scale one without scaling all three in tandem.
I provide resources and strategies backed by behavioral science to help you reach your full potential. We train in evidence-based, peak performance principles to get you to show up at your best — whether on the work, home, or health fronts.
Client Results
Lastly, find out what past clients have to say about your coach. How successful have this coach’s clients been?
My client roster includes dozens of successful CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs, from pre-revenue companies to multi-billion dollar global businesses. My clients take home invaluable research-backed lessons that they can immediately apply to their lives to become more productive, aligned leaders.
Final notes
Ready to take charge of your professional growth, become your best self, and transform your life? If so, it sounds like coaching is right for you.
Learn more about how to develop yourself, your leadership, and your company through my executive leadership coaching services.
Or check out my blog for more leadership tips!
Frequently asked questions
Every coach sets their own rates, depending on their experience and qualifications. They may charge by hour, by package, or by month. However, you should expect to invest thousands of dollars to see meaningful results.
Executive coaching focuses on senior-level executives with more authority and higher stake in organizational decision-making. Leadership coaching has a broader focus, helping managers at all organizational levels, including executives.
Yes. An investment in yourself as a leader is a long-term investment in your and your company’s future. Nearly everyone can benefit from executive coaching and developing a leadership mindset.
Executive coaching helps executives become more effective leaders and achieve their professional goals.
