Monthly Archives: November 2022

Bakhtiar Khawaja
Executive Coach & CEO
Coaching Resolve

1. An Introduction to Executive/Leadership Coaching

In these challenging times and a rapidly changing business environment, high performing leaders, who can empower, inspire and connect people, are in short supply. In response, high performing organizations systematically invest in their leadership development programs. More and more of them consider Leadership Coaching as a high leverage strategic investment, which strengthens and empowers their leaders. Organizations routinely invest heavily in leadership development. Much of this investment goes towards traditional learning and development efforts. During the last few years, many organizations have started to use one-on-one coaching, either on its own, or in conjunction with learning interventions.

“In a recent study, training alone improved leadership skills by 22%. When combined with Executive Coaching, improvement jumped to 77%.” Fortune

What is Executive / Leadership Coaching

Executive Coaching and Leadership Coaching are generally used to mean the same thing. However, there is a fine difference. Leadership Coaching is a wider term, which includes owners of small to medium sized businesses, senior management of non-profit organizations, corporate leaders, administrative and political leadership. Executive Coaching generally refers to senior management of large corporations.

It is also important to differentiate between Counseling, Consulting, Mentoring and Coaching. We sometimes confuse these terms, leading to a misunderstanding about which of the interventions is called for in a given situation. Counseling (or therapy) is for people with deep-rooted behavioural issues, which only a trained psychologist is qualified to conduct. We commonly hear about managers counseling their errant employees. What they are probably doing is training or advising them on appropriate behaviours.

Consulting is done by capable and experienced consultants ‘in a specific line of business or area of organizational work’. Based on their expertise and experience they analyze an organization’s current situation and chalk out strategies for the future, usually with active involvement of company subject specialists.

Mentoring is usually done in-house, by senior leaders within the organization. These leaders primarily share their own experiences and guide younger professionals towards higher levels of performance. Taking advantage of their senior positions, ‘Mentors’ can also be instrumental in opening doors for their ‘Mentees’.

Coaching is unique in that it proposes to empower the ‘Coachees’ by helping them unleash their own creative powers, leading to sustainable learning and behavior change. Coaching often leads to transforming Coachees to become more balanced and productive employees.

Executive & Leadership Coaching produces extraordinary results with high performing leaders, as well as with those who need to bridge performance gaps. If called for, coaches employ a range of diagnostic tools to provide the person being coached with the insight and awareness needed to create a meaningful Personal Development Plan with measurable goals. A mutually agreed combination of face-to-face and Skype-based coaching sessions is helping aspiring leaders from around the world build a path to success without the high cost of travel or absence from the office. Executive Coaches help leaders transform themselves into great leaders. They also assist today’s managers become tomorrow’s leaders by working with them individually to build skills, resolve daily issues and integrate new behaviors. Leaders undergoing coaching often remark how great it is to have a knowledgeable and trustworthy coach in their corner.

Executive Coaching not only delivers results but it also prevents problems. It brings about positive behavior change over time. We support this change in a safe and confidential environment. Executive gain new insight into the key capabilities necessary to achieve their desired results. The one-on-one coaching relationship is designed to encourage proactivity, purposeful dialogue, create new insight, develop new knowledge and skills, and spur personal growth.

By becoming proactive, executives can confidently explore their vision, bring projects to completion and investigate new opportunities. Sharing with someone from outside the organization offers a strictly confidential venue for you to receive an objective perspective. Since coaches have no personal agenda, you gain a true partner in helping you achieve what is most meaningful.

In order to benefit from executive coaching, YOU as a leader have to:

• Be willing to change and give it your 100%
• Be open to constructive criticism
• Listen and discover yourself by welcoming honest feedback

An executive coach helps you take charge of your reality: not dance around it. We require that you ask yourself difficult questions like ‘who are you’ and ‘what do you want’. This requires time and it all depends on how eager you are to change.

The central question for CEOs and HR/OD departments is: “How to find a knowledgeable and qualified coach in whose care you can entrust your company’s most prized assets – members of your leadership team”? Coaching is a relatively new leadership development system, and is largely unregulated. Any number of people can start calling themselves ‘Coaches’ and start offering coaching services. Some of them may actually be doing a reasonably good job! But how can one be sure? It must be challenging for companies looking for coaching services to find the right coach. Despair not – help is on the way. I’ll try to make things simpler for you.

‘Coaches’ Without Systematic Training and Accreditation The only issue with such coaches is that you can never be sure of what they are offering. In all probability, they are offering a combination of training, consulting and coaching. Not a bad combination, you may think. The problem here is that, when coached by these coaches, the sustainable development, empowerment, self-discovery and behavioural change that ‘coaching’ can bring, may elude your leaders. Solution: Find a coach whose expertise you can trust because he/she is properly trained, certified and credentialed by reputable and renowned coaching institutions.

Training and Certification

You are in luck! There are a large number of coach-training institutions offering a variety of training options for would-be coaches. Predictably, the quality and duration of these training courses varies from one institution to another. When a coach-training institution offers a three-day training course (or two-day, or even one-day), it will issue a certificate of ‘attendance’ or ‘successful completion’ of the said course. With this certificate in hand, the course participants earn the right to call themselves ‘certified coaches’. Two more questions arise:

• Is there a way to find out about the curriculum, teachers and overall quality of the training institution?
• Are three days enough time for a participant to learn and practise the art of coaching to qualify for your attention as a coach for your leaders?

Unlikely! This brings us back to square one.

Approved / Accredited Training Institutions by a ‘Coaching Body’

Brilliant! Let’s find a supra-coaching body – an association or federation, which oversees the work of coach training institutions, giving them some measure of credibility. There are many – all claiming to be torch bearers for a noble cause. The question that arises here is about the standing of the coaching association itself. Don’t take me wrong – they may be doing a good job. But a lingering doubt remains. More questions:

• What subject matter should be taught during training?
• What is an appropriate duration of coaching training?
• How much experience should a coach have to qualify for your attention?

Enter the International Coach Federation (ICF)

Now we are talking. Don’t take me wrong. I do not represent ICF in any way – but it IS the largest, one of the oldest and the best organized coaching body. ICF has over 30,000 member coaches. (Criteria for becoming a member are quite stiff). It sets standards, accredits and monitors coach-training institutions. It has put together a list of 70 core competencies it wants its accredited institutions to teach, plus a Code of Conduct it wants all member coaches to adhere to. That is why certificates issued by institutions accredited by ICF have a greater value and credibility. However, some questions remain – how much training and experience should a coach have? Who is to decide?

Let’s Go One Step Further! ICF Credentials

The questions raised above have been answered by ICF. Its top decision makers have made things easier for corporate HR / OD departments. Coaches who have successfully completed a coach training programme of a duration of 125 hours or more, and have completed a total of 100 (or more) hours of documented coaching, qualify to apply for ICF’s ACC (Associate Certified Coach) credential. However, this credential needs to be renewed after completing additional mandatory training. It doesn’t stop here – there are higher level credentials. After amassing 750 hours of coaching experience, you qualify for PCC (Professional Certified Coach) credential. The ultimate credential is the MCC (Master Certified Coach), which requires 2,000 hours of coaching experience, 200 hours of approved training, 10 hours of Mentor Coaching and a couple of other performance evaluation measures.

So, if your selected coach has earned an ICF credential, you can be assured that he/she has undergone required training, supervision and has passed a standardised practicle exam. Plus a minimum level of coaching experience has also been verified.

Other Coaching Bodies

To be fair with other coaching associations, many of them have also set standards and criteria for membership and credentialing process, though their following is in no way comparable to ICF. The more prominent of those (that I have discovered so far) are:

• International Association of Coaching
• Association for Coaching
• Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision
• European Mentoring and Coaching Council

Experience and exposure of Coaches:

Having settled the matter of coach-training, certification and credentials, let’s move on to the matter of experience and exposure of coaches. Unlike a consultant, who is an expert in his/her particular field, and prescribes standardized solutions based on his/her knowledge and experience, coaches are primarily experts in coaching skills. (We already know how to verify approved coach training, certification and credentials).

Coaches believe that clients are the real experts in their respective fields. What a coach does is to empower them, support and guide them to crystalize their solutions and then helps them implement those solutions. This he/she does by removing real or imaginary barriers, by clarifying a client’s beliefs and by helping him/her discover and modify disempowering underlying beliefs. From this point of view, a coach doesn’t need to have technical or professional knowledge or skill of a client’s industry or trade. However, it helps if a coach has professional experience and life exposure to match that of a client. For instance, take Mr. A, a certified and credentialed coach with long corporate experience, who is being considered for coaching a senior corporate executive. He will definitely have an edge over other coaches if he has ‘been there’, by way of having worked in senior level corporate assignments during his professional experience in the past. Mr. B, a young and relatively inexperienced, yet certified and credentialed coach, may be able to do a good job of executive coaching. However, it may be too much to expect that he will command the same level of credibility, trust and success, as Mr. A does.

(Bakhtiar Khawaja, ACC, is Senior Executive Coach ↦ CEO with ‘Coaching Resolve’)