How To Coach Senior Leaders To Get Them Light Their Own Journeys
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 22, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 19, 2022
Written by: Ilham N Musayev, Senior Level Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
As a professional coach, I am working with many types of clients and “moving” them to find their own way to the stars. It is their path, and it is up to them on how they see the stars. My role is to enable them to get there by applying a professional approach and catalyzing the thought-provoking process right to the breakthrough.
However, there is a special category of people/professionals where you need to have some skills and know the tricks of the trade – these are senior leaders or executives. A lot of people recognize this interaction as an executive coaching. Working with an executive coach is like having a mentor who guides you through your decisions from every angle, offering fresh perspectives and insights. A good executive coach will push you to identify your challenges and opportunities. Your coach will also help you to see your blind spots and share resources to help you take more balanced and wise decisions.
Leadership coaches use specific strategies tuned into your strengths and identify your weaknesses and pain points. They also look at the bigger picture to cover both business and professional goals.
So, let’s dive deeper and look at some aspects of senior management or executive coaching.
There will be various factors but let’s start from the most important – it is about credibility and empathy.
Establishing a credibility for coaches requires a solid amount of time and complimented with track records of high performance. It is practically impossible to convince senior leaders to change their patterns unless the coach is trusted, and applies empathy in conversations and connections to the leader. This connection is very vital and holds all threads for coaching firmly.
As every professional coach must do is to invite a client to set their own agenda. The same applies here for the senior leaders. They know exactly which subject they are keen to explore and why. However, a great coach is then taking a leader to a little journey and derives to the destination with set and agreed by leader actions. And as a coach, you are staying nonjudgmental, applying no assumptions, and providing no solutions.
We talked about the experience and high-track records. Every experienced coach will always treat a leader as a whole person. There is no other way on how coaching could be effective. Events happening somewhere else in a client’s life can have a huge and fundamental impact on their attitude or performance ability at work. And revealing that and treating leaders (and all other clients) as a whole person is a very paramount moment.
Coaches are not there to change leaders or their leadership styles. Neither they are intended to provide an agenda for them in this direction. However, what a coach can do is understand what can be changed to broaden leaders’ styles so they can apply it to different situations.
I worked and (working as well) with several senior leaders and each time I interacted with them, I learned something new. One of the important skills or behaviors is having a patience with senior leaders and letting things go on naturally.
At times senior executives can be impatient and they can often want to implement their new approaches immediately. As a result, this may end up with a negative experience, where they will decide not to try it again and switch back to traditional ways of doing things. However, if this experience is approached by patience and leaders have some time to build step-by-step confidence, the new approaches they try work well and they see the difference.
Let’s conclude and see why executive coaching works and makes a difference.
Not all ideas are going to come into reality, however by discussing ideas with an executive coach, leaders open them up to fresh perspectives, new horizons and a whole new world of possibilities.
Having an executive coach will motivate and energize leaders to meet long-term goals or building a fundamental piece of legacy.
One of the key benefits of executive coaching is understanding what leaders are good at – and what could be seen as an opportunity for improvement. It is important to note that when working with leaders a lot depends on the idea of self-awareness. The point is that individuals can only improve if they have a firm understanding of where improvement is necessary.
Executive and senior leaders can benefit personally from working with a coach, and what they learn can help their teams and or even the entire company be ready for various changes. By working with a professional coach, leaders become more confident and educated to make decisions that make change easier. They get the required skills to smoothly guide their businesses through periods of major transformations and uncertainty, which is very precious and powerful.
“Coaching will become the model for leaders in the future … I am certain that leadership can be learned and that terrific coaches … facilitate learning.” – Warren Bennis
Ilham N Musayev, Senior Level Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Ilham N Musayev, is a mentor and coach (outside of the company his works for) who helps people to unlock their potential in career and personal development. He also helps in area of personal effectiveness, setting realistic goals and becoming organized and structured.
Ilham also helps to re-gain the [lost] confidence and look to issues and problems from a different perspective. Another area of his support is helping to cultivate servant leadership via coaching and mentoring technics.
Overall, he is an energy sector professional with 24 years of practical experience obtained by working in one of the leader companies in this sector. Ilham’s experience is very multilayered. He worked and gained his experience from following functions: Wells, PSCM, Operations, Global Projects by mainly providing project controls support.
For the last three years he worked in Modernization and Transformation and Agile Design Teams and helped his company to transform to new ways of working. He currently is a part of Agility team and as an agile coach supports the company by implementing agile ways of working.
Ilham holds following professional certifications and accreditations: Professional Certified Group & Team Coach | ICF-PCC | ICF Member | PARA | PARP | PSM II | PAL I | PSPO I | PMP® | ICAgile ICP-ACC/ATF | MSc. PM | EMBA.
Ilham’s position is that staying open for support, serving people as a leader, and helping people to grow is what wins heart and minds and is the only answer to all questions.
His mission: “Aspire to inspire, before we expire”.
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