What Is Executive Coaching & How Can It Help Your Business?

So, what are the differences between executive coaching and other types of workplace coaching?

Executive coaching of course includes similar characteristics to other workplace coaching in general – in reality, its basis is focusing on improving and developing an individual and their performance through a positive relationship with their expert coach. And isn’t every type of workplace coaching trying to achieve the same?

Executive coaching isn’t exactly the same, however.

It is far more unique and specific to executives and executive functions, targeting personalised goals, which other workplace employees may not yet have, or need, to develop and better understand them – it provides a personal, safe space to reach the next level as an executive.

Coaching for executives also differs from other workplace coaching styles because of the types of coaches available, and their levels of experience.

Executive coaches are often far more experienced at having held senior positions, giving them the specific knowledge needed to approach setting, and achieving, executive goals – knowing the obstacles senior leaders and executives face today is key.

At EZRA, online executive coaching to us means more than just developing your execs. Our EZRAx programs are focused on ensuring the coach is right for you, curating a bench of coaches for you to choose from, as well as enhancing the experience of coaching for your leaders, and giving deep meaningful insights that can be used to direct growth and keep for future use.

What are the benefits of executive coaching for your business?

So, why is executive coaching important?

By way of benefitting both your employees and your business, executive coaching has a whole array of key benefits to deliver development and much more. These include:

• Improving the ability to assess strengths and weaknesses

• Developing goal-setting abilities

• Increasing confidence, therefore improving performance

• Providing help in navigating change in senior roles

• Fostering a better company culture

Let’s take a deeper look into some of these benefits.

1. Improving the ability to assess both individual and company strengths and weaknesses

With the help of executive coaching, your executives will develop the skills to assess both their individual and collective organisational strengths and weaknesses.

These skills can lead to far better individual growth and development, generating increases in performance and productivity individually. What’s better than your executives working to the best of their abilities?

More than that, executive coaching helps your execs and leaders develop skills to identify strengths within your organisation that can be improved and strategized upon, while also identifying weaknesses that can be better supported.

2. Improving goal-setting abilities, both personally and collectively for the business

By helping to identify strengths and weaknesses, executive coaching also effects an executive’s ability to identify key goals and work towards them, both for the business collectively and individually.

This is such a key skill to develop to move forward and achieve success. Without business goals, you’ll likely see the dreaded stunt in organisational growth. Similarly, without individual goals, personal development is far harder to achieve.

Business leaders tend to believe they’ve got goal setting down, but these aren’t always SMART goals. An executive coach will help shape and round these goals into defined, actionable, and measurable objectives.

3. Increasing confidence

Working on yourself improves self-confidence, right? It’s no different with workplace and executive coaching. It’s a basis to work on yourself and achieve your goals, whether they are personal or professional. And the results show this!

80% of people who received coaching at work reported an increase in self-confidence. That is a sizeable uplift, and the impacts don’t stop there. An increase in confidence has a direct correlation to improvements in:

• performance

• productivity

• communication skills

• assured leadership

• better and timelier decision-making

• and even happiness at work

…all of which increase your staff retention rates. The benefits are endless.

4. Helping to navigate change in senior roles

An organisation will always be going through changes. Whether it’s a change in leadership, changes to a client base, or entering new markets, change is inevitable. That is where executive coaching comes in. It provides support, insights, and recommendations for senior employees navigating this change.

5. Improving the ability to foster a better company culture

We’ve established that executive coaching isn’t just an individualised service. It translates into far wider business benefits, one of which is a healthier workplace culture.

Executive coaching helps business leaders to identify improvements for company culture and implement solutions. This may include improving diversity and inclusion at work or improving work-life balance.

Reportedly, only 28% of executives really understand their company cultures. And yet, these leadership roles are vital in cultivating a great company culture, and for a business this is crucial in reducing staff turnover rates.

What to ask your executive coach

Questions to an executive coach are going to differ from person-to-person. Why? Well, we all have different goals. But it’s important to understand that executive coaching puts executives in the driving seat.

So, senior employees should feel confident to define their goals straight away, ask how the coach is going to help achieve these goals, what is their process or style for doing so, ask for examples of previous success stories, and what benefits they’ll start to see through this coaching experience.

As we've explored in this article, executive coaching can be an incredibly effective way of developing your business leaders and, as a result, the business as a whole.

Get started with executive coaching with EZRAx and EZRA Measure and help kickstart your journey to growth and greatness today.