You have developed professional skills, expertise, vision, and ability to lead a team, but oftentimes you need professional assistance to make sure you are on the right track in deploying your strengths and capabilities to reach your goals more effectively. Executive coaches are the professionals who help you focus on your personal and professional development. They help you recognize your powers and opportunities for future development and enable you to develop strategic plans and strategies to accomplish business goals.
An executive coach is a professional partner with whom you can discuss your deepest concerns, business ideas, and challenges to move on with a dynamic strategy for ultimate business growth and success. The core purpose of hiring a coach is to maximize your potential and develop the essential skills and expertise to become successful. But finding the best one could be a real challenge.
Here are some criteria and tips to find the best executive coach to work with.
Credentials & Qualifications
Coaching is a somewhat unregulated industry and anyone can call himself a coach. That is the reason, you should find a coach who is credentialed by the ICF (International Coach Federation). ICF ensures that the individual has successfully completed a professional degree and has passed the exam to become an authentic and reliable coach. According to ICF, coaches are required to continue their learning and development in order to become more effective and stay current in the field.
Check for the Specialties
There are many highly skilled and professional coaches available. However, there are specialties that you must consider when it comes to hiring the best executive coach. For instance, if you are seeking a coach for a CFO, you must check the financial background of the coach to make sure it is the right fit for you and meets the particular needs of your CFO.
Interpersonal skills & approach
Every coach is different in his/her expertise and can make use of different approaches to make a coaching relationship work properly. That is the reason, you should know about the interpersonal skills and approaches of a coach you are about to hire for yourself, or for other executives in the company. Ask them how they will communicate and explain things effectively. Ask him/her to explain their interpersonal skills, style, and coaching approach. It will help you determine whether he/she is a good option to move on or not.
Can the coach collect and deliver honest feedback from your team members about you?
As executives, managers, or team leaders hold powers and authorities due to the most senior positions in the company, employees and team members are reluctant to share any serious feedback with them. They usually are afraid of the consequences of making the leader unhappy. That is the reason, the executives and team leaders fail to get honest feedback from their team members or employees. This is the place where a good executive coach comes in handy by collecting sincere and honest feedback about you from your employees. So, before engaging a coach, make sure to ask whether he/she can collect and deliver honest feedback about you from your team members. The coach has to inform the stakeholders of the benefit of frank feedback for the leader. As a result, the leader will be able to improve certain areas not only to develop a more harmonious team, but for ultimate career success.
Can the coach maintain confidentiality?
During the coaching relationship and engagement, a coach comes across plenty of information and details that are private and confidential in nature. He/she also needs to interact with employees and team members of the company to collect feedback and other business-related information. So, to maintain the trust of employees and executives, a coach must stay in boundaries and keep the private and secret information confidential. If he/she needs to share some business details with employees or executives, he/she must take permission first to maintain trust and reliability.
