Nelson Mandela had once said, “There is no passion, to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
As a senior corporate leader, you are working in an ever-changing environment. You are responsible for your function as well as the overall organizational goal. In this dynamic VUCA worldthere are innumerable challenges including things such as inspiring team members to deliver world class service to the customers, managing difficult and challenging internal and external stakeholders, providing value to the shareholders, managing the board members so on and so forth.
All successful leaders who make it to the top positions have these three things in common. 1. They have a growth mindset. 2. They are continuously sharpening their axe. 3. Learning is always a high priority in their overall scheme of things. They regularly invest in their self- development.
Executive Coaching is a journey from being good to great. It is a journey that you take to get in touch with your inner genius.
The executive coach nudges you towards the right action. He becomes your sounding board. He becomes your accountability partner for the proposed steps that you commit to taking towards your growth.
So if you are a leader who is wanting to do something extraordinary or have a desire to leave a legacy, executive coaching is the answer.
In the western world, almost every successful person has an executive coach.
Asked what the best advice he ever got, Eric Schmidt, the former Chairman and CEO of Google, said, “Find a coach.”
Bill Gates also said, “Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you are a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast, or a bridge player.” He says, “We all need people who give us feedback. That is how we improve.”
Executive coaching in India is also fast picking pace. More and more senior leaders are engaging with an executive coach as a sounding board to bring out the best in them.
An executive coach helps in the following way:
Asks a lot of powerful questions to facilitate learning and insights. A coach is not a mentor. Coach doesn’t advise. He/She gently nudges you to reflect on some questions that you have not asked yourself so far. You are so busy in your day to day operations to that extent that you don’t have time to stop and reflect on some fundamental questions such as:
Sometimes it’s imperative to stop, reflect, and get answers to some critical questions that determines the direction where we are heading and accordingly alter the direction of our journey if needed.
Acts as sounding board: As a high potential business leader you are full of creative ideas but you want someone who can act as a sounding board so that you can dig deeper and make a concrete plan to take your career to the next level. You need someone who is like a non-judgmental friend with whom you can fearlessly express your radical ideas. Sometimes, you are not sure that how will your ideas be perceived or received by others. At that stage, you need an external who will not judge you and rather act as a sounding board to further build and nurture on your ideas.
Positively Challenge you: At times, we are so convinced about our perspective that we don’t want to see or at times can’t see the other perspective. Also on the other hand some time we are so convinced by our limiting or disempowering belief that we think there is no other way. At that stage, a coach positively challenges your perspective and puts forth a fresh/different and sometimes divergent perspective.
Help you stay focused on the solutions: A corporate life is filled with every day challenge of survival and one thing that can make a huge difference is the focus on solution instead of problem. A typical coaching journey lasts from 5 to 10 months where a coach constantly facilitates that shift. We do have that tendency to delve on problems or the so called issues. The coach makes it a point to bring forth that shift of focus towards solutions.
Help you find that small difference in action that can bring a big difference in the outcome: When you play the game of golf, if you hit the ball at a particular point, it travels a in a particular trajectory and lands at a specific spot. However, if you instead hit just a fraction of an inch away from the earlier point, the ball will land at a different spot. Sometimes you are not able to identify by yourself what is that small thing that you can do differently that may give you altogether different results. This happens because we do not have an objective view. A coach provides that objective external view point. This saves a lot of time, effort, and money.
Once there was a golden eagle who strayed away soon after its birth and started living with hen. Very soon, the golden eagle started considering itself as a hen. It never learned to fly. Several months later, another golden eagle was flying high above in the sky and saw this golden eagle crawling on the ground along with other hen. It came down and asked “what are you doing here? You should be flying up there in the sky?”. The golden eagle responded by saying, “I am a hen and hen can’t fly “.
The fellow eagle understood the whole story and took this young eagle to the tallest adjacent tree and just pushed the young eagle. There after it continued to soar greater heights.
Sometimes, we need an external support to make us identify the greatness within us.
When we are blessed with a lot of potential, it’s imperative that we make the best use of this innate potential and shape our destiny in the way we cherish.
To discuss Coach Kshitij’s executive coaching services for yourself or the individuals in your organization, Contact Coach Kshitij for Executive Coaching in Bangalore.
