Good leadership coaching almost always ends up here…

One of the quirks of leadership coaching is that you never know where the coaching will end up. Clients and their organizational sponsors normally hire a coach for one thing, usually one of the “usual topics” like: a behavioral or style change, resolving team conflicts, improving leadership presence, changing the culture, or managing multiple priorities. However, as the coaching progresses, something completely different becomes part of the focus for coach and client.

Almost every engagement, the focus of the coaching eventually shifts to the personal toll that leadership takes on the business owner, executive or manager. The coaching shifts to client issues like:

  • How can the client find a more fulfilling and significant career?
  • How can the client find more time for family?
  • How can the client find more time to rest and stay in good health?
  • How can the client reduce stress and overwhelm?

In addition, once the client trusts the coach, they often want a sounding board about issues outside of work – a conflict with a spouse, a child that isn’t getting his homework done on time, and of course never-ending issues with the in-laws. The client doesn’t even need the coach to be an expert. They just want to vent, process, and have someone listen to them. One of my colleagues calls these “at the door issues.” That is, as soon as you are at the door ready to end the session, the client asks you if you have a few moments to talk about something a bit outside of the domain of work.

Life coaches reading this are probably salivating right now. These kinds of topics are right in their sweet spot. However, the problem for life coaches is that no client trusts the coach enough to talk about these issues until the coach demonstrates value on more business-related, logical topics. These topics feel safer and less vulnerable. Only coaches with credibility in handling leadership, executive, and management issues get hired. Then, when the coach and client get traction on these issues, the client feels more comfortable opening up about other things.

If you want to coach the whole person, you first have to have credibility to resolve the safer, more logical, leadership-specific issues.

Often, everything fits together. For instance, I worked with the VP in the banking system. His health was at risk because he slept maybe 3 hours every night. His doctor was telling him that he was reaching a crisis point in terms of stress and wellness. When we looked at how he was spending his time, it became clear that his lack of delegation was causing him to do the job of 5 executives (not an exaggeration). We worked on creating a new working structure and hiring leaders for some of the roles that the VP was doing. This helped the VP to get more sleep, improve his health metrics, and also feel much more fulfilled in his role. The banking system started achieving its goals on schedule, too. If the VP hadn’t trusted me enough to talk about health, we might never have gotten the results we did.

When I coach, sometimes I ask permission to offer some tools to earn the trust and credibility of leaders, managers, business owners, and up-and-coming talent. I do this with a deep, in-depth set of coaching methodologies for the most pressing problems that clients face. Sometimes I also give them the skills to coach themselves, once they open up to me about other issues – which they almost always do if you get good at more traditional business- and leadership- related coaching.

My belief is that you have to be ready, and you have to earn the trust of your clients in order to create a lasting relationship based on significant value.

Good leadership coaching is the future. Are you ready for it?

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Despre autor

Daiana Stoicescu

– is an executive coach for leaders, with a Master Certified Coach (MCC) Credential by the International Coach Federation (ICF), a Master Certified Coach Trainer (MCCT), Coach Supervisor and a Registered ICF Mentor Coach. She was also the President of the ICF Romania Chapter until 2019.

As a Master Certified Coach (MCC), she works with leaders-from startup entrepreneurs to C-level executives- who have bold visions and who play for high stakes.
As a Master Certified Coach Trainer (MCCT) with a Coaching School,  she is Certified to train other executives and managers to become Certified Executive Coaches. She does this through one-on-one or group coaching.
As a Certified Mentor Coach by ICF, she is certified to offer mentor coaching programs for coaches interested in applying or renewing their ACC (Associate Certified Coach), PCC (Professional Certified Coach), or MCC (Master Certified Coach) Credential and need the required 10 hours of mentoring.
As a Coach Supervisor she works with leaders and entrepreneurs that take their work seriously enough to set up a reflective space where they can review that work, learn from it and apply that learning when they return to it. She also works with coaches who bring their work to another individual/or group in order to learn how to do that work better. One way of describing what coaching supervision does is to think of it as a process of Reflection, Insight and Support.
As a Systemic Team Coach she enables teams to identify and resolve their challenges over a programme lasting seven to nine months – resulting in deeper learning and more sustainable change. It usually involves coaching the team together as well as one-to-one coaching for individuals.

Punctele de vedere și opiniile exprimate în articolele invitaților, prezentate pe acest blog, aparțin autorului și nu reflectă neapărat opiniile și punctele de vedere ale Federației Internaționale de Coaching (ICF). Publicarea unui articol aparținând unui invitat pe blogul ICF Romania nu echivalează cu aprobarea sau susținerea din partea ICF Romania a produselor sau serviciilor furnizate de autor.
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