Executive Coaching

Executive coaching is an experiential and individualized leader development process that builds a manager's capability to achieve short and long-term organizational goals. It is conducted through one-on-one interactions, driven by data from multiple perspectives, and based on mutual trust and respect. In most cases, the process involves collaboration between the organization, a manager (the Coachee), and the Executive Coach, who work in partnership to achieve maximum impact.

The coaching objective is to maximize the manager's effectiveness and his or her contribution to the organization. Successful executive coaching links a business focus with human processes by closely aligning the manager's development with critical business needs.

1. Tactical problem solving

2. Developing leadership capabilities

3. New ways of thinking and acting that generalize to other situations and roles.

Compared to traditional leadership development workshops, executive coaching has tremendous benefits since it is done almost entirely in real business time and focuses on specific, real-life contextual issues. In addition, the executive coaching process is personalized, as opposed to a 'one-size-fits all' approach.

The Coachee can expect to experience fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced thinking and decision-making skills, enhanced interpersonal effectiveness, and increased confidence in carrying out their chosen work and life roles. According to research by Turner (2006), executives identified five significant benefits of executive coaching as a leadership strategy.

1. Continuous one-on-one attention

2. Expanded thinking through dialogue with a curious outsider

3. Self-awareness, including blind spots

4. Personal accountability for development

5. Just-in-time learning

Dialogue, fueled through powerful questions, is at the heart of the coaching process. In coaching conversations, managers think aloud, become more reflective, and gain access to their own tacit knowledge and unexplored ideas. The coach's role is to act as a sounding board, confidant, partner, challenger, and catalyst for change. The emphasis in coaching is on building the manager's ability to deal with the issues using his or her own decision-making skills, as against telling him or her specific actions to undertake.

Since executive coaching addresses specific performance or behavioral gaps, it is more effective than general-purpose training because it gives high-performing busy managers an opportunity to reflect on feedback, focus on developing goals, and have someone to hold them accountable for executing their goals. The confidential coaching relationship also creates a safe space for managers to share their concerns.

At The Painted Sky, we undertake Executive Coaching assignments for our clients who have managerial authority and responsibility in an organization. We work with clients across industries, to help them rise to the challenges at work, fulfill their true potential and achieve greater success and satisfaction, through our successful Executive Coaching practice. Potential coachees can include members of the CXO suite or their direct reports. Initially, the objective is often to groom them for further responsibility and/or develop them to become even more effective in their current roles. Specific objectives can be defined during the pre-coaching discussion.

Our approach, using the ICF "Eclectic" method, leverages research-based tools and techniques, which are tested and proven to bear better results. It is a powerful and structured process through which the client is helped to identify and address self-limiting beliefs and skill gaps that hinder progress towards goal achievement. This leads to change and transformation that a client aspires, which emanates from asking right questions, rather than providing right answers.

We use tools like the 360-degree feedback process to gather confidential about the coachee from concerned stakeholders to identify strengths and development areas, the PERFECT model to evaluate and ascertain need areas, and also employ the GROW model for structuring the overall process, among other tested approaches and methods.