Is Executive Coaching Worth It? 7 Surprising Benefits

The field of executive coaching has increased dramatically in recent years and it is now widely recognized that coaching is an effective tool for leadership development and well worth the investment.

An effective coaching relationship will be built on a foundation of trust and use this to not only clarify your goals and objectives, creating a clear development plan, but also ask the difficult questions that allow for real long-term transformation.

And professional coaching doesn’t just help you set and achieve business goals. A study by Grant et al in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that compared to the controls “coaching enhanced goal attainment, increased resilience and workplace well-being and reduced depression and stress”.

Participants also felt they had better management skills, higher levels of self-confidence and were better equipped to deal with organizational change as a result of coaching. Meaning there are plenty of benefits you might find unexpected or surprising that mean coaching is worth the investment.

1. Emotional Intelligence

Coaching effectiveness isn’t just about the immediate goals and outcomes and the effects of coaching are generally visible long after the initial goals have been achieved and the coaching engagement has ended.

One of the most noticeable outcomes is an increase in coaching clients is emotional intelligence. The ability to recognize your emotions and how they affect you and those around you as well as being able to access and empathize with the emotions of others can have a huge impact on a persons ability to manage relationships.

Effective management of any relationship requires both self-awareness and the ability to understand and respond to another with empathy for their needs as well as your own. It has been shown that emotional intelligence is a critical trait in successful high-level executives and yet many members of senior management lack this vital skill.

2. Better Self-Awareness

The outcomes you are looking to achieve with leadership coaching might be nothing to do with how self-aware you are, however, improved self-awareness of the person being coached is actually a key coaching outcome. Without realization and self-awareness, we carry on making the same mistakes or limiting our success in the same ways.

Becoming aware of our emotions, how we respond to them and what triggers them can have a considerable impact on our ability to regulate our emotions and attain our goals. This might be visible in the form of better organization, better time management, better relationships, or a better work-life balance.

3. More Empathy

Great leaders are almost always great empathizers, they have the ability to make you feel like they completely understand where you are coming from, sympathize with your issues and revel in your success. It makes people want to follow you as well as come to you to seek advice.

Developing greater empathy is crucial when managing high performance teams, it will give you a better understanding of your team and your clients and this can give you a powerful edge when it comes to the success of your organization.

4. Improved Interpersonal Skills

More emotional intelligence, self-awareness and empathy all add up to better social skills. Again this might not have been top of the list of desired outcomes from hiring an executive coach, but when you combine greater emotional intelligence with exceptional clarity of vision the result is often the ability to communicate better at all levels. Improving team dynamics, negotiations and leadership.

5. Increased Motivation

Motivation naturally increases as we start making progress, particularly in areas where there was previously resistance. Talking and strategizing with an executive coach can bring clarity to issues and uncover new approaches that see results which in turn boosts motivation.

6. Resilience & Workplace Well-being

Another surprising benefit that often comes with coaching and the increase in emotional intelligence that it brings, is a more flexible mindset and a greater capacity for creative thinking when it comes to making decisions and solving problems, making coaching clients more resilient particularly during organizational change.

Coaching also provides a confidential safe space in which to discuss issues that it might be difficult to talk about with colleagues, which can make it the perfect space in which to work on well-being both of the executives being coached and others within their organization.

7. Seeing the big picture

Another of the positive effects that often isn’t spoken about because it is hard to quantify is the ability to somehow pull it all together. Coaching relationships can act as a sounding board and good professional coaching will help you see the bigger picture.

Is executive coaching worth it? Call to find out how we can help you! 949.260.0300