The short answer to ‘why’ CEOs should leverage executive coaching is simple: it is the clearest way to develop leadership skills, to take a leader with potential and help to make them extraordinary. Also? It’s lonely at the top. Few people will tell you where you are going wrong and even fewer will support you through developing skills to change that path.

Or put another way: “Dare to cross the bridge between the leader you are and the leader you have the potential to be.” Sound familiar? It’s a tagline we favor because it’s true.

“Two-thirds of CEOs don’t receive any outside advice on their leadership skills, and yet almost all would be receptive to suggestions from a coach.”

This from a Stanford University/The Miles Group survey of 200 CEOs. What’s interesting about the information gathered in the survey isn’t so much why the CEOs need coaching, but how interested they were in it and how they leveraged it.

Let’s go back a step, and look at the WHY:

Why CEOs need to leverage executive coaching

“Given how vitally important it is for the CEO to be getting the best possible counsel, independent of their board, in order to maintain the health of the corporation, it’s concerning that so many of them are ‘going it alone,’” says Stephen Miles, CEO of The Miles Group. “Even the best-of-the-best CEOs have their blind spots and can dramatically improve their performance with an outside perspective weighing in.” (Source)

Executive coaching helps leaders to:

• Gain clarity on their goals and achieve them, with strategic thinking;
• Become more self-aware, with a strong and authentic style;
• Develop strength, resilience and presence.

There are four key areas where executive coaching can really make a difference:

1. Communication is at the top

This isn’t just about making speeches and getting people to do what you want them to do. Executive coaching helps individuals to dig deep on their understanding of communication, including developing active listening skills, nonverbal cues, credibility, respect and authority in speech.

2. Perception is reality

If you learn how people perceive you and how to expand upon the ways in which they do so positively, you can take those perceptions and grow your presence.

3. Leadership style that works for you

Often leaders don’t realize that their leadership style can actually be inhibiting them, and their team, from growing. For example, leaders who tend to over-manage their team won’t be getting the best performance that they would get if they learned to step back and allow people to do what they do best. Executive coaching helps to hone in on the traits that could be holding you back.

4. Develop your EI—emotional intelligence

More important that IQ, your EI is the basis of how you relate to others. If you’re in tune with how people—including yourself—use emotion, how you/they react in different situations and where you can be helpful to manage these within the working relationship, you’re way ahead!

Now let’s take a look a closer look at the survey results to understand the HOW:

How CEOs leverage executive coaching

Most leaders who have reached the C-suite are aware of any shortcomings they might have in terms of leadership skills. For many, the ascent to the top had a lot to do with technical ability in their particular industry or business, and less to do with the inherent skills that good leadership requires.

In fact, according to the survey: “78% of CEOs said it was their idea to receive coaching.” (Source) This despite a sense among some organizations and their boards of directors that seeking coaching is a sign of weakness in the C-suite. In reality, it’s anything but.

“In general, where there is a relationship between coaching and getting to the top is when an executive believes in continuous learning and development.” (Source)

(Source)

And when CEOs did look for coaching, they were usually looking for very specific skills development including, in the top 3:

• Conflict management  – 42.9%
• Listening skills – 32.1%
• Sharing leadership / delegations skills – 35.7%

Another important point is that getting executive coaching from a source outside of the organization is optimal. Like anyone looking at their own work, it’s difficult to be objective. By bringing in a coach from outside the existing organizational structure, the CEO is guaranteed to find out about areas of need that they might not even have realized they needed to look at. Furthermore, they can be guaranteed a ‘safe place’ to work through issues of self-awareness, growth and understanding of their role.

It’s clear WHY executive coaching is important for those ascending to newer and higher roles, and HOW executives have been shown to leverage it proves that they gain a tremendous amount of self-awareness and understanding of their goals, styles and abilities, with a view to improving all of them, to help them to explore all of their potential.

It’s not about being loud: good leaders can communicate with a whisper and still be heard.

If you think about the greatest leaders the world has ever seen, throughout history, you’ll realize that all of them were excellent speakers. They knew how to communicate a message that resonated with the audience they were seeking to reach.

When it comes to being a leader, the ability to speak with authority, gain your audience’s trust and have them not only hear but actually feel your message, is essential. Reaching people at a visceral level is the only way to motivate them towards action.

1.Be clear and specific

A speaker will lose an audience, whether communicating to a small group around a table or delivering an address to a packed hall, if they are not clear, concise and specific. Using a lot of jargon, trying to communicate too many ideas at a time, talking about things that aren’t relevant to the audience in question… these are all ways that a message gets lost in translation. If you can’t get to the point and reach your audience quickly, you have little chance of them taking in your message.

2. Be open to opposition

Before you can convince a person that your message is right, you need to be willing to listen to their perhaps opposing point of view. If you aren’t open to the possibility of change or altering your thinking, you are demonstrating that you can’t see things from the point of view of those you are speaking with. Closed mindedness is never a good thing, but when you are trying to get people to listen to you and embrace your message, it’s even more limiting.

Here’s a great example where Steve Jobs—a man noted for his ability to inspire with his speaking—responded to a very critical question: <INSERT VIDEO HERE: https://youtu.be/FF-tKLISfPE >

3. Drop the ego and listen

A true leader understands that communication is often as much about not talking and instead listening to what others have to say. Authenticity comes from trust and people will trust you more if you’re willing to hear them and respond fairly to whatever it is that they have to say. If you focus on what your audience wants and needs to learn / know, you will find it easier to reach them. If you focus solely on what you think they need to know, you will have a harder time reaching them.

4. Be knowledgeable

The worst speaker, or leader, is the one who speaks without knowing, without understanding what they are talking about. You cannot get people to trust you, let alone follow you, if you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about it. This isn’t a place where you can ‘fake it until you make it’. Genuine knowledge lends gravitas to any speech, whether to three people, or three thousand.

Essential personal attributes and examples of speakers who demonstrate them

• Decency — this comes back to the authenticity and trust I mentioned earlier. Speakers who walk the walk, and not just talk the talk, will get a lot more traction with their words. Examples? The Dalai Lama and Mahatma Gandhi.

• Performance Quality — it’s not just about the words. The ability to perform and leave the audience feeling as if they’ve been witness to something valuable is important. Examples? Martin Luther King Jr. His ‘I have a dream’ speech is still today one of the most famous in history. Or John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. Who wasn’t moved by that?

• Humility — the ability to connect with your audience in a real way. The best example of this? Mister Rogers. Yes, he was communicating to children, but he was also effective in communicating to the United States Senate, when he spoke to save his show’s funding, as shown in “Mr. Rogers and the Power of Persuasion” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DGdDQrXv5U)

There is no doubt that the power to persuade others to support your way of thinking, your ideas and your beliefs is an essential tool in leadership. With practice and study, it’s a tool that everyone can acquire and hone over time.

The manager who seeks to keep all the knowledge within their own silo, refusing to share with others, in the hopes of retaining power, is doomed to fail.

The manager who understands that their success comes as a direct result of others working together towards a common goal will be successful.

Knowledge management is, at its core, the ability to collaborate with others. Why? Because you can’t possibly have ALL the knowledge. Every piece of information that is needed to see a project to fruition, or a company grow, does not reside in one single person or group of people.

To be successful within a project or as a company, you have to embrace collaboration as part of your operational culture. It’s through collaboration that true innovation can become reality. Creating the feeling that the collaborative environment is a safe one is important as the instinct to protect oneself and one’s knowledge is ingrained in all of us.

Turf wars don’t get the job done. Playing well with others does. Is this an oversimplification? Maybe a little, but the bottom line is that the same techniques of getting along and according respect to others that are taught in kindergarten are elements that we would all do well to remember.

What is collaboration?

Collaboration, in the context of the business world, involves working across silos, teams or any other corporate construct, in order to get the job done, uniting under an overarching goal. The point is for the focus of any team to be on the end result and engaging in actions that will move a project forward to that result. If the team, and it’s leader, is focused on jockeying for position and power, the goal will invariably be missed.

It is also more than just willingly (or grudgingly) sharing information. In other words, it’s more than playing nice. It’s about collectively and proactively reaching out to achieve an objective goal.

Aspects necessary for successful collaboration

• Clear roles and responsibilities for all parties involved — as much as people need to disavow the idea of jockeying for power and position, collaboration only works if everyone is clear about what they are bringing to the table and how they are meant to work with others.

• Sharing the credit and the mistakes — while any collaborative effort isn’t meant to view all participants as a single entity, it’s important that they operate as a team when it comes to the good, and the bad. If mistakes happen, it’s not wrong to drill down to find out the how, what and why. But it shouldn’t degenerate into finger pointing. Ultimately, the goal should transcend everything else. And when things go well? The credit needs to be shared among all participants, not divided on a percentage based on perceived effort.

• Collaboration can be intensive and should be used only in situations where it can be truly helpful. If all the participants don’t see the value of the end result or how they can contribute meaningfully, it will be difficult to get some if not all to willingly take the time to share knowledge and information, to work together in a genuine way. Instead, the effort will be piecemeal and fit in to schedules only insofar as the work of individuals or groups aren’t directly impacted.

How to collaborate even when there is discord

Liking another person or group and respecting them are two different things entirely. You don’t have to like someone to appreciate that they have knowledge or abilities that your team needs. Negotiating between individuals and groups, as well as resolving conflict, are two important aspects of leading from a place of collaboration. You can’t make people like each other but you can make them see each other’s value in regards to the end game and what interest everyone has in working together, rather than against each other.

5 traits that every collaborative leader should embrace

1. The ability to influence, not control, others — a leader who can motivate a team, influence them to participate by showing them the goals and the possible positive results will be far more effective than one who tries to control people and force them to collaborate. This kind of influence requires an element of trust: towards the leader and amongst all the people involved, from every functional group. It’s important, however, to ensure that pieces of the puzzle aren’t missed or withheld, out of fear.
2. The ability to embrace risk — it is a much riskier process to work collaboratively across silos and even organizations: the ability to embrace this risk is essential to being effective.
3. The ability to lead horizontally and eliminate silos — instead of only dealing with traditional constructs of direct reports and teams, a collaborative leader will seek functional expertise where it exists and not within silos or predetermined constructs.
4. The ability to maintain clear communication — when working with new groups of people, it’s essential that communication be clear, open and transparent. Agility in decision making and functioning cannot be inhibited by traditional top-down communication methods.
5. The ability to understand different contexts — a collaborative leader may not be an expert in every functional area that is contributing to a project, but they need to have a solid understanding of each so that they can see issues from all perspectives, but always with the view of the end goal in their sights.

A collaborative leader isn’t focused on their own position and success. They’re focused on strategic objectives that are best served by bringing together otherwise distinct groups, and they have the skills to do so with a minimum of disruption or divisiveness.