Executive coaching is a powerful performance tool worth investing in

All top athletes have a coach. All sports teams have a coach. It’s “the done thing”, and is expected. How can we expect them to perform, or hone their skills, without a coach? Yet in the corporate world, leaders are expected to perform each day, in a demanding environment, often under pressure, without a coach to support them.

Leading a team or an organisation can be very stressful. Many leaders feel isolated at the top. A Harvard Business Review study cited that half of the CEOs they surveyed experienced feelings of loneliness in their roles. Out of this group, 61 per cent believe this hinders performance.

First time CEOs are particularly susceptible to this isolation.

Athletes get feedback all the time. How else are they expected to capitalise on their strengths, flag their weaknesses, and improve? In stark contrast, a good number of leaders do not get feedback, and yet are constantly expected to churn out better results. You may argue that sports performance is not exactly the same as corporate performance — which may be right to an extent. However, there are many similarities.

Like sports personalities, leaders work in high-pressure environments. They focus on performance, feel the need to constantly improve, and work in fierce competition with rivals. Arguably, most corporate leaders do not get the one or two months of downtime that athletes do after a big event. They are expected to just keep going, with a holiday slotted in here and there, usually when it suits the organisation they lead.

Even while on their time off they are probably constantly checking their emails.

In 2013, Stanford Business School carried out a survey on executive coaching and found that nearly 66 per cent of CEOs did not receive coaching or leadership advice from external coaches or consultants, while 100 per cent of them stated that they were receptive to making changes based on feedback, and nearly all want it.

This research shows that there is a clear shortage of advice being shared at the top, and a feeling of isolation, and possibly frustration.

Why aren’t leaders engaging in coaching?

While there has been a marked increase in executive coaching in Europe and the US, in East Africa it is still not common for leaders to have a coach. There seems to be a stigma attached to having a coach. Many leaders may perceive this a remedial solution, as opposed to a positive, performance-enhancing tool. With corruption ever present in many African businesses, trust may also be a barrier for leaders to engage in coaching. For any coaching engagement to be successful there needs to be full, explicit trust between the coach and the client. Time and money are also an age-old excuse for not investing in any form of leadership and personal development.

STRESSFUL JOBS

However, according to the Hay Group, 25–40 per cent of Fortune 500 companies use executive coaching. Although it was once used as an intervention with troubled staff, coaching is now part of the standard leadership development training for executives in such companies as IBM, Motorola, JP Morgan Chase, Hewlett-Packard and many others. Brokerage firms and other sales-based organisations such as insurance companies use coaches to bolster performance of people in high-pressure, stressful jobs.

The benefits of executive coaching — a life-long investment that often has a positive ripple effect on the leaders personal lives — definitely outweigh the monetary costs attached to it. A study by the International Coaching Federation on global coaching found that, on average, a company could expect a return of seven times their investment in executive coaching.

Grant Thornton East Africa managing partner Kamal Shah has found that coaching has helped him focus and bring clarity to the business objectives and has made planning and executing easier.

Shah says coaching has also helped him improve his overall wellbeing and relationships with his employees and clients. He also shared that “my coach has become a sounding board on issues I cannot talk to others about and often as CEOs it is a lonely place at the top”.

Executive coaching benefits both the client’s business, as well as the individual client. It helps them increase their level of self-awareness, enabling them to understand the reactions and behaviours that are hindering their performance.

It also assists them to understand their priorities from a perspective of being purposeful about their decisions and choices, instead of them just reacting to what is happening around them. With support from a coach, leaders can use their strengths and evaluate their weaknesses. Usually, performance at work comes at the expense of neglecting your family or yourself. Coaching can help a leader find that balance and identify what is really important to them, or how best to deliver effectively at home and at work.

Jack Groppel, the author of The Corporate Athlete writes that “executives and employees in the new millennium can protect their health and happiness and continue to perform at high levels only by doing what athletes do — train.”

To train effectively, you need a coach to help clarify your goals, identify what is important to you and build your resilience.

Leaders need to realise that they do not have to navigate the business minefield as a lone ranger. Executive coaching is a powerful performance tool that is worth the investment.