Second, it seems important that the coach and client are clear about what constitutes both leadership and executive coaching. A clear distinction must be drawn between leadership and management, and between professional coaching and other helping professions.
A third success factor appears to be the readiness of a person being coached for this kind of support. Is the client being somehow “forced” to engage a coach? Do they understand how the executive coach might actually be of benefit to them? Is it all back to the matter of TRUST Does the client trust the intentions and competencies of the person doing the coaching?
Closely related to this factor is the setting in which the coaching is taking place. What is the “mindset” of those leaders and other stakeholders in the organization who are sponsoring, supporting and encouraging the use of executive coaching? Is their mindset aligned with that of the coach(es) being engaged? Organizations are often saturated with internal politics. Do executive coaches try to remain outside the “fray” or do they somehow play a role? Where do coaches turn for wisdom regarding these political matters?
Most importantly, it seems that successful leadership development—and executive coaching as an important complement to this development—requires a comprehensive framework. The practices, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and values associated with a leadership development and executive coaching program must be clearly articulated by both the organization and the executive coach(es). Several important matters must be addressed.
Are leaders to refine their existing skills and enrich their own current knowledge of the way in which to lead in this organization? Or are new skills and new knowledge to be acquired in a development program and in the executive coaching sessions themselves? One of the small groups identified the steps that should be taken in the identification of new ideas and practices:
Phases of leadership “teaching”
1. Starts with a “drip” (coach to coachee)
2. Then a “leak” (coachee) (those whom coachee influences)
3. Spreads (culture)
4. Flood: expectation
Perhaps, executive coaches should themselves be open to new learning—as they begin to encounter the unique issues and dynamics that are taking place in the specific organization that has engaged them. Executive coaches might themselves embrace a “drip” and then a “leak” and eventually a flood. As a life-long learner, the executive coach is modeling effective leadership in their own practice.
They can provide additional modeling in their own mentoring of younger coaches. They can model legacy leadership, creating what one small group identified as “a generational thumbprint of leadership for future coaches.” This group went even further in envisioning the “transcendent potential that models ‘real leadership’ for others in coaching”
There is one final point regarding leadership development and executive coaching that relates to what the small group identified as “transcendent potential.” Spirituality was one of the themes that emerged from the ‘open space” format of the NECS. Some people working in organizations (and providing executive coaching services) hold their version of leadership as “sacred”.
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