Executive coaching

Whether you are seeking to increase productivity in your division, drive
increased sales or take your leadership skills to the next level, having a coach by your side will assist you to:

• gain clarity on your vision,
• build strategies to get there,
• set milestones to track and recalibrate your progress,
• increase your self-awareness,
• benefit from someone who is trained to support your thinking as you address old and new challenges,
• celebrate your successes and overcome challenges with someone who has walked the journey with you and is totally there to support your agenda.

What is an executive coach?

A coach is someone trained to support your thinking to overcome obstacles and achieve your goals.

A coach uses questioning and clarifying techniques to allow you, as the only true expert on your business, to achieve the positive change you are seeking. A coach may introduce you to new frameworks that you can apply to benefit your professional and personal effectiveness.

Coaching is not mentoring

Coaching differs from mentoring. Coaches are trained and adept at guiding you toward creating your own solutions to the challenges you need to address. Mentoring is about sharing models, frameworks, solutions that others have tried with success. At Mackerel Sky we use a combination of coaching and mentoring to best meet the needs of our clients.

Coaching assists you to do high quality thinking. Coaching leaves you with the benefits that you have implemented in the business, the knowledge of how you made the improvements and the new ways of thinking and behaving that have allowed you to do this. Your business will benefit from what you have achieved during the coaching. After the coaching your new ways of thinking go on paying you dividends.

Many leaders who initially trained in the professions such as engineering, medical, accounting, law, IT and many other science-based disciplines use a problem based thinking style as their primary strategy for thinking through problems and assisting staff. This is very useful for coding, error detection, bridge building and wound care. Unfortunately as many studies show it is less useful for creating great outcomes through people. Experiencing coaching is one way leaders learn to support their own staff to think better.

Globally coaching is a young industry. Business leaders are still gaining clarity on how to select coaching panels (for organisations) and individual coaches (for themselves). An Australian study showed that most coaches are still selected on ‘face validity’ i.e. they look and sound like they know what they are on about! This works only some of the time as the skill-set to talk confidently about coaching in your business is somewhat different to the skill-set required to coach exceptionally well.

How do I choose the right coach for me?

Coaching is used by healthy populations to take their business, professional and personal goals to the next level. People who give themselves the gift of a three or six month coaching series describe it as an extraordinarily exciting and alive time. Teams also choose coaching to move their business unit to a new level of performance or to support required learning in a new area, e.g. business development.

Coaching is not counselling

The list of questions below have been created to support you to find the right coach for you or your business. Ask the following questions and listen for specific information.