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5 Signs Your Company Needs Executive Coaching
In more than a decade as an executive coach, I’ve found that many leading organizations share a handful of similar problems. Yet company leaders can be so bogged down in the everyday that it’s hard to focus on what’s really needed to overcome these challenges.
That’s where an executive coach or business coach comes into play. Coaching is an external, impartial resource that helps senior management implement their vision and goals. It combines practical business guidance and human capacity coaching to leverage strengths and draw the best out of your people and teams.
Here are five reasons to hire a business coach:
1. You have a great business plan that has never been fully implemented.
According to the Harvard Business Review, 95% of a company’s employees are unaware of, or do not fully understand its strategy. There is often a massive disconnect between the work that’s planned and the work that gets done. Your ability to consistently execute may be a factor in your organization’s current rate of success.
Most employees only spend about 50% of their time on the most critical goals. Companies today need an aggressive, consistent and repeatable process to execute on strategy that delivers significant results. Accurate, timely, top-down communication must occur throughout the organization to realize these outcomes.
2. Leadership isn’t as strong as it could be.
Weakness inside your organization breeds more weakness and can be tremendously destructive. “A” players hire, train and develop “A” players. “B’s” hire “C’s,” and “C’s” hire “D’s.” Champions aren’t just born, they’re coached. When leaders increase their effectiveness, the effectiveness of the entire team is elevated and organizational profitability improves.
Companies need a comprehensive and practical method of effectively managing and developing people, time and resources, and it must begin with leadership. While coaching was once viewed as a tool to address under performance, it is now more widely used as a means to maximize performance and retain top producers. In fact, a survey by Right Management Consultants reports that 86% of companies use coaching to sharpen the skills of future leaders.
3. Our people don’t consistently perform to their full potential.
Corporate investments must return the value intended, yet in many cases a company’s greatest assets—its people—fail to perform. Fast-paced organizations breed a sense of urgency that can become counterproductive, as your people become too busy to focus and deliver on critical initiatives. They’re busy, but they aren’t getting the right things done.
As results don’t materialize, key players become uninspired and top management frustrated. They want to “get there,” but they aren’t sure how. To perform well, teams need a vision of where they’re going and what that looks like.
Before teams can reach their goals, they must concretely and thoroughly define those goals, create relevant measures of progress, and commit to accountability for results. Coaches take good people and their talents and turn them into champions.
4. What used to be an open environment has become a series of departmental silos.
An organization’s success is dependent upon its multidisciplinary teams working together. Yet team goals can at times supersede organizational objectives, and group dynamics can foster an inward focus across operational units. Communication breaks down and teams can begin to work against each other as they compete for resources.
Communications skills are the most valued leadership trait in organizations today, yet poor communication is at the heart of 85% of all company problems. How the team interacts and shares information and ideas directly impacts corporate profitability. Teams that communicate effectively and that value the strengths that diverse teams contribute accomplish much more.
5. Accountability is lacking as activity has taken the place of productivity.
Companies facing this problem lack a results orientation across the enterprise. High performing teams build an expectation of results into the culture. They align strategy, make teams and individuals accountable, and take disciplined action.
When individual and team ownership of goals and timeframes is missing, your teams cannot self-appraise; they may blame other people or circumstances for things not getting done. They may even play the victim. They have no means to assess their performance and change course if necessary.
How many of these do you recognize at your company? Investing in executive coaching gives your leaders the tools to achieve more than they thought possible. Coaches mentor, cheer, scold, teach, listen, and achieve!
If you’re ready to look into how your company can improve, please contact Barr Corporate Success. Whether you’re in Cincinnati or anywhere in America, Krissi Barr will deliver the business coaching your team needs.