Have you ever considered why the best athletes have coaches? What can a world-class athlete learn from a coach? The answer is even the best performers in their field can still benefit from coaching. An executive coach assists by working with clients to identify blind spots, stumbling blocks, strengths and unrecognized opportunities. Then, throughout the coaching process, the leader identifies and adopts changes in their thinking and behaviors to improve their effectiveness. In this video, Carm Moceri, a Certified Executive Coach at Healthcare Alignment Solutions™, shares his insight regarding what leaders will gain from an executive coaching engagement.
Video Transcript:
The answer to that is, “Yes.” If any of us, as leaders, believe that we are the penultimate leader and we have nothing to learn, I would say that, in itself, defines you as needing coaching, right?
I do believe all of us have a chance to be better. I do believe all of us, even effective leaders, have areas where they can focus. Even effective communicators can be more effective in communicating.
And part of coaching allows us to see those places that may not be failures, but we have an opportunity to optimize our leadership.
And I would suggest that, even when we optimize our leadership, there are other things we can do to become more effective. Some of them may be, “I’m a great individual leader, but maybe I’m not the best team leader. Even though I’m getting great results and my people are satisfied with the outcome, I have a chance to improve. And I can tell you that even as I’ve gone through my career, and I’ve had assessments completed on me – some of them actually full eight hours worth of different assessments – I’ve learned something from every one of those. And even in areas that I’m perceived as being skilled at by others, there’s an opportunity to do it better, there’s an opportunity to get feedback.”
So, do leaders know the difference between being nice to somebody or being kind to somebody?
Those terms might seem to be the same. But they’re not. People, sometimes, who are nice to folks, don’t necessarily get great results. But they’re really nice people. People who are kind are able to help somebody understand, “we’re not getting great results, but I’m not mean to you, I’m kind to you, but I’m helping to lead you in a different way.”
So, something as simple as understanding the difference between nice and kind is something that will help a leader see themselves in a way that’s different than maybe how they’re currently leading. It doesn’t mean they’re not ineffective. They could be tremendously effective, but the growth opportunity remains. I believe we all have opportunities to be better.
And that’s why, when I’m working with clients – and it’s taught to us, but it’s something that’s come naturally – to me, the last five to seven minutes is a debrief about what worked – about the time we spent together – what didn’t work? What could I have done to be more effective? What could I have done to help you further along your journey?
I, as someone … with 30 years of leadership experience – some good some, bad some, very humbling – I have things to learn. Clients can teach me. Clients can help me with how I can help someone else in a more effective way.
So, I believe yes, the answer is, “yes,” … effective leaders that don’t have problems can still become more effective. They can still learn through this process and don’t necessarily need to struggle on their own – even though they may not be struggling – don’t necessarily need to go on their journey by themselves – a coach can help them. And I believe we could unearth things in the process that allows them to be more effective … even though they’re already good leaders.
