3 min read

Nov 22, 2024

Investing in executive and leadership coaching for your senior leaders and directors has wide-ranging benefits for your leaders as individuals, and for your wider organisation. However, with various leadership strategies and approaches available, it’s important you choose a development framework that is fully aligned with your organisational goals, in order to derive a tangible return on investment, or ROI from your programme.

In this article, we’ll look at the three key factors that can help you achieve an impactful and successful coaching experience for your executives, and how this contributes to increased value.

1. Depth Of Engagement

The success and value of an executive leadership coaching programme depends largely on the level of engagement between your coach and the executive being coached. It goes without saying that a good coach should have the necessary skills and experience, but also the ability to establish a deep level of rapport and trust with your senior leaders. This creates an arena for honest and open communication, which is crucial for identifying areas for improvement and creating an effective and bespoke development plan. It’s also worth considering the use of psychometric assessments or 360° feedback as part of your coaching strategy – these tools provide valuable insight and help you to measure progress and value throughout the coaching engagement.

2. Focus And Scope Of Development

The focus and scope of a leadership development or coaching programme is essential to deriving the full value from your investment. Every aspect of the programme should be tailored towards creating value at a leadership level, and for disseminating that value throughout your organisation for maximum ROI.

A leadership development programme of this nature must be bespoke to your organisational needs, and we recommend working with an experienced consultant or coach to identify specific goals that you want to achieve through coaching. These include primary goals, such as improving communication skills, developing greater emotional intelligence, or becoming a more effective leader or manager in a particular area, and secondary goals, which take into account how success in these areas positively impacts other teams and departments in the company. These goals attend to both the developmental needs of the individual leader, but start with the performance they are seeking to drive as the two should go hand in hand.

It’s essential for both the coach and your executives to have a shared understanding of these development goals, as well as a practical plan for how they will be achieved and implemented. A good consultant will work with you to create a personalised development plan for each executive, and a team level programme, that is tailored to the unique needs and challenges faced by your organisation. As an ongoing programme, this plan can be reviewed and adjusted as required to measure progress and adjust training parameters to maximise value.

3. Strategic Leadership And Team Development

Finally, the focus of investing in executive and leadership coaching shouldn’t solely be short term individual development – development should also have one eye on the broader impact of the programme on long term strategic leadership and team development within your organisation. As your executives grow and develop as leaders through coaching, they should be equipped with practical ways to deploy their new skills and perspectives back to their teams to create a ripple effect of positive change.

The work of a coach isn’t just to impart knowledge and develop skills and then walk away, but also to help executives internalise this knowledge in a way that transforms their approach to leadership, self-awareness, communication, and people management – among other factors. Through their actions and example, coaching will help your leaders to foster a stronger culture of collaboration in your organisation, helping bring out the full potential of their direct reports, and driving teams and departments towards greater success and growth. This concept centres on 'systemic leadership,' where leaders develop a critical awareness of the interconnectedness within an organisation, viewing it as a living, dynamic system. In this framework, leaders gain insight into how profound transformations can be achieved both within themselves and across the organisation.

Find Out More

Centre for Teams provides tailored executive leadership development and coaching services for high-level directors and C Suite executives. To find out more and to discuss the benefits, please get in touch today by clicking here.