What Exactly does an Executive Coach do?

“And what exactly does an executive coach do?”

This is probably the question I am asked most frequently, when I introduce myself as an executive coach. When the question comes from a casual acquaintance or someone I just met at a social event, I usually say something like “I work with executives to help them get better at leading”. This usually leads to another question, “So you are a soft skills trainer?” Most times, I smile, shrug and politely change the topic.

However, this is not a good strategy - I’m probably losing some potential clients there. And this question does not just arise during casual encounters. I’m asked this question or some version of it, quite often by prospective clients: senior management at organizations that invest in coaching to develop their leaders.

An answer that I’ve tried with limited success is “I work with executives and business owners to help them get better at working with and through others, and create greater impact as leaders”

The challenge with any pithy answer to this question is that invariably, people draw parallels with something they are familiar with - such as training, or seeking advice from a mentor, or engaging a consultant. And while there is certainly some overlap with each of these helping approaches, executive coaching is distinct from each.

“Neti, Neti”, literally translated as “not this, not this” is a well known approach to understanding the true nature of self in Indian Vedanta philosophy. I think the question “What is Executive Coaching” is often best  answered by distinguishing itself from other approaches - “not training”, “not mentoring”, and “not consulting”. 

In other popular forms of coaching including life coaching and relationship coaching, which primarily deal with issues such as achievement, fulfilment, self-worth, relationships and other life questions, there is also a tendency to conflate coaching with therapy or counselling. Fortunately, this is rare in the domain of executive coaching, though this is also not an impervious barrier as the works of thought leaders such as Manfred Kets de Vries and Robert Kegan would suggest.

Adult learning theory asserts that people learn best through doing. However it also acknowledges that knowledge is essential in developing skills. This is probably best summarized, though somewhat simplistically, in the “70-20-10 Principle”. In its simplest interpretation, this principle states that 70% of skill acquisition happens through experience (learning by doing) and that 10% can be attributed to acquiring knowledge, for example by taking classes, attending training, participating in conferences, reading books, or watching videos.

What about the remaining 20%? This is often overlooked in development programs, and gives rise to what is popularly known as the “knowing-doing gap”. Mentoring and Coaching are both ways of addressing this gap, but they work differently.

In mentoring, the support comes in the form of advice or sharing of experience, and the mentor is usually someone who has successfully overcome the challenge the mentee (learner) is facing. 

For example, Radhika who led the Technology Support team for the Retail Marketing business of an energy major, was struggling to sell her ideas and convince senior stakeholders to invest in new technology to make the business future-ready. One of the ways of supporting her in this development area was to assign her a mentor who had a track record of successfully leading similar transformation in other similar businesses within her company. Of course, it required her to be selective in drawing from the experience of her mentor, and to adapt these lessons to her own unique context.

Coaching on the other hand relies not on the transmission of wisdom drawn from experience, but in helping the leader apply this received wisdom through thinking in a structured way, addressing barriers and constraints, and leveraging opportunities and resources that are unique to his or her business context. The Coach does this through a process of skillful questioning, triggering convergent and divergent thinking, reflective learning, and innovative problem solving by the leader, working with and through others within the leader’s organization.

In Radhika’s case, my contribution as a Coach was to engage her in a series of conversations that over the course of the engagement, led her to draw actionable insights from her interactions with her mentor and stakeholders, devise and test multiple strategies, and finalize the action plan for driving a key change initiative in her business.

Executive Coaching is not Training

One of the common misunderstandings  that people have about executive coaching is that it is the same as training. This wrong understanding is often reinforced by the fact that executive coaching is often delivered in a group setting (more about this later), especially when the objective is developing specific skills.

As we have seen above, knowledge acquisition is an essential part of skills building. Training, when done well, is a very efficient and effective way of achieving the objective of transmitting knowledge. While most well designed training programs incorporate an element of learning by doing, these practical elements in training programs are often generic in nature, and rarely address the learner’s unique business context.

Coaching, as mentioned in the discussion on the 70-20-10 principle, addresses the knowing doing gap. In the context of leadership development, the distinction between training and coaching, and their complementary nature is used to enhance skill acquisition, retention and impact  in well designed programs. 

One such program that I had the privilege of contributing to recently, incorporated both training and coaching effectively to maximize the learning experience. The program kicked off with a 3 day workshop covering the key leadership competencies that the organization wished to focus on.

While this workshop was very interactive and incorporated a lot of activities based on principles of accelerated learning, it was primarily aimed at providing leaders with a better understanding of the leadership competencies that the organization wished to develop.

As part of the program, leaders also worked individually with coaches to identify opportunities for applying this knowledge in their day to day work, setting business and behavioural goals that required effective use of the identified skills, and designing and implementing action plans to achieve these goals.

This program was considered a success, because pre/post-program multi-rater assessments showed significant improvement in the majority of cases. This was markedly different from previous instances, when the organization had relied on training alone.

Executive Coaching is not Consulting

Often leaders ask for support with implementing critical initiatives - such as driving significant organizational change, conducting major strategic reviews, executing complex projects, or deploying new processes. 

Typically, support is provided in the form of Consultants - subject matter experts who understand the needs, take stock of current reality and constraints, and devise a solution that achieves the goal. While most consultants stop at this stage, some consulting engagements include involvement in the implementation of the solution as well.

However, a common challenge in consultant supported implementations is one of lack of ownership. Consultants, by virtue of their not being part of the organization, rarely display ownership of the issue and are seldom emotionally invested in the success of the implementation. 

On the other hand, when implementation is the responsibility of consultants, people in the business, including leaders, do not fully buy in to the solution, and are not fully committed to the successful implementation, or subsequently sustaining it.

In such situations, a coaching approach to implementing a major initiative can be an alternate or even complementary support mechanism. This is especially the case when there is significant expertise within the organization, or where the knowledge is proprietary and external consultants are unable to support, or are deliberately excluded.

A good example of this approach is a recent engagement where I worked with the Owner/CEO of a mid size specialty chemicals manufacturer, on developing a strategic plan aimed at tripling sales in 5 years (3X in 5Y). The business had previously engaged a consulting firm on this exercise, but none of the recommended projects had been implemented.

In this engagement, my role was to coach the client (Owner) through a strategic planning process that he was familiar with, but lacked the confidence and discipline to follow, while effectively engaging his core team, fostering the buy-in crucial for successful implementation. This was achieved through conversations that supported the leader in thinking more broadly and deeply about options, encouraged him to articulate outcomes more precisely, engage his team in fleshing out the strategies and tactics more fully, and be more disciplined in prioritizing (and discarding) projects based on longer term objectives and capacity/capability considerations.

A Working Definition of Executive Coaching

Having looked at what executive coaching is not, it is easier to define and appreciate what it is. While a search for “definition of executive coaching” throws up over 2 million entries, I have a preference for the one that Stanford GSB uses. I have adopted this definition (with minor tweaks), and use it to help my clients understand this development approach better:

Executive Coaching is an inquiry-based approach to personal and professional development within an organizational context. It is aimed at creating awareness, generating action, and facilitating learning and growth in leaders at senior levels. It focuses on improving performance by helping executives develop and sustain new perspectives, attitudes, skills and behaviors

There are a number of important  concepts embedded in this working definition, that describe and distinguish executive coaching.

First, the definition highlights that executive coaching is an inquiry based approach. Powerful questions are probably the most important and carefully curated and honed instruments in an executive coaches toolkit. This distinctive aspect of the coaching approach  is often summarized as “ask, don’t tell”.

Secondly, the definition emphasizes that coaching is about development. The goal of coaching is not merely to address an issue or solve a problem, but to build the capability to effectively deal with such issues and problems repeatedly and sustainably.

The definition also reinforces the fact that learning and growth require action (to create impact, and bring about growth and improvement) as well as reflection (to generate awareness and crystallize learning)

Finally, it acknowledges that for effective and sustainable change, leaders  need to look beyond behaviours, and work on their ways of seeing, thinking, feeling, and being.

What Executive Coaches do

With this working definition under my belt, I am now better equipped to answer the question that I am asked most often: “What exactly does an executive coach do”.

While coaches are engaged to help executives and business owners deal with a number of development needs and in a variety of business situations, in my experience most of these fall within a limited number of coaching contexts. The contexts executive coaches are most often engaged to support include:

• Developing leadership skills

• Navigating leadership transitions

• Working through critical and complex initiatives

• Facilitating broader and deeper thinking

• Developing a team

• Aligning the Top Team

While these common coaching contexts provide a good entry point for an executive coaching engagement, it is often the case that engagements evolve and address more than one of these contexts. For instance, the majority of coaching engagements that I work on involve helping high potentials and designated successors acquire and hone the skills they need to work effectively in their next role. In a number of cases, I subsequently get invited to coach the leader through the transition into the new role.

Another example where coaching contexts overlap, is an engagement where I was initially engaged to coach a business owner through a significant transformation his company had embarked on. While the identified scope of the transformation lasted for about 18 months, I was asked to stay on as a sparring partner, helping him think through significant decisions more rigorously.

Concluding Thoughts

Executive coaching is a proven and effective development approach that can be used to help organizations develop individual leaders as well as grow collective capacity and capability. While executive coaching is distinct from training, mentoring, and consulting, it can be strategically used in conjunction with these approaches to create greater and sustained impact.

Organizations and leaders can benefit from working with an executive coach in a number of situations. While every leader and situation is unique, most executive coaching engagements fall within a few common coaching contexts. And while these coaching contexts offer useful entry points for engagements, leaders often find it useful to maintain an ongoing relationship with their coach.

In this essay, I have attempted to answer the question that I am most often asked about executive coaching. I hope you found this useful, and that it has given you a better understanding of what executive coaching is, and an appreciation of how it can benefit you and your organization.