What goals could you work on in executive coaching?

Executive coaching helps leaders to develop the capability to optimize their strengths and excel at their work. At the same time coaching also helps them to build the capacity for continued future growth and development.

Coaching is a goal-focused, outcomes-seeking intervention.

A coach starts with figuring out what the leader wants and needs to achieve through the coaching engagement. Accordingly, the coach and leader set goals for the leader’s development. A critical aspect of the goal-setting process in executive coaching is the definition of clear success criteria. The coach and leader together define what success looks like and how they will know that they have reached the goal.

These goals are closely tied to the leader’s development needs.

Broadly the goals the come up for work in an executive coaching engagement get divided into three categories:

1. Personal Effectiveness Goals
2. Relationship Effectiveness Goals
3. Business Effectiveness Goals

 

1. Personal effectiveness goals:

These are individual focussed goals and help a leader manage themselves better. These could be inherent traits that a leader wants to improve or develop. These could also involve becoming better professionals and individuals. Some examples of these are:

1. 1. 1. Becoming more self-aware
      2. Being more confident
      3. Managing emotions
      4. Managing their time and priorities better
      5. Overcoming behaviors like losing temper, getting irritable, etc that do not support success and growth
      6. Building capacity to manage difficult situations
      7. Managing job, career or organizational transitions

 

2. Relationship effectiveness goals:

These goals focus on how well the leader engages with the different relationships in the organization. These relationships could be with direct peers, subordinates, supervisors, or external stakeholders like customers and suppliers. These goals could include:

1. 1. Managing power presence
   2. Being a more effective team leader
   3. Building emotional intelligence
   4. Handling conflicts and difficult relationships
   5. Managing team performance and morale
   6. Build better relationships with stakeholders
   7. Understanding stakeholder needs better

 

3. Business results:

These goals focus on how leader’s capability to manage the business. These include not only managing the present issues but preparing for the business challenges and plans to come. These goals could include:

1. 1. Learning from success and failures
   2. Reflection on upcoming plans and priorities
   3. Thinking through future business goals and shifting priorities accordingly
   4. Preparing the team and business for the future
   5. Preparing for the future customers, stakeholders and markets.
   6. Be able to take tough decisions