Sometimes, even as a leader, you can get stuck. You may be looking to evolve in your career, but something is limiting your growth.
This is where executive coaching can help. Working with a coach can help you better understand your strengths and opportunities for growth, and guide you in translating self-awareness into improved performance.
But too often, executive coaching is limited, superficial, or transactional. Rather than providing the transformation you’re looking for, you receive limited guidance or superficial action items.
But there’s a more transformational approach to executive coaching that starts by providing you with a clear sense of how you’re showing up in your current environment, and then supporting you to create a clear vision of the kind of leader you want to be. Finally, it includes helping you build the key skills and mindset for achieving that vision and co-creating an action plan to get there.
Where Traditional Coaching Often Fails
The purpose of coaching is to achieve transformation, to move from stuck to a new state of leadership. Yet traditional approaches to executive coaching aren’t comprehensive enough to achieve the transformation required.
Traditional coaching often works off of a self-assessment alone, doing the work in a silo without outside input. Or the outside input comes from questionnaires that only superficially address what you need. In some cases, the coach directs you from pre-planned frameworks or guidance, without seeking to truly understand you and create a tailored approach that meets your needs, strengths, and goals. Quite often, the coaching happens just a few hours a month, which tends to make the coaching more tactical and superficial. You could come away with “one-time” advice that only applies to a specific situation..
A Different Approach to Executive Coaching
At Proteus, we don’t believe it’s effective or efficient to begin with what we think you should do. That’s why we don’t start with feedback. Instead, we start by listening to your history and how you look back on each of your experiences. We hear what you’ve learned about yourself from those experiences. Then we explore what you want for your career, and how you want to be known.
In other words, we start with how you see yourself and what you envision for your future. Then, when outside feedback comes in, you can align that feedback to your vision.
For example, in traditional approaches to executive coaching, outside feedback may say that you need to delegate better. You may try to integrate more delegation into your work without understanding how it helps you on your journey. Instead, with a firm vision in place, you will understand how increasing delegation can help you become more strategic with your time and with your team, and move you closer to your career goals.
We find that it’s easier to tie action items to a broader vision, and that it’s easier to change when you are motivated by your vision.
Before and After the Catalyst
We also don’t believe that the traditional approach to coaching, where you may only meet for a few hours a month, is effective. It is known that the best way to learn a new language is to drop into an environment and learn it in depth. Similarly, we believe that the best way to achieve change is to start with in-depth reflection and learning.
That’s why we implemented a two-day, 16-hour, one-on-one Catalyst, and it’s one of our biggest differentiators. This initial time and investment is where the real transformation happens, as we articulate aspirations and how to get there, then teach skills and enable mindset shifts that align with those aspirations. You come away with internal clarity, new ways of thinking and behaving, and an actionable plan. You also come away with better self-awareness around your limiting beliefs and blind spots.
Before the Catalyst, we conduct 360° interviews with those in your circle to better understand your strengths and opportunities, and we distill what we hear into actionable feedback. This helps you see the disconnects between your current words and actions and where you want to go.
We also give you access to a toolbox that includes resources to help with skills you may need to improve, such as self-talk, listening, delegation, time management, and making clear agreements, as well as organizational tools to help with vision and strategy, change management, process improvement, and building teams.
As for the impact of this approach to coaching, one executive said: “I found deep value in the direction and advice provided… Usable direction that will have a lasting impact once I pull it all together. I look forward to our follow-ups.” Another said: “Working with a Proteus coach helped me find my path again — enabling me to have more impact with fewer words. It’s transformed my approach.” Another said: “My coach provided the tools for me to continue to develop into the leader I want to be.”
Next Steps: When to Look for a Coach
You may consider executive coaching if:
- You’ve recently been promoted to a more challenging position
- You have high potential, but are experiencing limited influence or success
- You’re a technical leader struggling to lead people
- You’re looking to be considered for a promotion
- You’re simply stuck in old habits or unrealized potential and want to “turn it around”
- You’ve only experienced transactional coaching before and are looking to go deeper
Ultimately, working with a coach can both improve your performance in the short term, and help you build mindset, skills, and behavior that will allow you to achieve your future vision.
How Proteus Can Help
At Proteus, we know that coaching is about transformation, not just conversation. We work directly with you to unlock your potential, build confidence, and accelerate your growth.
Executive coaching is an intensive one-on-one engagement to build skills and strategies targeted to an individual executive. Our executive coaching provides you with the “escape velocity” you need to break unproductive habits and integrate new ways of working.
Our coaching offer also includes other possibilities:
Personal Vision and Strategy is a one-on-one support to clarify your hoped-for future and create a plan for moving toward it.
High-Performance Team is a model teams can use to assess and then improve their relationships and performance.
If you’re looking to create a different future and achieve the vision you have for your career, book a call with us today.
