What Executive Coaching Is

What is Coaching?

Much of executive coaching is about identifying different perspectives to a problem or situation that then helps the coachee get unstuck.

When we were very young, we realized that each problem has an infinite amount of solutions available to solve it. Even as adults, we are told that in brainstorming we are not to evaluate the ideas. We do this for the purpose of bringing as much creativity or innovation into solving the problem. In other words, we do this to re-access the infinite. Always hanging out in the infinite, however, isn’t the answer either. In order to get anything done, we must embrace a perspective. We then can rally the team together and move from Point A to Point B. Though, inevitably, while moving along the path of going from Point A to Point B, the unexpected happens. Circumstances change, people change, and new information comes in. Yet, most of us don’t change with it. We are attached to our perspective. We do not remain open-minded enough to dip back into the infinite and look for new solutions to address the current state. Through powerful questioning and a non-attached genuine curiosity, the executive coach helps open the coachee’s mind back to the infinite. From this place the coachee sees new perspectives and can thus make better decisions. This is very different from the executive coach leading the client to the coach’s own biased solution. And, it is for this reason that the coach is not the expert but helps the client access their own inner wisdom.