An executive role is a powerful opportunity to impact the people and organization around you. Executive coaching with CEO of Your Life is all about giving you the tools to stay in the driver’s seat and keep moving towards your ultimate objectives, regardless of what’s happening around you. In this way, you will be empowered to truly take ownership of your impact, lead powerful change, and take yourself and the organization to new heights.
Working with CEO of Your Life, you will develop the tools, strategies and perspectives to enhance your career in ways that enrich your personal life, honor your values, and empower you to approach all aspects of your work and life with purpose. Through a values-based leadership approach, you will develop a greater sense of clarity into what you truly want and how you will take charge of creating it.
Why choose executive coaching?
An executive coach is someone who knows the corporate world, and understands the unique challenges of an executive role. They are someone who can act as a sounding board, help clarify complex situations, and co-create solutions with you that will keep you moving in the right direction.
Ultimately, the goal of executive coaching is to give you the tools to create results today, and to keep yourself on a path that continually lifts up yourself and the people around you.
Through executive coaching with CEO of Your Life, you will gain the insight and mastery to:
- Create and hold a big picture vision
- Cultivate an environment of innovation
- Be intentional in your influence across all channels
- Become confident in your decision-making
- Actively develop top talent and coach others to continually grow in their careers
- Develop a culture of inclusivity and equity
- Become an agent of transformation within your organization
- Lead in times of chaos or uncertainty
- Take full control of your mindset, approach and impact
- Tune into your intuition and the wisdom of your body in order to thrive in times of change, chaos or uncertainty
Key to our approach is that all of this is worked toward while being true to who you really are – your inner leader – and focused on bringing your whole self forward.
By developing these skills and understanding how to apply them in a streamlined, holistic leadership approach, you will begin to truly thrive as a key player in your organization.
Why CEO of Your Life?
CEO of Your Life has MCC coaches (Master Certified Coach). MCC certification is widely considered the gold standard in coaching, with credential-holders requiring 200+ hours of intensive training, and a minimum of 2,500+ hours of in-the-field experience. They have demonstrated knowledge and highly proficient application of the ICF (International Coaching Federation) Core Competencies, Code of Ethics, and definition of coaching. At CEO of Your Life, we also have direct experience with corporate life and working at high levels of leadership. Beyond MCC certification, you will also be working with someone who has first-hand knowledge of what it takes to thrive at an executive level.
What does it mean to thrive as an executive?
You need to make things happen for your organization. You have targets, expectations, objectives, and all of it must be achieved in ways that continually fuel the well-being of the organization because that’s what creates ongoing growth and success, and how you have the greatest impact.
What would that look like in practice? Let’s say you’re responsible for increasing the productivity of a department while keeping costs down. Productivity and cost are the two main elements, but to achieve them in a way that ensures continual growth, you also have to consider engagement, motivation and retention. That means knowing what truly engages and motivates people and, most importantly, how you can be instrumental in engineering that environment.
Through a purpose-driven leadership coaching approach, CEO of Your Life gives you the expertise to recognize where you will have the greatest influence and how to put it into action. Using proven frameworks for envisioning the future, and being strategic and intentional about bringing that future to fruition, you will gain clarity into what thriving looks like for you, and how to make it happen, while being aligned with your values, strengths and purpose.
How can executive coaching help me achieve my business goals?
What puts business goals out of reach? It can be a number of things, but there are three common themes that we see come up again and again:
- Hesitating to take risks
- Letting things outside our control influence our decisions
- Interpersonal struggles
Hesitating to take risks is extremely common in failure-averse environments. On the surface, being averse to failure may sound like a good thing. But when perceived failures are met with shame, blame, judgment, or even put people’s careers at risk, an aversion to failure actually stifles creativity and innovation. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to take risks if there’s a genuine fear that your job would be on the line.
Letting things outside your control influence your decisions is an issue of prioritization, and it often happens in environments where there’s a constant sense of urgency. When certain things come up, people are expected to drop whatever they’re doing, even if that means stepping away from key objectives, which has the effect of putting business goals further and further out of reach.
Interpersonal struggles happen when there’s difficulty working across departments, or communicating with other key stakeholders. It can also happen when there’s a disconnect between upper-level leadership, department heads and team members.
Of course, these are not the only challenges you might face. Other challenges can include lack of clarity in defining goals, struggles to align business goals with larger corporate objectives, lack of support from colleagues, and so on.
Executive coaching is all about recognizing what you actually control and how you can leverage that to achieve your business goals, regardless of what’s going on around you. It guides you to master the practical skills to work through these challenges, and to make your own goals happen even when the environment around you is your main barrier.
What is the difference between executive coaching and other forms of leadership development?
Leadership development can take many forms and can be beneficial to people at all levels and roles. At CEO of Your Life, we take the approach of guiding people to first lead themselves by developing their inner leader, and to use that as the foundation for developing leadership of others. Our leadership coaching programs and workshops can be tailored to a variety of groups and organizations, and to empower people at all levels.
Where executive coaching differs is that it starts with the understanding that one’s professional role is highly demanding in terms of time, energy and focus, and that you are likely being looked at with a great deal of scrutiny by colleagues and people at other leadership levels, as well as by the people you lead.
An executive role comes with significant responsibilities, and it can be a challenge to balance the day-to-day demands, keep focus on big picture outcomes, and navigate the intricacies of professional relationships and atmospheres. A deep understanding of this is where executive coaching differs from other avenues of leadership coaching and development.
What is the role of executive coaching in developing strategic leadership skills?
An executive is a leader. Even if people do not report directly to you, as someone at a high level within an organization, you will be looked to for leadership.
You set the tone for what is and isn’t acceptable. You set an example for what’s considered a successful way of being within your organization. How you interact with others sends a message about what’s rewarded and what’s frowned upon. It’s a highly influential position to be in, which brings a high level of responsibility.
Where there’s responsibility, you have to think strategically because you want to be intentional in your impact. Executive coaching will guide you on how to be strategic about the impact you want to have, and how you bring that into your day-to-day dealings, as well as your overall approach to your role, whether or not you have people reporting directly to you.
On a more granular level, executive coaching empowers you to think with greater clarity, and develop the skills to tune out the “noise” of daily life in order to focus on big picture objectives, which will naturally lead to a stronger ability to strategize and problem solve.
How can executive coaching help me achieve work-life balance and avoid burnout?
We are in an epidemic of burnout, and executives are far from immune.
In an executive role, it can feel daunting to strive for balance because, on the one hand, you’re in a role that affords you a great deal of autonomy in how you use your time, while on the other hand, you have a huge amount of responsibility and high expectations that need to fit into that time.
While the overall focus of executive coaching is helping you to thrive in your role, we recognize that humans don’t exist in silos. Our personal lives can influence our professional lives, and vice versa. As with all our coaching programs at CEO of Your Life, we understand the importance of creating solutions and strategies that work for you, in all facets of your life.
If balance and burnout are on your mind, we will bring that into your coaching experience. Having someone who is removed from your day-to-day life to act as a sounding board can help you widen your perspective, clarify your blind spots, and even act as an accountability partner in putting your insights into action. By taking a whole-life, values-focused approach, we will help you to first clarify what balance looks like for you, what truly fuels you, what rest looks like for you, and design strategies to integrate these things into your daily life, steering you far from the burnout path.
At CEO of Your Life, we take an approach to burnout and balance that respects the whole human. We meet you where you are and work with you to explore elements such as mindfulness, meditation, grounding, and even energy medicine that resonate with you and fit with your daily life and big picture goals. For many, it’s their first experience with these techniques. Some feel it isn’t for them. Others feel that meditation or a few mindfulness tools are all they need, and others are open to anything. All of that is ok. There’s no one way, there’s only the way (or ways) that feel right for you. One of the concepts we lean into is that if you want something different, you have to do something different. Openness to something different will help you make meaningful, even radical shifts that have a powerful impact for you and the people around you. For one person, “different” may mean energy for work. For another, it may mean a conscious morning routine. It’s about where you are now, where you want to be, and exploring the paths that will get you there.
How can I improve my executive presence and presentation skills through coaching?
Presence goes hand-in-hand with influence, which goes hand-in-hand with self-acceptance.
Why self-acceptance? People who have that “certain something”, who come across as truly genuine, speak with confidence and authenticity, inspire others, stand strong in their beliefs, and lift up the people around them… that certain something is actually radical self-acceptance. They know and accept themselves exactly as they are, which means very little can rattle them, and they’re able to move through the world with ease, leading from their heart. That includes everything from being an expert negotiator to delivering great presentations. When you drop all the masks of who you think you should be, or need to be, simply showing up as YOU in full confidence and acceptance becomes the ultimate armor against anything that comes your way.
Of course, even with self-acceptance, you still need the skills to design those presentations, and build key relationships. As strong communication skills are a cornerstone of executive coaching, you will emerge from your coaching experience with the presence to truly command an audience and influence those around you.
How can executive coaching help me develop a strong executive team?
Developing a team presents a host of unique challenges and opportunities. For example, people at executive levels often have strong personalities and stand firm in their perspectives. Many of the interpersonal challenges that come up at all levels can also be present in executive teams such as territorialism, judgment and gossip, struggling to have authentic conversations, shifting of blame, and so on.
Executive coaching takes a two-fold approach to such challenges. The first is to help you develop your inner leader because that’s what will empower you to effectively lead others.
The second element is to augment your proficiency in identifying growth and development opportunities within a team, and identifying your role in leveraging those to strengthen the team dynamic. While you can have a powerful influence on team members (which executive coaching will also teach you), we all know that we can’t actually control anyone else’s choices, behaviors or mindsets. Instead, one of the most impactful things you can do is to continually identify and leverage potential growth areas, and amplify the strengths that already exist.
How can executive coaching help me become a more inclusive leader?
Being an inclusive leader demands a willingness to look inside yourself, and the strength to look outside yourself without seeing what you find as a threat. It demands the openness to truly hear and accept what another person has experienced, and the humility to shift your own way of being.
Oftentimes, the answers to creating an organizational culture that is truly inclusive are right in front of us, but we need to drop the old lenses we’re looking through. Executive coaching gives you the tools to recognize when you’re seeing the world through beliefs or thoughts that aren’t truly yours, guides you to cultivate a way of being that is truly open and inclusive, and gives you the tools to create an organizational culture of true inclusivity, trust and respect.
If you are in the reverse position as an executive, coaching can give you tools to navigate a world where you may be regularly met with prejudice in a way that stays true to your core values, and empowers you to hold others accountable in professional settings.
How can executive coaching help me manage change effectively?
Change is inevitable, and if the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that change can be even more disruptive than we ever imagined. How does executive coaching address that? Leaders who are able to successfully guide people and organizations through change tend to be highly skilled at something called bounded optimism. It’s a mindset that is deeply rooted in reality, while maintaining hope and confidence about the future.
Executive coaching gives you the tools and guidance to develop this skill and the expertise to put it into action with yourself and the people you lead.
How can executive coaching help me improve my sales, marketing, and finance skills?
Through broadening your skills in communication, problem-solving, collaboration, strategic thinking, confident decision-making and more, executive coaching gives you the tools to create results in all areas of your role. As you practice and strengthen these skills, your coach will act as a sounding board and give you actionable feedback and exercises to continually develop your proficiency.
How can executive coaching help me manage risk in my organization?
Managing risk often comes down to clarity and confidence. Essentially, it’s that sweet spot of being able to anticipate risk and plan proactively, without letting that anticipation derail a goal-achievement strategy. Executive coaching guides you to hone those skills and works with you to put them into practice as you design your path forward.
How can executive coaching help me develop a succession plan and prepare for leadership transitions?
Executive roles demand a high level of strategic thinking that doesn’t just consider things like leadership transitions, but understands how those plans need to fit with current activities and strategies. It’s this level of flexibility, adaptability and forward-thinking that an executive coach will help you develop, and give you tools to continue developing as you move forward.
What is the role of emotional intelligence in executive coaching?
There’s no question that strong communication skills are paramount to executive success. But, what’s behind those skills? Emotional intelligence.
Everything from negotiations, to conflict resolution, to effective collaboration and so much more go smoothly when we can keep our egos out of the equation. That’s when we can truly focus on co-creating solutions, and being intentional in how we’re communicating and the outcomes we influence.
Emotional intelligence is absolutely something that can be learned, practiced and strengthened, and it will have a powerful impact on your whole-life experience, including your communication skills as an executive.
Using mindfulness practices that can be easily integrated into your daily routines, executive coaching will help you strengthen your emotional intelligence in all areas of life.
How can executive coaching help me manage crises effectively?
When it comes to managing a crisis, high emotional intelligence and the ability to think strategically are two of the most critical skills an executive can have.
At the height of the Covid pandemic, CEO of Your Life was coaching people at all levels, including executive roles, to guide them through unprecedented challenges in both their personal and professional lives. It was during this time that her belief in the importance of a whole-life approach was solidified because that was what helped her thrive during the chaos, and what helped so many of her clients work through such a difficult and unexpected crisis in ways that empowered their professional careers and gave them even greater insight into key elements of thriving through crisis such as team management, conscious business practices, heart-led leadership and so much more.
Drawing on this insight, we will help you develop tools and practical strategies for managing virtually any crisis that may come your way.
How can executive coaching help me develop a growth mindset and foster innovation in my organization?
One of the greatest things to come out of executive coaching is often a broader understanding of what creates engagement in an organization, what stifles it, and how to assess the unique needs of an organizational culture in terms of cultivating engagement.
Why does engagement matter? When people are engaged, they feel more empowered to bring their uniqueness forward, and that’s where both innovation and growth exist. Using proven coaching tools and techniques, CEO of Your Life will guide you to develop a leadership approach that brings out and amplifies the strengths in others.
