What is the difference between Leadership Coaching and Executive Coaching?
Summary: Executive Coaching and/or leadership coaching could really support your business’ development. As a Business Leader considering Executive Coaching, it offers a multitude of advantages across different areas of your business.
Author:
Ridhima Dosani
Read Time: 5 mins
Table of Contents
What is the difference between Leadership Coaching and Executive Coaching?
Within the world of business, we are always looking for the next way to help grow and improve as individuals. Whether this is for our own sake, for our teams or for the entire organisation, professional coaching is the next step in helping us to excel.
Here at The Executive Coaching Bootcamp we focus on the clients’ perspective, providing coaching that is centred around delivering value for them. We prioritise value, measurable results and impact because we believe that achieving impactful results for clients is the only way to achieve success as a coach.
Both executive and leadership coaching are powerful, supportive tools that get real and measurable results, working to simultaneously challenge and support high potential staff in order to encourage them to help themselves, the wider teams, and the business overall. Whilst they are very similar, there are some important differences.
So… what exactly is the difference between Leadership Coaching and Executive Coaching? Let us explain.
What is Coaching?
For some background, coaching is helping someone to unlock and realise their potential. As a coach, you’d be a great listener, ask insightful questions and be willing to challenge your client’s way of thinking in ways that help them grow.
For each session, your client will set a particular goal that you will help them work towards. The process will include asking the right exploratory questions, listening to them weigh up the options and challenging their thoughts so that by the end of the session, you’ve helped them to gradually lead themselves to the end goal.
The client directs where the conversation goes and you will follow them wherever it leads, whilst also making sure that the conversation is constructively heading towards the goal.
2. What is Executive Coaching?
Executive coaching is designed to boost the success of those being coached, as well as the business as a whole. The coach is there to support and motivate the employee(s) to improve their performance in order to achieve personal, team and business related goals.
Coaching specifically looks at the goals of the business and the individuals being coached, and implements tactical coaching techniques that will get measurable results for your business, as set out by the business’ specific requirements.
Executive coaching is specifically targeted towards C suite business executives but many of the same coaching techniques and methods are actually applicable to other talent groups such as directors and senior managers too.
With executive coaching, you are more likely to coach your clients through the typical challenges that executives tend to face, such as how to make their intended impact on their organisation, and how to best add value from their unique perspective. It may also involve supporting clients who want to move upwards or across into executive positions within their organisation. The specific context of these challenges will vary depending on the size of the organisation too. You might even offer executive team coaching, where goals need to be met in a short period of time or where the team needs support setting up their ‘way of working’ and becoming a high performing team.
3. What is Leadership Coaching?
There are many leaders who may not be executives, and so this is where leadership coaching comes in. Leadership coaching is very similar to executive coaching, with a shared focus on improving performance and motivating employees. In fact, when you take our ICF accredited ACTP executive coach training programme, you learn how to serve all of these different types of clients.
This form of coaching focuses more on supporting the client to become a more impactful and inspirational leader, with heightened communication skills. This may involve supporting clients who want to move upwards into more senior positions or those whose leadership style may need to change to fit the company culture or building the capabilities of high potential employees who need a little extra focused support to start reaching their potential.
Clients for leadership coaching are often directors, heads of department, senior managers or team leaders looking to become more effective in terms of their teamwork and communication skills, in order to get to the next level in terms of their leadership.
Leadership coaching is not only for business professionals - anyone in a leadership position can benefit from leadership coaching, from social influencers to political activists. Anyone who leads can benefit from this kind of coaching.
4. Benefits of Professional Coaching
There are many benefits to Executive Coaching being utilised within a business environment. The coaching itself sets out to support the improvement of the business and the individual both reaching their goals, making it beneficial overall.
Some benefits include:
Navigate change in company culture and leadership styles
Actionable insights such as strengths, weaknesses, and employee feedback
Increase productivity
Meet goals with a quick turn around & informed goal setting
Personal and professional development
Employee satisfaction and wellbeing
Measurable results to support informed decision making
These benefits apply to both the employer and employee, meaning there are multiple reasons for you to consider Executive Coaching.
5. Why Business Leaders should consider Professional Coaching
Reflecting on the list of benefits above, we can see how Executive Coaching and/or leadership coaching could really support your business’ development. As a Business Leader considering Executive Coaching, it offers a multitude of advantages across different areas of your business.
For example; realising visions & achieving goals for your business, helps you gain perspective through feedback and insights, increases productivity and profitability, improves leadership & holds you accountable as a leader.
These are only the benefits for you, but when considering the benefits for employees and teams on top of this, it further adds to the list of benefits for you as an employer.
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