Steve (not his real name) was at the end of the line with his employer. While his technical skills were highly valued by his employer his interpersonal relationships with the other employees was setting him up as an outcast and seriously undermining his ability to effectively lead his team. His employer decided his last ditch effort to salvage Steve would be to provide him with an executive coach. A few months later Steve was back in the good graces of his employer and his employees and has gone on to be a successful and valued member of the organization and perhaps, most importantly, he is happy in his job.
Steve had the ability to be an effective leader; he simply needed a coach to assist him in realizing his full potential, which is exactly what happened.
Coaching is something that anyone can benefit from if he/she has the right frame of mind. A coach can only be successful with a client if the client is willing to be coached, as Steve was for instance. Often this requires experimenting with new ideas, stepping out of comfort zones that have become obstacles to success, or dropping old beliefs, attitudes and assumptions that no longer serve you and your vision. Steve had been convinced by those around him that he was a poor leader despite the fact he had been an effective leader in the past with other organizations. His coach assisted him in drawing upon those past successes and leveraging them in his current work environment.
If you are in a leadership role in either your own company or working for someone else you constantly encounter challenges in the work place that require your intervention. A coach can assist you with how to best handle various situations, not because the coach has all the answers, but rather because an effective coach knows that you have all the answers and their role is to assist you in uncovering them. A coach does not tell a client how they should resolve an issue or proceed with a problem; a coach helps the client discover for him or herself the best solutions. A coach will never know your business as well as you and if you find a coach who tells you different you should be very skeptical. Unless they have walked in your shoes they cannot possibly know your business as well as you.

Here are some common questions that I ask of potential clients to help discover if they ready to be effectively coached.

What is your motivation for working with a coach?

What are you passionate about?

What are you proud of?  What are you not proud of?

What is an experience that defined who you are today?

How you answer these questions can assist in determining if you are a good candidate for coaching, the main thing is did you answer them honestly? Only you can make that call, be honest with yourself, there is nothing worse than wasting both your money and your time and if you hire a coach and you are not ready to be coached that is exactly what will occur!

Should you decide that you are a good candidate for coaching what you can you expect? Of course the results will depend in great part on you and your willingness to participate, but if you are willing and you work with an effective coach then some benefits you can expect are:

•    Performance Improvement – Coaching will help an executive that is not living up to his/her fullest potential get in touch with what is holding him/her back.

•    Leadership Development – Here the coach will take the feedback they have received from managers and develop an intensive feedback program that focuses on ways for the executive to enhance his/her leadership role and abilities.

•    New Roles and Responsibilities – Companies promote people that they believe will help the company grow; top level executives want executives that have insight not only into how to improve the company, but who know how to improve themselves. Often times an executive coach is brought in to help an executive that is being groomed for a promotion prepare for the new responsibilities.

•    Crisis Management –An executive coach will help executives learn how to trust their instincts and tap into their intuitive knowledge.

•    Team Development – Executive coaching helps executives work as a team by teaching each executive how to use his/her individual strengths and abilities to accomplish goals.

Finally, interview potential coaches and find the one who best fits your philosophy and personality and one with whom you can easily engage.

For more information please visit our  coaching page “http://www.futuredecisions.com/services/coaching” !

Here at FutureDecisions we often speak about how different the fears and concerns of Gen Y’s are from Boomers or X’ers. While Boomers will complain about being screened at the airport a Gen Y will tell you it makes he/she feel safer.

A recent study that was done bears this out in what we think is startling detail. Specifically this study produced the following results:

TOP FEARS BY AGE
Ages 7-10
1. Being kidnapped
2. Myself dying
3. AIDS
4. Not being able to breathe
5. Being threatened with a gun
Ages 11-14
1. AIDS
2. Not being able to breathe
3. Being kidnapped
4. Being raped
5. Being threatened with a gun
Ages 15-18
1. AIDS
2. Being raped
3. Not being able to breathe
4. Being threatened with a gun
5. Myself dying

Source: Joy Burnham; article in Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, July 2005

This study was conducted by surveying 1000 children who were in second to twelth grade in 2005, which means that  all the participant were Gen Y’s (the cutoff date for Gen Y is commonly accepted as 1999).

While we here at FutureDecisions do not remember our fears when we were young (except of course the monster under my bed every night), we know we were not fearful of catching AIDs and cannot remember fearing someone with a gun was going to come after us. It should be noted that some fears could be traced to where the child lived, an urban or rural setting for instance.

If you are a Boomer and you remember your fears when you were young please share them with us, FutureDecisions is always interested in what our readers think and knowing more about their life experiences.