Being an executive, leadership, and/or business coach is fantastic. You can work with all sorts of dynamic and interesting people in all sorts of ways.
But if you are a coaching purist, someone who only does coaching, you might be leaving a lot of opportunities on the table.
It makes me sad to meet coaches who play small, who do nothing more than accept short assignments from Human Resources departments, usually with lower-level managers.
That might be the place to start, but if you have vision and substance, you can think much bigger about your coaching practice and get much more exciting work.
For starters, you can start positioning yourself to get longer, more meaty coaching assignments with people higher up in organizations.
From there, you can lead some wonderful engagements.
For instance, almost every time you coach a client, clients should be asking you if you can facilitate an executive retreat, lead a training, set up a leadership development program, or do team development work.
As you build trust with my clients, they see you as more than their coach. They see you as a trusted advisor. They want you to be a
sounding board in their most important decisions. They want your guidance and help with their most important initiatives. That's a great place to be!
Often, if you position yourself the right way, they will want you to do offer some sort of hybrid solution that includes coaching, consulting, facilitation, and/or training.
Examples include: strategic planning, succession planning, working to create a high-performing team, helping a leader turn around a unit that is not performing, helping a CEO lead a major change initiative, developing a Board of Directors to be more effective, and helping a rapidly growing organization become more mature as it reaches a certain size.
The advantage of accepting these assignments is that it also makes the coaching more "real." Now you can focus on real issues that the leader faces. The coaching is practical, focused on how the client is showing up as a leader in these situations.
It all works together in a quite powerful way.
At the Center for Executive Coaching, we show you how to position yourself as more than a vendor-style coach. That way, you get opportunities like these. In fact, our members also write books, speak, create seminar programs, and more. They recognize that coaching is one very powerful way to help people be more effective, and yet they keep opening doors to new ways to bring value and help people.
We have a unique approach and give you the tools, methods, and support to make this happen for yourself.
If you have aspirations to be a coach in the top echelons, the kind of coach who understands that coaching is one of many ways to open doors into organizations on the way to being seen as a trusted advisor, then we should talk.
Call me anytime at 941-539-9623 if you want to discuss whether our program might be a fit for you.
Best regards,
Andrew Neitlich
Director, Center for Executive Coaching
Author, Guerrilla Marketing for Coaches
Author, The Way to Coach Executives
http://CenterforExecutiveCoaching.com
Cell: 941-539-9623
