Executive Coaches: Required Personality Attributes

Executive coaching is a whole other world in the coaching industry that has grown over the last twenty years. If you are thinking of becoming an executive coach you will be dealing with a group of highly intelligent and highly motivated people who represent the top 10% of professionals in most fields. And the attributes needed by an executive coach to communicate and affect positive change in these types of people are a great deal more refined than those of other types of coaching and mentoring.

The most crucial attribute you need to be able to deal with people at this level is effective and relevant communication. Executives, or those people who wish to become executives, are used to being in charge of others and have a very direct way of communicating that often leaves little room for unnecessary or time-consuming communication. Getting executives to take the time for serious self-analysis requires coaches to take command of the situation using their own skills of communication.

This is often one of the biggest barriers in mentoring these types of people their natural instincts are to take charge of the situation using their thought-processes and personality. An executive coach should be able to quickly make people see the relevance of self-analyisis and the impact this has on the coaching experience. Relevance of speech and actions by the coach are all key to ensuring that executives invest in the coaching process.

Leadership Is More Than a Buzz Word

Leadership is a key aspect of executive coaching, and the mentoring aspect of coaching means that coaches have to demonstrate in both words and deeds that they have the clarity of purpose and the ability to enable others to invest in a vision. In other words, coaches must not only be able to lead: They must be able to lead leaders.

Leadership is an often misunderstood skill and many believe that good leaders are forceful and have an iron will. While this is true in some cases, recent studies of leadership have shown a shift away from this style of leadership. In fact, they show a move toward the recognition that effective leaders rely not on their ability to command others, but to engender in them the same vision and motivation.

Motivational Psychology

Motivation is another key attribute that is a vital to a good executive coach. While there has been a quantum leap in our understanding of the importance of motivation, very little of this has translated to the top tier of management in many organizations. To be able to create an environment in which executives will learn new and important skills, the coach must be able to get them to invest the time that