Executive coaching is a powerful way to support leaders with development. It’s a personal leadership development process with specific objectives to help a leader grow his or her effectiveness to positively impact business outcomes and align his or her values and vision with the organization’s. It’s usually done in person, and the goal is to enhance the performance of key executives.

In today’s increasingly fast-pace, competitive and complex business environment, leaders face unprecedented challenges and situations they don’t always know how to handle. An experienced coach can help develop the capabilities of high-potential managers and provide a sounding board on organizational dynamics, strategic issues or day-to-day management decisions. Coaching supported by data brings several benefits to the overall process and the coachee:

1. Data bridges the gap between subjective observation and objective measurement: If the coach doesn’t have some objective assessment data to learn about the coachee, it’s more difficult for the coach to glean true knowledge, personality and skills information. Data brings clarity and consensus to the coachee’s current state or starting point.

2. Data brings efficiency to the coaching process: data allows coaches to build benchmarks to remeasure and quantify business impact. Effective coaches remain detached from outcomes, so data plays a role in showing the impact of the coaching results.

3. Data supports intuitive listening and holistic thinking for the coachee and coach: With insights from data, self-awareness is brought to the coachee, and the coach is able to better communicate with and engage the coachee with the sessions.

The best executive coaches are skilled facilitators with objective insights into how individuals and teams are motivated to perform and behave. Leveraging both quantitative and qualitative data, they identify the priority issues that will lead to improved performance.

Article courtesy of PI Worldwide.