Who uses coaches?
Many high performing people who have engaged with professionally accredited coaches have had their lives turned around, in a good way. Many like to keep their coaches a secret.
Some examples of people who use coaches
Here are just a few who were happy to share the secret of their success:
- Jonathan Schwartz, one-time President and CEO of Sun Microsystems, is happy to say he has had an executive coach
- Steve Bennett, former CEO of Intuit says, “At the end of the day, people who are high achievers—who want to continue to learn and grow and be effective—need coaching.”
- Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, who said that his best advice to new CEOs was "have a coach”
- Barack Obama, had and has a coach and indeed has ambitions to be a coach “to serve as a "coach" for up-and-coming liberal leaders”.
Sydney Finkelstein, author of Why Smart Executives Fail researched several CEOs who had spectacular failures and concluded that they had unchecked egos, eliminated those who challenged them or tried to give candid feedback, they were over-optimistic and had too high locus of control; they thought they could change and control the world. Other researchers and authors say the same.
Professional executive coaches can help leaders reduce their blind spots, dare to dream and think through the risks, visualise and plan the steps to success, learn to be open to constructive feedback, and provide psychological safety where they can reveal fears and issues and work through them.
Some reasons why people use coaches
Our independent coaches have coached 1000s of people for many different reasons. Some of these are outlined below.
Personal life
- Discover what success & wellbeing really mean to them in their personal lives
- To develop heightened self-awareness and self-management
- To think through important life decisions
- To learn tools and techniques to better manage their enablers and address constraints.
Work life
- Discover what success & wellbeing really mean to them in their work lives
- To help them become even more successful at work and in their careers
- Coach them through important work events – interviews, promotions, performance reviews, etc.
- Address issues/constraints that are getting in the way of them being successful and having wellbeing.