Executive Coaching: How Coaching Can Develop Leadership Skills
Posted on Wed, Apr 18, 2012 @ 07:40 AM
Executive coaching can prove to be an enormously helpful way of developing leadership skills. 
Personal and professional development begins early in life and never really needs to stop.
When I was 26, I volunteered to be the “Assistant to the Director” of a two week summer day camp program. I was to function as her “go-fer” and runner. Four days before the camp started, she broke her ankle. Suddenly I was on point. It was before the days of cell phones and instant messaging, so I was able to confer with her only once or twice a day, tethered to a phone on the wall. She was there (at home) to guide me, but the job was really on my shoulders. But she was with me as a coach.
Looking back on it, I bet she was more stressed and frustrated than I was. She had not volunteered to be a leadership coach, or a life coach or even a project manager. I bet she did not want to be coaching me at all; she probably wanted to be doing the job herself. But we did it. We worked together and successfully directed a program for 300 kids with a crippled director and a green assistant.
It was risky. It was scary. It was a stretch. It was stressful. I have never learned more in two weeks time. Not even in an MBA course.
So what is the point? We all know that sometimes it feels like it is easier to do it yourself than to teach someone else, then follow-up, and correct and review.
Maybe that is a big stretch for you, to let go, to trust and support instead of being the doer. And besides, you feel bad because the extra work stresses your staff. They have enough to do. So you just keep doing it yourself. No one stretches, no one is stressed, and no one grows.
Can you remember a time that someone gave you a stretch assignment? It was hard, but you did it. How did you feel when you were successful?
Are you willing to be a teacher and coach to someone else? Let them stretch their wings? Can you let go long enough to do that for a staff member? They might complain in the moment, but they will always be grateful.
