EASE Program client companies have used coaching to sharpen the skills of individuals who have been identified as future organizational leaders. Under the right circumstances, one-on-one interaction with an objective third party can provide a focus that other forms of organizational support simply cannot.
Many executives benefit from receiving honest and objective feedback. As employees advance to the executive level, development feedback becomes increasingly important, more infrequent, and less reliable. As a result, many executives plateau in critical interpersonal and leadership skills. By providing feedback and guidance, coaching develops leaders without removing them from their day-to-day responsibilities.
Coaching can be particularly effective in times of change for an executive. Promotions and other new challenges are times when an independent sounding-board can help a leader achieve a new level of performance. A coach may help develop or refine newly-required skills on the fly.
But coaching is not just for tackling new assignments. Coaching can also help executives develop new ways to attack old problems.
One of the big benefits of an EASE Program coach is that he or she isn’t a part of the company. Most leaders can’t find this type of external, objective conversation partner—what Harvard Business School professor Thomas DeLong called a “truth speaker”—anywhere else in their organization.