Seasoned business coaches have the ability to teach and model the hard and soft skills leaders need to reach their full potential. Here’s a list to give you an idea of the skill set you’ll develop when working with a business coach.
Soft skills
- Self-awareness: Leaders can challenge their own beliefs and behaviors when working with a business coach. This Inner Work® allows leaders to better understand their triggers and motivators.
- Emotional regulation: In times of crisis, employees look to leaders for reassurance and direction. That’s why effective executives are masters of emotional regulation. When difficult emotions arise within a coaching session, a business coach teaches emotional regulation techniques.
- Confidence: Coachees often report that the coaching process leaves them more relaxed, energized, and confident. In fact, confident feelings naturally emerge when a UK based business coach works with an executive coachee. They learn to clearly understand business goals, action steps, and emotional triggers.
- Emotional intelligence: Great leaders can read a room and tailor their message to individual audiences. They possess high levels of empathy and can quickly understand what motivates others. Emotional intelligence is an executive superpower that business coaches cultivate in their coachees.
- Optimism: Effective leaders are optimistic. They see the learning and development potential even in the hardest of situations. Optimism can come naturally, but it’s also a skill that can be learned through coaching.
Hard skills
- Strategic planning and review: The best coaches are experienced business strategists. As a result, they can help executives and their teams plan and execute brilliant strategies. Together, the coach and coachee can develop a roadmap using a step-by-step strategic planning process.
- Analytical skills: Data is a driving force for many successful companies. Business coaching can fill gaps in a client’s data analysis skills while challenging them to get out of their comfort zone.
- Marketing: As part of their pre-coaching discovery work, business coaches often spend time researching a client company’s brand and market dynamics. While this serves as valuable intelligence when coaching leaders, it can also support a safe conversational framework for exploring new data-driven market opportunities and target audiences. Before making major product and marketing investments, executive coachees have a second set of expert eyes to review and critique profitability and developing plans.
- Speaking and presentation skills: Not all executive leaders are natural presenters or speakers. Some may suffer from stage fright or feelings of inadequacy that thwart their ability to connect with an audience. To solve these challenges, coaches once again create a safe zone to investigate topics like impostor syndrome and persuasive speaking. Experienced business coaches can also review critical presentations and rehearse essential speaking skills with the coachee.