Most people don’t become successful on their own. They have teachers, mentors, industry peers, and coaches to guide them on their journey. Executive coaching helps individuals reach their goals by determining how you can get from where you are now to where you want to be. An executive coach aids clients in making smart decisions that lead to personal and professional success.
In this post, we’ll cover everything from how to choose an executive coach to how to become one, as well as the best executive coaching certification programs online.
Topics Covered:
- Types of Executive Coaching
- Executive Coaching Benefits
- Cost of Executive Coaching
- How to Find an Executive Coach
- How to Become an Executive Coach
- Executive Coach Certifications
Types of Executive Coaching
Executive Coaching Definition
An executive coach helps people reach their professional goals. Their advice and guidance help clients make smart business and career decisions while supporting targeted professional development. An executive coach’s goal is to help their clients reach the success they desire by providing actionable advice for how someone gets from where they are now to where they want to be.
They will assess your strengths and weaknesses to determine how you can best advance your career and what you need to work on most in order to succeed. A talented executive coach is able to balance all of your personal and professional goals to encourage professional growth as well as personal happiness.
Depending on someone’s desired coaching path, an executive coach may choose a specific niche such as executive career coaching or executive leadership coaching. The more experience a coach has, the more they’re able to specialize their offering in order to help clients reach the success they’re looking for.
If you want to exclusively advance your career, you might look for an executive career coach, whereas someone who wants to improve all aspects of their work and personal life might seek out an executive life coach.
What is Executive Career Coaching?
An executive career coach specializes in helping you advance in your career. They will guide you professionally so that you can ascend in your industry and land your dream job. They help you choose the career path that’s best suited to your unique skills while helping you reach your daunting professional goals.
What is Executive Life Coaching?
An executive life coach focuses on a blend between professional and personal goals. They will help you make better business decisions, but they’ll also prioritize your wellness, happiness, and lifestyle goals. They can help you do everything from advancing your career to building better relationships to finding a better balance between work and your personal life.
What is Leadership Coaching?
Executive leadership coaching focuses on the skills and business experience you need to become a better leader. Guidance from a leadership coach is tailored to the strengths and weaknesses you possess as a leader. They’ll help you build confidence and learn to manage other people to become an effective leader, all while working to accomplish your professional goals.
What is Business Coaching?
A business coach specializes in helping business owners to both manage their companies and develop their own professional goals. A business coach helps their clients understand the vision of their business to manage company growth, maintain current success, or withstand a crisis. A business coach will ensure a business is able to survive what’s to come, and they can help you get your business from where it is now to where you want it to be in the future.
What is Coaching in the Workplace?
Coaching in the workplace improves the skills of employees to better the business as a whole. Employees with extra coaching and training are able to do their jobs more efficiently, effectively, and with more enjoyment. By providing workplace training, a business illustrates that they care about their employees and are willing to invest in them. A business might provide workplace training to develop a team’s technical skills or invest in adaptability training to prepare a team for the possible outcomes of an uncertain future.
Executive Coaching Benefits
Hiring an executive coach can push your career to the next level. It will help you advance in your industry by teaching you what you need to do to reach your desired future.
With a coach alongside, you’ll be able to accomplish your goals more quickly, and you’ll be far more likely to commit to them since you have someone to motivate you along the way. A coach can assess your strengths and weaknesses in a way you won’t be able to on your own, so you can lean into what you do well and improve upon your weaknesses.
They will guide your decision making to help you reach new potentials. An experienced coach should be able to blend your personal and professional goals together to improve your overall wellbeing and happiness.
How to Find an Executive Coach
Begin by searching within your own network. Ask trusted colleagues, peers, and mentors if they’ve worked with an executive coach or if they know anyone who does that type of work. Reach out to managers and leaders within your own company or contact board members.
Don’t be afraid to contact peers outside of your industry. You can send someone a simple message on Linkedin or ask your social media network at large if they can recommend any executive coaches they’ve worked with before.
If all else fails, you can do a local Google search for executive coaches near you, but getting personal recommendations is the best way to go since you have a reference for the quality of coaching you will receive.
Once you have some leads, you can narrow down your options to a couple of choices. Reach out to these coaches to determine if they’d be a good fit for your comfort, goals, and budget. You’ll be paying this person quite a lot and working with them frequently, so you need to know you can trust them before you make a decision.
Cost of Executive Coaching
The cost of an executive coach can vary significantly and generally depends on the experience and past successes of the coach. New coaches won’t cost as much, but they will be less specialized and have fewer success stories.
You should expect to pay anywhere from $200-$600 an hour, with some well-known and highly sought after coaches charging over $3000 an hour. The ability to build your own business and increase your rate as you become more successful is one of the reasons becoming an executive coach is such a desirable career.
How to Become an Executive Coach
Executive coaching is an ideal career path for those who enjoy helping others achieve their goals. Executive coaches have strong leadership skills and a great deal of experience in their respective industries to guide others on the path to professional and personal success.
Becoming a business coach requires many years of experience working with other people. You should ideally have at least 10 years of experience in management, leadership, or similar roles before you pursue a career as an executive coach.
Step 1
Gain experience and develop your leadership skills in a business field to establish the skills you need to become a coach. This can take many years if you haven’t worked in a business or leadership capacity before. Executive coaches need to be able to pull from many years of relevant experience in order to guide others successfully.
Step 2
Complete a reputable coaching certification. Consider several executive coaching programs before you choose the one that’s the best fit. You can select certifications that focus on executive coaching, career coaching, life coaching, or business coaching, depending on the specialization you want to pursue.
Step 3
Continue learning and building your success stories so that you can begin to increase your rate. The more experience you have and the greater success your clients achieve, the more you will be able to charge as an hourly rate or flat fee.
Executive Coach Certifications
To become an executive coach, you should obtain a reputable certification. Luckily, you don’t even need to venture outside of your home or office to do that since you can obtain an executive coaching certification online.
iPEC’s ICF-Accredited Coach Training Program
iPEC, The Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, offers an ICF-Accredited Coach Training Program that provides three certifications:
- Certified Professional Coach (CPC)
- Energy Leadership Index™ Master
- E Dynamics Specialist
The program includes online course training, interactive live conferences, sessions with a success coach, one-to-one mentoring, and access to iPECs coach community network. In the COR.E Dynamics certification section, you’re able to choose between tracks of Leadership, Performance, Transitions, or Wellbeing. You can also pick a specialty with a number of options, including a Leadership: Executive & Management Coaching specialization.
Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC)
Co-Active offers a 6-week online program called CPCC, the Certified Professional Co-Active Coach. They provide an ICF-accredited coach training program with live coaching demos, one-on-one supervision, personalized feedback, and a network of professional colleagues. The CPCC curriculum is one of the first in the world to become accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF).
Other Executive Certification Programs
- Certified Personal and Executive Coach Program from The CaPP Institute
- Executive Coaching Certification from Center for Executive Coaching
- Certified Personal and Executive Coach Training Program from College of Executive Coaching
- Executive and Professional Coaching Certificate from Naveen Jindal School of Management
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