01 May Common Misconceptions About Executive Coaching
When it comes to executive coaching, there are a few things that business owners have a misconception about, and I spend quite a bit of time overcoming these misconceptions. In this clip, I talk about the top one that I see, which is that business owners and companies think they need executive coaching only when there is an issue. Watch the clip to see how I combat this thought process:
Patrick: What are some of the common perceptions and misperceptions around coaching?
Leland: One of the most common ones is that coaching is because someone’s got a problem. Someone needs to be fixed. There’s something wrong with them. I do not this is a great motivation for coaching.
My feeling is that when I want to coach someone, I’m coaching someone who is talented. Typically, they are at the senior level. They are talented, and they are good. My goal is to make them excellent.
I usually start from a high level saying, “We want to go a little bit higher,” as opposed to saying, “You’re down here, and we want to bridge this huge gap.” I don’t think that’s either realistic or fair to the individual.
Patrick: I think it’s totally BS. If you look at a Serena Williams or Roger Federer, they have coaches and sometimes change coaches. They’re the top people in the world at their game. Yet they want the best possible coaching that they can get.