What Does a CEO Coach Do?
If you don’t have a CEO Coach now, you may ask yourself what a CEO Coach is. What do we really do?
A Story of a CEO Learning Their Value
One of my CEOs took a while to realize they could benefit from a CEO Coaching relationship. Once they understood the value, they never gave up that relationship.
As a CEO, they were frustrated. They saw that they weren’t growing the company as fast as they wanted to. They were working too hard for too little in return.
The problem was that they were staring at the bark of a tree all day long (trying to run a successful company) when they needed someone to tell them they weren’t even sure it was the right tree in the forest (they were focusing on the wrong things.)
Why Was CEO Coaching so Important for Their Growth?
A CEO Coach starts by focusing on you. Once you understand that they would improve the company by improving themselves, they started looking internally, and that made all the difference.
The beauty of the CEO role is that everything emanates from the CEO. All successes are due to the efforts of the CEO. And all failures lie at the fault of the CEO. If your CEO Coach helps you understand this great truth, that alone will accelerate your success.
CEO Coaching Helps Improve Company’s Performance
The CEO is the most significant point of leverage in a company’s success. If the CEO can improve their own performance, then their company will perform at a higher level.
A great CEO Coach will help you improve your company’s performance by helping you achieve peak performance yourself. But that’s not all.
A CEO Coach Assists with Operational Needs
Sometimes a CEO needs other kinds of advice and counsel. Sometimes the CEO needs to get down in the weeds on operational issues. A great CEO Coach will go with you wherever you need them the most.
It helps that I was a CEO for 25 years. It helps that I was in venture capital for five years, coaching CEOs of startups. A great coach can tell when you need to work on yourself and when you need to work on a critical operational issue.
Let’s say you need to determine if you’re going to acquire a company or not. A CEO Coach will help you examine all the issues to make a great decision. They will bring in other experts when it makes sense to do so.
A great CEO Coach encourages the CEO to leverage all relevant resources. They want you to reach out to others. They want you to get expert advice, and they will help you get it. But that’s not all.
A CEO Coach Can Assist with Decision Making
Let’s say you’re trying to decide whether or not to keep a vital team member. They’ll help you take the right course of action. They’ll help you determine the likelihood of that person’s success. They’ll help you develop a plan of action if you want to invest in them. They’ll often help you accelerate the decision to terminate them (as CEOs usually take too long to do this.) But that’s not all.
They’ll also help you understand how you got to a place where you have a person on the team you want to terminate. They’ll go deep on the issues so you can learn from the experience, change the root behavior that enabled this to happen, and reduce the odds of this happening in the future.
It could be in your organizational design, the recruiting process, or how you managed the person. Your coach’s job is to help you understand what you need to change to become better. But that’s not all.
CEO Coaches Can Aid with Personal Issues
Sometimes the issue is a personal one, and it makes sense to address the personal issue. A CEO who has a poor personal life is not going to achieve peak performance at work. They will be carrying thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that don’t serve them well as a CEO.
I have had CEOs tell me they have no friends. They have revealed a sadness that results from being a workaholic and not living a balanced life. In this situation, they come to work less motivated and less focused than they could be. They are missing something important in their life, which weighs on them.
The coach will work on any personal issues that are not enabling you to achieve the peak performance you seek.
Great CEO coaches will help you at the moment with whatever issue arises, and they will drive to the core issues that create lasting change.
Contact Glenn Gow For CEO Coaching Services Today!
My name is Glenn Gow, CEO Coach. I love coaching CEOs and want to help make you an even better CEO. Let’s decide if we are a fit for each other. Schedule a time to talk with me at calendly.com/glenngow. I look forward to speaking with you soon.
