Job Description for Executive Coaches

Leaders’ jobs are confusing, and pretty much impossible. They must do them anyway, and do them with apparent confidence. What makes leadership so hard? Consider the job description. Wanted: Leader who can Align people who have different ideas and skills to a common purpose. Select the right people, and put them in the right positions, so that they can accomplish that purpose. Catch people being successful. Have difficult conversations when things go wrong. Inspire Build relationships that engage followers. Understand how organizations work. Understand their business and all its component parts. Manage the myriad emotions that followers bring, arising from followers’ experiences with past leaders. Have self-awareness regarding their own emotions, and how they impact others. Have enough resilience to bounce back from mistakes and unfair criticisms. There is more, but you get the picture. Leaders need you, and it’s no wonder! But let’s be clear about what they do…

What is EQ Coaching?

You might think that EQ executive coaching is simply a method for building EQ skills in leaders. But it goes deeper than that. EQ skills aren’t taught or practiced in a vacuum. EQ Coaching is an integration of EQ skill building into the broader context of executive coaching, which means that we deal with all of the topics that executives deal with. Let’s take a look at two of those topics: 1) influencing and 2) negotiating. Influencing: Leaders must be able to influence their followers if they want them to unite behind a shared vision willingly and enthusiastically. As Ken Blanchard says, “The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.” John (not his real name) needed to get his team to make a dramatic shift away from their comfortable and familiar set of goals to a very different destination. This shift involved a whole new way of thinking…