Maybe you have been thinking of shifting your career and starting executive coaching for a while, or you’ve recently become aware of the countless possibilities of success that come with becoming an executive coach. The following is a guide to help you become a successful executive coach in 5 steps.
- Your Motivation Determines Your Path
Determining your motivations, background, and skills can inform you about the kind of executive coach you want to be and should essentially influence what kind of clients you’re most capable of helping.
The first thing you should consider is why you want to become an executive coach.
Many executive coaches describe the moment they knew they actually wanted to become executive coaches once they realised that their current job or roles wasn’t fulfilling enough but wanted to use their career skills to help others. Find out why you want to become a coach as those reasons will help establish the principles through which you can conduct your coaching services.
- Training and Certifications
Will I have to be certified to be an executive coach?
No. In the coaching industry, there is no universal consensus as to what certifications a person needs to be a coach. However, this is your sign that you should be certified.
Professional certification for executive coaching is a great way to prove your coaching competency to clients – you have put in the time, work, and money to become an expert coach with the skills and capabilities of helping them. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is a globally recognised coaching organisation.
Currently, there are thousands of executive coaching courses online as well as schools offering programs certified by the ICF, which essentially prepare you to be certified as an executive coach.
- Coaching Methodology
Your coaching methodology and plan should ideally incorporate an effective coaching model. During the coaching program, you will be taught the need for developing a coaching model, along with the different kinds of models that you could choose and incorporate into your practice.
You could also integrate your coaching model into the overall strategy along with the daily sessions. There are coaches who even layer several coaching models, while others will use one umbrella model encompassing their entire coaching services.
Every client should essentially have a personalised plan outlining their goals, the right steps to reach them, and the desired learning strategy that works best for the said client. You should also decide how often you should meet with your client face-to-face, via messaging, or virtually.
It’s also important to focus on developing the core leadership skills of your client, no matter the executive coaching method you choose. Ideally, the cornerstone of each coaching session should be developing and maintaining such core skills.
- Set Your Rate
Regardless of whether you will be coaching as a side hustle or full-time, you should consider your training, experience, certifications, and skills when setting up your pricing model. Most people value coaching services and can pay more than you can imagine.
- Find a Platform to Offer your Service
If you’re new to coaching and don’t have coaching experience yet or a stamp of approval from a reputable individual or organisation, providing your coaching services on your own might be quite difficult. Offering your coaching services on a platform is typically the best way around this problem.
When new coaches are evaluated by a coaching platform and a team of experts, the clients are generally more willing to engage as they know the coaches have been vetted by the coaching platform.
Bottom line
Most leadership coaches agree that attaining your goals is an amazing feeling, but utilising your knowledge and skills to help other people continuously achieve their goals is on a different level of amazing. If you feel that becoming an executive coach is the next step for your career, use the steps outlined above and immerse yourself in the world of coaching.
