To lead the company to the next level, the CEO must constantly and actively improve himself/herself in many ways, especially the way of thinking. CEOs are often faced with different decisions: how to solve the crisis for the company? How to deal with a group of dominating board of directors who come with a hidden agenda? How to handle acquisition or anti-acquisition? To cope with those challenges, CEOs need new skills and new thinking.
Take the CEO to the next level
Behind all high achievers, from the sports fields to the commercials, there is a coach. The reason is that even experienced warriors have potentials that they don’t even realize themselves, also there are no standard answers for decisions made, CEOs need guidance and a coach to help them refocusing.
In high-stakes decisions, CEOs need the guidance from a sensible coach. Personal coaches are good at providing advice and helping executives improve specific management skills. The study surveyed 45 CEOs with formal coaches:
- 71% are convinced that coaches help improve company performance
- 69% think that the quality of decision-making has improved
- 76% believe that the performance can better meet the expectations of shareholders
- 84% believe that coaches effectively assist in adapting to new positions and avoid major mistakes
Many people have heard of Bill Campbell, business coach to Steve Jobs (founder of Apple Inc.), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), and Larry Page (founder of Google). In 2002, Google was just a start-up, and it was Bill who accompanied several founders to Google’s listing.
Why do the top Silicon Valley CEOs above all need a personal coach? And how to find a suitable personal coach?
The right personal coach
A successful personal coach needs to have professional experience, a broad perspective and the full trust of the CEO.
Experienced coaches with broad perspectives typically outside the company. In such they can observe and look into issues from different angles, and provide objective insights on the company’s market positioning.
As for the need for complete trust, it is because the CEO knows very well that there are certain things that can be shared internally, and some things cannot. For some CEOs, the risk of exposing their challenges to fellow colleagues, or even directors, is way too high. It is very important for the CEO to be able to have frank dialogue with a personal coach, who is out of the interests of the company and the boss. This is also an advantage of appointing a personal coach from a consulting firm.
“A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.”
For small business owners, if they want to expand their business, they must develop interpersonal skills. Success comes from teams, not individuals. According to my experience, the biggest limitation of many small businesses is team management. A personal coach can help a small business break through and build shared purpose, culture and aspirations for the team.
The personal coach walks with the CEO and puts forward the sincerest opinions. The business owner also needs to open his/her heart, have an open and willing to learn attitude, that’s essential to lead the company forward and move to the next level.