Leaders at every level – from CEO to frontline people manager – show up to coaching with issues they want to discuss. Whether you’re a leader who coaches or an external executive coach, you always have two options. You can cover the items they bring. Or, you can help them to see under, inside, and around those issues to uncover the patterns they’ve created, helped to create, or consent to that contribute to the issues they bring arising over and over again.
In other words, you can use your time as a coach as a firefighter helping your client put out fires; or, you can use your time as an explorer helping your client to look for the patterns that make things work the way they work. Everything produces what it is designed to produce. Powerful executive coaching explores the design underlying the production of results. It’s also more impactful and much, much more fun.