Marshall Goldsmith is a very wise Executive Coach who works with the CEOs of the world’s largest companies. He’s also funny and very humble and I find his advice quite smart. Take a look at his blog article on why coaching clients give up. I have summarized the top reasons below using Marshall’s words:
- Ownership: I wasn’t sure that this coaching idea would work in the first place. I tried it out – it didn’t do that much good. As I guessed, this was kind of a waste of time!
- Time: I had no idea that this process would take so long. I am not sure that it is worth it!
- Difficulty: This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It sounded so simple when we were starting out!
- Distractions: I would really like to work toward my goal, but my company is facing a unique challenge right now. It might be better if I just stopped and did this at a time when things weren’t so crazy.
- Rewards: Why am I working so hard at becoming a more effective leader? After all of my effort – we still didn’t make any more money this year!
- Maintenance: I think that I did actually get better when I had a coach, but I have let it slide since then. What am I supposed to do – work on this stuff the rest of my life?
Anyone considering leadership or executive coaching needs to know this is work, but it doesn’t need to be “yet another thing”. The trick is to integrate this into your day to day work as a leader and be very clear in your intentions. What aspects of you inside and outside of your career are working now? Where do you want to see a shift, and what’s the payout? Your work with a coach helps you get that clarity and then get into motion and experiment with new ways of working, relating, and experiencing life.
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I hope this has been helpful and of course the Adaptive Talent team would welcome the opportunity to help you and your team improve your results and adaptability via our culture and organizational development consulting, communications and coaching / mentoring training, total rewards consulting, assessments, leadership coaching and development programs and retained search to help you land high impact talent.