Executive coaching equips executives and senior leaders with the leadership skills and resources to lead to their best potential and achieve individual and organisational goals.
Most leaders operate in time scarce, results focused, deadline driven environments. They are required to be resilient, agile, think fast and make quick decisions to navigate uncertainty and complexity yet they suffer from limited time to think.
Coaching offers leaders the time to think for themselves, about themselves; time to think effectively and creatively about their leadership purpose, priorities, challenges, personal development and business goals.
Results-driven leadership coaching
Results driven leadership is a distinctive coaching approach that connects personal development and leadership purpose with individual outcomes and business results.
Leadership is all about relationships; how people connect and collaborate with others within and outside of the organisation. Building leadership capability and community enables people and organisations to grow and become ‘agents of change’.
Results driven leadership coaching is designed to accelerate personal growth and business performance and help clients achieve ambitious and challenging goals, quickly and effectively.
By aligning individual goals to organisational goals, people focus on where they can add most value and make most impact. Results-driven leadership coaching improves leadership performance by unlocking potential and minimising interference and barriers to success.
Coaching expertise
Sara works with executives and leaders to be their best, whether enhancing performance in an existing role or making the transition to a new leadership, strategic or executive role or first Board appointment.
Sara offers the full range of coaching programmes for individuals and teams:
- Executive coaching
- Executive mentoring
- Leadership coaching
- Team coaching
- Transformational coaching
- Women on Boards
- High performers, high potentials and emerging leaders
- On-boarding and First 100 Days coaching
Coach mentoring and supervision
For coaches wanting to invest in their professional development, Sara’s coaching supervision offers a safe and supportive space to focus on reflective dialogue, deepening self-awareness and enhancing coaching capability.
Sara’s coach mentoring enables coaches to gain ICF credentials (ACC, PCC and MCC) and helps coaches to navigate the complexities of the credentialling process with pragmatic support and insight. Sara’s coaching mentoring has a 100 per cent success rate, enabling coaches to confidently gain their ICF credentials.
You can find Sara on the ICF register https://www.coachfederation.org.uk/find-coach/coach-detail/20
Coaching Outcomes
Leaders today face high-risk, high-stakes situations and challenges. This is the moment when great leadership matters, as events unfold. Often the challenges are new or unfamiliar. Getting your leadership style and decisions right during these high-risk, high-stakes challenges could make the difference between your organisation sinking, surviving or thriving; and between personal success or failure.
Why coaching matters?
Executive coaching can have dramatic results. Not only on skills and performance, but coaching brings wide-reaching benefits to individual and team performance, to productivity, employee satisfaction, retention and other key business performance indicators.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) reports that coaching results in clear and measurable impacts, including:
- 70% increase in individual performance – in terms of goal attainment, clearer communication and higher employee satisfaction.
- 50% increase in team performance – in terms of better conversations, improved collaboration and enhanced work performance.
- 48% increase in organisational performance – in terms of increase in revenue and improved employee retention.
Another study published in the journal Public Personnel Management found that introducing an eight-week one-to-one executive coaching programme boosted individual productivity by 88%.
In today’s climate, the most important factor for an organisation to adapt and survive is its ability to transform and keep transforming. But over 70% of transformation efforts are estimated to fail. Introducing a coaching culture across your organisation can help to transform your business.
Organisations that develop a strong coaching culture see much greater gains in revenue, growth and return on shareholder value than their competitors. They see a significant increase in employee productivity, performance and retention. If your leadership team is seeking to increase performance, deliver transformation or gain competitive advantage, instilling a strong coaching culture will help the organisation to get there, faster.
Many companies ask about the ROI of coaching. This will depend on a wide range of variables including the skills, experience and credentials of a specific coach, willingness of the individuals being coached, objectives and expectations. However, one study of a Fortune 500 company found that executive coaching delivered a 788% ROI when wider factors such as increases in productivity and employee retention were considered.
Why participate in coaching?
Recent research by PwC and ICF found that over one third of respondents had participated in a professional business or life coaching relationship. Of those who had participated in coaching, the most common reasons given for choosing to partner with a coach were to improve communication skills (37%), improve work life balance (35%) and to increase self-esteem and self-confidence (35%).
Source: ICF Global Consumer Awareness Study on Coaching 2022, a survey of 31,000 people across 30 countries & territories
The PwC and ICF research indicated that female respondents were more likely than male respondents to partner with a coach to increase self-esteem and self-confidence (36% of female respondents compared to 33% of male respondents). Whereas male respondents were more likely to partner with a coach to improve business management strategies (33% of male respondents compared to 30% of female respondents).
Source: PwC ICF Global Consumer Awareness Study on Coaching
Measures of success
Along with her client Electricity North West, Sara is the holder of the ICF UK PRISM award for achieving coaching excellence in business transformation.
Coaching and leadership interventions enabled Electricity North West to successfully deliver business transformation and added clear value:
- ENWL calculated a return on investment of 190% and expected this to increase.
- Quarterly Climate scores increased by 100% in 2 years, reaching a world class peak of 76%
- Leadership ratings increased from 41% to 72%
- Customer Service improvements were improved by up to 15% in every business area
- Change Orientation scores increased by 10%
- Both the Executive Leadership Team and the Senior Leadership Team were strengthened with internal promotions
In terms of the impact that coaching makes on individuals, the PwC and ICF research identified the most common outcomes of coaching were improved communication skills (42%), increased self-esteem and self-confidence (41%) and increased work/life balance (38%).
Almost all respondents (92%) reported that they were either very or somewhat satisfied with the coaching they received. In addition, almost 80 per cent of respondents rated the importance of a coach having credible professional qualifications as important or very important.
Among those who have received coaching, a strong majority (80%) report positive impacts resulting from the coaching engagement. Among key areas where they report improvement are their work performance, communication skills, productivity, well-being, and business management strategies.
Source: ICF and Human Capital Institute Building a Coaching Culture with Millennial Leaders
Organisations with strong coaching cultures are more likely to have better talent and business outcomes:
- Among organisations with a strong coaching culture, 61% are also classified as high- performing organisations.
- Using coaching to lead an agile culture is correlated with greater confidence in employees’ capabilities in planning and executing change.
- A strong coaching culture is correlated with most of the indicators of a high-performing organisation including success at large-scale strategic change.
Results driven leadership coaching delivers measurable differences in leadership behaviours, performance, personal growth and business performance:
- Improved individual performance and growth
- Improved performance of the business function and direct reports, impacting overall business performance
- Operating more strategically, less operationally
- Becoming a more challenging, bold and courageous leader
- Enhanced leadership presence, role modelling the right leadership behaviours
- Greater confidence and self-belief, resilience & mental toughness
- Improved communication and collaboration across all levels of the organisation
- Increased understanding of building strengths to mitigate against performance risks
- Investing in time to think, questioning underlying assumptions and blockers to personal performance, growth and career development
- Increased job satisfaction and personal effectiveness
- Increased employee engagement and customer satisfaction
- Achievement of individual, team and organisational goals and strong ROI
- Transformational development and sustainable change for the individual and the organisation
In this section
In my opinion the incredible and unwavering support that Sara’s coaching and mentoring offers is something that no amount of courses or ‘self help’ books can ever supply.
Angela Hesketh, Head of UK Market Development, Pexa Group