As your role and influence grows, your world becomes more controlled, more filtered, and often more superficial. Board members, peers, and direct reports often only offer deference, but rarely challenge your decisions. That leaves a growing space inside where doubts, conflicts, and complexity go unspoken.
Success may expand resources, but it doesn’t eliminate vulnerability. According to the Harvard Business Review’s 2024 Global Leadership Development Survey, 70% of respondents said it is important or very important for leaders to master a wider range of effective leadership behaviors to meet current and future business needs. For leaders who want to thrive, not just survive, working with an Executive Coach is an effective way to build more support into your role.
What Executive Coaching Really Does
Executive Coaching is not therapy or consulting. Working with a coach is that rare professional relationship where you don’t have to perform. Instead, coaching provides a safe, confidential space for you to be vulnerable and explore potential outcomes. Your coach doesn’t hand you answers; they help you hear your own truth more clearly and act on it with confidence.
The result is a positive ripple effect throughout your interpersonal relationships that often leads to larger organizational success. And the evidence is pretty compelling: A recent International Coaching Federation (ICF) survey suggests that employees at every level appreciate coaching, with high approval from both senior executives (78%) and employees (73%).
What is Values Anchored Leadership
Executive Coaches often use a leadership program to guide their clients along their individual coaching journey. Many of these leadership programs focus on “what to do” when facing challenges. Values Anchored Leadership asks a deeper question: Why do you do it?
Values Anchored Leadership is guided by a sequence of steps to create unique self-discovery while accelerating leadership growth:
- Define Goals Including Metrics
- Clarify Leadership Intent
- Validate Self Awareness
- Gather External Feedback
- Explore Internal Experience
- Focus Growth Plan
- Measure Goal Achievement
Over time, the pressures of short-term metrics, market expectations, and stakeholder demands can pull leaders away from their core beliefs, creating internal tension. That drift is invisible and potentially destructive. Coaching that is anchored in values helps you recenter and stay centered, so decisions made under pressure still reflect who you are and where you want to go.
How Long Should a Leader Engage with an Executive Coach
Much like a strategic transformation process, leadership growth needs deliberate iteration – not quick fixes. It is recommended to engage with an Executive Coach for a minimum of six months to see results. This timeframe strikes a good balance: long enough for deep discussion, short enough to maintain focus. Over six months, you build trust, reveal blind spots, pilot new behaviors, and consolidate momentum.
I’ve lost count of the many leadership seminars, courses and training that I’ve participated in over the years. Most of them were as short as a couple of hours and as long as a week, some with a small amount of follow-up, but most with little sustained impact. Sound familiar? An impactful leadership growth experience, such as a focused coaching engagement, requires enough time to break old patterns, experiment with new choices, and internalize change.
When to Work with an Executive Coach
For C-Suite Leaders
You may think: “I got this far without a coach. Why engage with one now?” Coaching at this level
becomes your guardrail against drift and blind spots. According to the Harvard Business Review, it is estimated that nearly 40% of new CEOs fail within 18 months. For long-standing C-Level Leaders, coaching can help break down self-awareness gaps and the isolation that often comes with leadership.
For CHROs and Talent Leaders
You’re tasked with cultivating future-ready leaders and trust that their previous training has been adequate. However, according to the Center for Creative Leadership, roughly 60% of new managers report that they never received any training when they transitioned into their first leadership role. Coaching, by contrast, is contextual, personal, and accountable. It helps fill that gap in leadership training and turns your investment in future-ready leaders into measurable cultural impact.
For Mid- and Senior-Level Leaders on the Rise
You may believe coaching is only for the C-suite, but it is most potent at these transition points. Gartner, a global research and advisory firm, found that 60% of new managers fail within the first 24 months. This unfortunate reality is largely due to a lack of training in leadership and management skills. Coaching for Mid- and Senior-Level leaders helps grow your leadership and management skills, so when the pressure hits, you don’t hit the wall.
The Harsh Bottom Line
Leadership will always demand more – more complexity, more resilience, more soul. But your success should not require you to lose yourself.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe:
Courage in leadership is not about never needing support. It’s about knowing when to seek it.
Hiring a coach is not proof that you’re broken. It’s proof that you believe there is more clarity, connection, and impact opportunity ahead, and you’re not willing to go there alone.
Executive leadership coaching, when anchored in values, doesn’t just improve performance – it protects your legacy. Reach out today to explore the journey toward accelerated leadership growth and sustained self-fulfillment through Values Anchored Leadership.