Using Your Executive Coach

If you are a manager or executive who is beginning a coaching engagement or who is considering a developmental plan that calls for an executive coach, you need more than a desire to improve your leadership capabilities. You also need to understand how to get the most from your work with a professional coach. This guide can help you to understand the unique nature of a coaching engagement and to assess your readiness to embark on this method of professional development. The book describes the three main elements of a coaching engagement—assessment, challenge, and support— and provides information on how you can collaborate with your coach in each of these aspects to get the maximum benefits from coaching. You will also learn how to recognize and overcome your resistance to the disruption and discomfort brought about by the behavioral changes that coaching addresses.

This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has generated, since its inception in 1970, through its research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared-in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today's leadership and organizational challenges.
The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL's mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide.

Wayne Hart is a feedback and coaching manager, and a senior faculty member at CCL’s San Diego campus. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology and a California Psychology License. Additionally, he has been certified as a Teaching Member of the International Transactional Analysis Association. He has published two books and more than a dozen articles in professional journals.

Karen Kirkland is a licensed clinical psychologist and a feedback and coaching manager at CCL’s San Diego campus. She holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Missouri and served previously as Associate Dean of the School of Human Behavior at United States International University in San Diego. In more than eighteen years at CCL she has provided feedback services to hundreds of leaders and executives. She has also written or co-authored fourteen professional articles.