Executive Coaching Chicago

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WHY Coaching?

“Coaching is not therapy. It’s product development, with you as the product.”—Fast Company magazine.

Business experts often cite coaching as an effective way of enabling professionals, by making sure they embrace their jobs and maximize performance. By coaching, I don’t mean those all-hands-on-deck motivational sessions where a celebrity or high-powered speaker (like me!) delivers a keynote address aimed at improving solidarity or general productivity. Those definitely have their place, but count as coaching only in the most general sense.

Coaching isn’t the same as an annual evaluation, either, though some coaching may take place during the evaluation. It isn’t mentoring, because that usually doesn’t involve a manager. Nor is training, another essential, the same as coaching. True coaching involves one-on-one, informal face-time between a leader and his or her follower, in which both parties discuss what the professional needs to do, learn, or become in order to boost his or her performance. Coaching is rarely a one-time thing, or a merely annual event like an evaluation. The leader has the responsibility of checking in with each follower on a regular basis, to see if they need more attention, using the opportunity to improve not just the individual, but the communication process as well.

Here are just a few reasons why coaching can help professionals boost their productivity:

It’s compassionate. If nothing else, coaching proves that the COACH cares about the professional, their well-being, and their abilities. Sure, it’s all about making them work better in the context of their profession, but it can improve their lives overall if undertaken properly. Warning: without some level of emotional investiture by the coach and the professional, it rings hollow.


Coaching addresses sensitive issues in a safe place. The coach and professional talk things over in a private space, where the professional can discuss their issues as well as the coach. No one but those involved knows what they discussed. It takes place during a scheduled round of interviews when the professional receives individual coaching, and the coach actively listens.


Coaching improves motivation and job satisfaction, resulting in employee engagement and ownership of their jobs. The best coaching inspires and boosts confidence, because it concerns not just where the professional is off-track, but also what they are doing right.


Good coaching helps the professional discover and manage strengths and limitations. This leads to maximize strengths and manage limitations (if worthwhile), while also overcoming obstacles and challenges. It also sets goals or benchmarks for the professional to strive for, and teaches them to stay on task, helping them improve their time management and fostering problem-solving skills.


It provides a deeper level of perspective and personal awareness to the professional moving forward.


It helps them improve communication skills, at least between the professional and the coach, and ideally between them and any other team members. Among other things, this promotes more effective teams with stronger bonds built on meaningful connections.

All these factors can increase personal performance if the professional takes them to heart and the coach follows up regularly. The latter point is where coaching often fails in the corporate sector (where a manager assumes the coach’s role)… if it’s tried at all.

But how often is coaching actually practiced in the workplace? Think about it: how often have you experienced coaching? I know people who never have. In the hustle to produce, and the long hours that prevailed after the tech bubble popped and the Great Recession overwhelmed us, it fell out of favor, possibly because managers felt they didn’t have the time or resources to do it properly. Later, Millennials moving into managerial and executive positions failed to continue the practice simply because they didn’t know or think about it. I fear coaching as a corporate practice may be on its last legs due to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, during which face-to-face meetings have been avoided like, well, the plague.

I believe it’s time for the professionals to take their professional development into their own hands by engaging a dedicated coach in a one-on-one setting (and not rely / expect the employer to your growth). Good luck!

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