What is executive coaching honesty? What does it mean to be honest in your executive coaching sessions?

Being Honest Takes Some Finesse as an Executive Coach

Some coaches can be brutally honest – just say it like it is any way, and in any manner you like. Athletic coaches come to mind – they can yell, shout, scream, knock over a chalk board or two. Even life coaches can leave the refinement of speech and words behind. However, executive coaches are often dealing with a different breed of people – individuals who have amassed power, enjoyed privilege, demanded respect, and have built a career on managing others.

In many ways, executives are different than other clients. They may not be able to handle brutal honesty from someone they hire to be their coach. So, being honest may be different for executive coaches – what is executive coach honesty is probably a bit different than what is coach honesty.

What is Executive Coaching Honesty?

There’s two general answers to the question: What is executive coaching honesty? The answers are opposite, but they both apply.

Treat Executive Coach Clients Differently

Because most executive have a Type A personality and have achieved a great deal in business, they are different than many clients a life coach would have. Brutal honesty might not work as well as honesty disguised with a little respect and finesse.

Treat Executive Coaches the Same

Sounds like a contradiction to the first answer, but it means that you still need to be honest. You can’t censor yourself because that executive is paying you for results. You can’t worry about driving your client away just because you are being honest. If one of your clients doesn’t like your advice, they might leave, but would that really be worse than not giving your most honest coaching to all your clients? Sacrificing one client for the benefit of all (and the good reputation you’ll get by achieving desired outcomes) is definitely worth it in the long run.

Honesty is the Best Coaching Policy

Being honesty will accomplish three things:

• It will help build your relationship with your client – when they realize you are honest with your coaching is the moment they realize that their money is well-spent.
• It will allow for trust – trust is critical to an ongoing coaching relationship and will contribute to finding the outcomes your clients want.
• It will set you apart from coaches who are afraid to be honest.

What is executive coaching if it is not being honesty, even if that honesty may create a rough ride and a few bruised egos from time to time. It’s not easy being honest. It sometimes seems as if success and honesty are mutually exclusive. That may be true occasionally in the short term, but in the long term, the honest coaches will be the most successful coaches.

What is executive coaching? Well, it is many things and more. But, one word can’t be left out when describing how to be a good executive coach, and that word is honesty!

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article… Thank you!

Fred Philips
Business Coach
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