Coachees often make common mistakes when starting a new coaching relationship. To avoid these mistakes, coachees need to know what to expect from an executive coaching relationship.

Willing Doesn’t Mean Ready

The first mistake a coach makes is to confuse the willingness to be coached with true readiness. You can claim to be ready for coaching, and you can even believe it yourself, but that doesn’t guarantee you really accept what coaching has to offer. This situation often creates a fatal lack of commitment, condemns the interaction with failure, and ultimately gives the organization the impression that coaching was a failed investment.

This result can be largely avoided if an organisation is ready to receive advice when investing in an executive coach and has a strong sense of urgency and willingness to actively challenge themselves to change. Hiring an executive coach involves a significant investment in both time and money. It is not exactly the same as, for example, a managed development program and should not be treated that way. 

The need for a sincere relationship between the coach and the client is paramount. This commitment is necessary to develop a reasonable degree of self-confidence. Most of all, you need to be receptive and vulnerable for the coaching to work. Without the level of trust that sincere communication between coaches and clients allows, the chances of real success are dramatically reduced.

Resistance and defensiveness must be out of the picture from the very beginning. If you want to hire an executive coach, you need to check your willingness to be vulnerable, as well as be open to visualising a positive outcome through a process of real effort. Understanding what success means in your particular circumstances increases the probabilities of attaining that success by a measure of magnitude.

A Classic Misunderstanding of Coaching

Part of the proper preparation for the appointment of an executive coach should ideally include recognising some of the possible misconceptions. A classic coaching mistake is simply to judge a person’s situation too hastily and mistake a new training scenario for one they’ve seen before. When this happens, coaches tend to stop listening, make assumptions, and easily rely too much on previous solutions. All of these may not be able to resolve the underlying problem or concern.

Are you looking for a reputable executive coach? Then you’ve come to the right place. We might be a perfect match. Get in touch with Integrative Coaching to book your free session today!