The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching: 50 Top Executive Coaches Reveal Their Secrets

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engage in every day to develop them? The final area, of course, is action.
Everything must always come down to the actions that should be taken.
By the time participants have finished 12 months of work, they’ve become
totally different people. The key to their success is whether they have the abil-
ity to begin a program and stick to it. Many entrepreneurs and many successful
people in general have extremely short attention spans. Nevertheless, most
people are eager to pounce on these ideas and the process has been designed
to generate tangible returns. If the ideas are used on a regular basis, the re-
sults are always extraordinary.
To be an effective coach in the area of human potential, it is critical to
have the structure, credibility, presence, and maturity of a teacher or
trainer. A good coach has a very clear structure because people have a lot
going on in their lives and need the discipline to focus on what’s critical. The
credibility comes from having been there and done it, on a personal level. If
someone wants to coach in the area of success, they’d better have a track
record of success themselves. Presence is required to be able to carry the
room. When a coach works with someone, he or she had better be a very
powerful and confident person to enable the client to believe that the pro-
cess is really going to help. And finally, a coach must have the maturity to
be a caring and serious person. Ken Blanchard once said that he wanted to be
known as a loving teacher. Our goal is for people to see us as a warm,
friendly, supportive, and fully committed team, dedicated to making them
become more effective. When people feel that, they learn better, laugh and
talk more, and have the energy to work on the exercises we give them.
There are some people for whom coaching is a form of psychotherapy.
There are others who focus on people’s passion and the giant actions they must
take to realize their dreams. In my coaching, we allow the structure and the
action orientation to create actual results. If people follow the structure and
commit to the work, the results will appear with the force of gravity, pulling
you along whether you believe in the existence of that force or not. I promise
that your whole life will change.

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