Knowing when to hire an executive coach is less about hitting a crisis point and more about recognizing where you are in your career trajectory. If you have been wondering whether coaching is only for people who are struggling, this episode is going to reframe that question entirely.

Here is what most leaders get backwards: they wait until something feels broken before they consider coaching. The leaders who benefit most from executive coaching are already performing well. Coaching is not remediation. It is acceleration. And the earlier you bring a coach into your career development, the faster you move.

In this episode, I walk you through three clear signs that you may be ready to work with an executive coach. First is the plateau, when growth has stalled even though you are doing everything right. Second is the transition, when a new role or expanded scope requires a different version of you than the one who got you here. Third is the perception gap, when there is something outside your field of awareness that is quietly limiting your impact and you cannot see it on your own.

I also break down the difference between executive coaching, career coaching, and life coaching so you know which type fits your situation. And I share a few specific things to look for when vetting a coach, including the one question you should ask in every chemistry call.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it and replay it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

Do I need to coach? It sounds like a simple question, but honestly, most people who ask it are asking it at exactly the wrong moment. They ask it when they're already stuck, they're already frustrated, or they're already feeling like they've missed out on something important. And by that point, the question feels a little bit more desperate than strategic. Now, I hear this question from leaders that I work with a lot. Someone gets promoted or takes on a bigger role, or sometimes they hit a wall that they just can't seem to break through on their own. And then they start wondering, should I be working with a coach? Is that something that successful people do? Or do you need one only if something has gone wrong? And here's the honest answer. The leaders who benefit the most from coaching are not the ones in crisis. They are the ones who are already performing well, and they want to get sharper, faster, cleaner. Coaching is not remediation, or at least it shouldn't be in this case. It's acceleration. So again, I get this question, do I need a coach? Well, whether it's an emerging leader asking a new manager asking or a high performer, who's wondering if coaching is right for them? The answer is, if you're asking this question, it might be too late. Well, it's never really too late. But the best time to get a coach is before you think you need one. Now, let's tie coaching instead of to, like, do I need one right now, to be thinking about it instead of, where am I going in my career? What am I trying to make happen? Now, let's just borrow athletic coaching for a moment to think about this. If I really wanted to go someplace amazing with my athleticism, now, if you know me, I'm not that athletic. But if I was, let's say, Olympic quality athletic, if I really wanted to make something amazing happen with my athleticism, I wouldn't be waiting until I was 35 to ask if I should get a coach. I shouldn't even be waiting until I was like 18 to get a coach. I would be actively working with a coach the moment that I knew my sights were set on something big for me. So now as you think about where your career is right now, some of you might be thinking like, no, I don't need a coach. I like where my career is right now. I don't have any aspirations to make amazing things happen in my career, in which case, it's fine. You maybe don't need a coach. Now, there might be a different type of coach. Maybe you struggle with work-life balance and a life coach would be better for you, or you are trying to create amazing relationships in your life, in which case, in your personal life, in which case, again, maybe a life coach would be right for you. And we'll distinguish between life coaching, career coaching, and executive coaching here in just a couple of minutes because even if an executive coach isn't right for you, there might be some other kind of coaching that you would benefit from. But when people are asking that question, I think what they're really asking is, am I struggling right now? And can coaching help me? And how much will it cost? Is there something wrong with me? And will this fix it? Well, I want to reframe this. And I want you to think about coaching as not something to fix a problem. I want you to instead think about accelerating building skills, gaining clarity, and really maximizing your growth. So again, to go back and borrow from athletic coaches, athletes don't hire coaches because they're broken. Athletes hire coaches because they want to win. Now, when you think about working with a coach, let's say when you were in high school, if you were an athlete in high school, and I know many of us were not everybody was, but if you weren't an athletic, if you weren't in athletics, maybe you were in math league or on the speech team like I was. I was a speech team. I had my speech coach. I was also on the softball team and I had my softball coach. And so when you think about what it takes for somebody to work with a coach, again, in those types of circumstances, it's not because something's wrong. It's just because that's how you learn the game. That's how you play better. That's how you accelerate and get better and win. So I work with a handful of coaching clients. I'll talk about that in a second. But before I talk about that, let me distinguish clearly between what I'm talking about when I talk about an executive coach versus a career coach versus a life coach. So an executive coach is somebody who is helping people who are, again, in the probably on the top half of the org chart, if you want to just kind of find a clean place to make that break. And depending on the company that you're with, there's a really good chance that if you're on that top half of the org chart, let's say director level and above, your organization has some budget set aside for coaching. And even in larger organizations, there are within the human resource department or within the organizational design and development department, there may be executive coaching capacity that is either on staff people or people who are brought in from outside the organization, someone like myself, who will work with those senior leaders in an executive coaching capacity. And again, it's usually not because something's broken. It's because these leaders want to be even better leaders and want to take their organization places that they probably couldn't get there on their own, because an executive coach is going to push them to think differently. And again, we'll get into a little bit more about what an executive coach does, because that's the primary focus of this episode. But I do want to distinguish between career coaching and life coaching. So career coaching, that much like it sounds, is somebody who's going to help you move your career, not necessarily within your same organization. So the premise of an executive coach, especially if the organization is paying for it, is that the executive coach is going to make this leader a better leader and help that executive coach drive the initiatives that they're working on in the organization, have better relationships with the people who report to them. And perhaps with the different business partners, different business units, or maybe even customer segments that they serve. So that's an executive coach, but a career coach is usually retained by an individual where the individual is paying for the career coach. And the objective there is for the career coach to help that individual get a better job. Maybe it's a higher paying job, maybe it's an industry specific job, that sort of thing. But the career coach is really focused on you moving your career forward. And again, it may or may not land that you stay in the current organization that you're in, which is again, why an individual would hire and retain that career coach on their own dime. So career coaches are typically paid for by the individual getting coaching. Now, occasionally that is not the case if there's a massive layoff or doesn't even have to be a massive layoff. But if there's a layoff, oftentimes people at a certain level in the organization are provided career coaching, and that might be paid for by the organization who it as part of their layoff package. So sometimes a career coach is paid for by the organization, but that would be under more extenuating circumstances. And then there's life coaching. So life coaching is somebody who is again, typically retained and paid for by the person who's getting coaching, not their organization. And the life coaches job is to help maximize and have like the most amazing life ever. And that could involve their personal relationships, it could involve their finances, it could involve where they live, their friendships, their hobbies, and things outside of work. It might involve their work as well, but it's just very much a comprehensive look at the whole life of the person. And again, typically that life coach is retained and paid for by the person who's getting coaching. So I just wanted to make sure those things were clear in terms of distinction. So what I'm talking about here is executive coaching. When you're getting coaching, ideally inside your organization, where your organization is paying for it, but hey, if you're an emerging leader and you're not yet on that top half of the organizational chart, but you have every intention of getting there, then you might be paying for that executive coach out of pocket, you know, again on your own dime because you see for yourself that there is a trajectory that you want to take your career on and you really want to be as successful as possible, as fast as possible. Now with all of that said, let me talk about two different reasons that people will use an executive coach. The first is to address a performance gap. Now a performance gap is when you know what you need to do, but for some reason you just can't seem to execute on it effectively and consistently. So a coach is going to help help you close this gap through accountability, through practice exercises, through giving you feedback, and so on. And so if you were working on a performance gap, you would come to that coaching relationship saying, hey, I know I could do better. Let's just say you know that you could do better managing people. Maybe you're a technical professional who's risen through the ranks and you're just not that good at the people side of the business. Well, you might get an executive coach then to help you specifically address that performance gap of management and leadership. And you might have some very specific and well-defined things that you want to work on in that area. Now when there is a performance gap, sometimes executive coaching is assigned to you as a senior leader, because again, maybe it's the people side of the business. Maybe you're great at the technical side of the business and managing budgets and operations, but you just can't.

and quite get the people side of it. Well, then you might have an executive coach assigned to you to help you with the people side of it. And again, that executive coach is going to give you assignments and challenge your ways of thinking and really help give you some feedback to elevate your game as it relates to the people side of your job or whatever the gap is. But that is one reason for having an executive coach, which is to address a performance gap. Now, I would say that is less than half of the cases. More often, maybe even less than a quarter of the cases, more often somebody who is retaining an executive coach or somebody whose organization is paying for an executive coach is to help really accelerate your career, accelerate the work that you're doing. And oftentimes that's going to come through identifying awareness gaps. So these are patterns in your behavior or patterns in your leadership style that sit outside of your field of awareness. So a coach is going to hold up a mirror and show you things about situations or your relationships or whatever it is that, again, are outside your field of awareness. And the real value here of coaching is that a coach is going to give you honest feedback that you cannot get from your boss. Now, your boss has a stake in the outcome. So your boss is going to either be giving you high level praise that might be somewhat meaningless or down in the weeds, practically micromanaging you, or just managing your performance, which is exactly what your boss should be doing. But when you have a coach, a coach has no stake in the outcome. A coach will often say something like, and I mean, this is a little woo-woo, but I will say this to executive coaching clients of mine, I love you as a human, not as a amorous love. And I don't care what you do. I don't care what you do. We're going to talk through the pros and cons of doing this versus this. We're going to talk through the pros and cons or give you the coaching on whatever it is you're going to do, but you choose. I don't have a stake in it. If you choose wisely and you do something that accelerates your career, fantastic. I'm there to cheer you on. If you choose something that really kind of bombs, fantastic. I'm there to help you through it and cheer you on. But I don't have a stake in it. Your boss has a stake in it. You know who else has a stake in it? Your peers. When you get peer coaching, and I'm a big fan of peer coaching, but you have to take peer coaching for what it is. These are your peers who are oftentimes competing for the same promotion. These are your peers who are often struggling with the same budget constraints or the same like do more with less constraints or whatever as you are. And so in any kind of peer coaching situation, you really do need to take into context that they may not have. Your peers may not have your best interest entirely at heart. There's something in it for them too. Now, again, that doesn't mean they're being malicious. And it just means that there's this subtext of they're competing for the same resources that you are. So there's that. Again, nothing wrong with peer coaching. I think peer coaching can be fantastic, because one of the things about peer coaching is that the people inside your organization are dealing with some of the same challenges, and they get it in a way that sometimes an external coach doesn't get it as much. So there is certainly a role for peer coaching, but remember, your peers are competing with you, whether it's for promotions, resources, talent within the organization to be on their teams, all of that. And then, of course, your friends and family. Now, they love you, and they want to protect you. And they don't always want what's best for your career. Quite frankly, they don't, because maybe what's best for your career is going to involve more travel. If you get that promotion, and then you're on an airplane three times a month, well, that might not be what's best for your family. It might be what's best for your family financially, but in terms of their personal relationships with you, maybe that's going to be at odds. And so your family members, they're not always going to give you the best coaching. Now, sometimes they just don't want to see you suffer, because when we come to a coaching situation, again, it's maybe not that there's a problem, but it's like, how can I do this better? Friends and family might just tell you, you're doing amazing, and there's nothing to change. And they don't necessarily always see the professional side of you, or see that professional side of you in the same light that a coach might see. OK, now, let's get back to answering the question, do I need a coach? So I want to give you three signs, three signals, that you might be ready for a coach. The first is a plateau. If you're performing well, but your growth has stalled, and it doesn't necessarily mean your promotional growth has stalled, but you're just not feeling as excited, or as jazzed, or as revved up about your work, that could be the kind of stall we're talking about. You might be doing everything right, but it's just not moving the needle the way it used to. And there's very subtle signs that you have plateaued. And maybe it's just you're not getting the big praise that you used to get when projects would finish, or when you would hire new staff, or whatever it is. It's just not as juicy as it used to be. It's not as exciting as it used to be. And much like a plateau is flat, your career is starting to feel. And again, it's not necessarily your promotional level, but just like getting up, going to work, doing all the things that used to excite you. If they've kind of flat lined, that would be you've reached a certain height, and then you have plateaued. So that's what a plateau is. It's just a flat stretch. So if you are in that flat stretch, that would be a really good reason to get a coach. And again, nothing's wrong, per se. There's nothing broken, but you're just realizing it's not as exciting. It's not as juicy as it used to be. And so that could signal that you're in a plateau. Great time to get a coach. Second great time to get a coach is when you have just recently taken on a new role, a new team, or maybe a new scope in your work. And so I do executive coaching. I don't do a lot of executive coaching. So if you're looking for an executive coach, I can always make a referral. But I have just a couple of organizations that I do a fair bit of work with across the board, in terms of training and keynote speaking at their conferences and so on. And a couple of organizations have retained me as a coach. And I am often that transition coach. So somebody just got promoted to executive vice president. So they're in that new EVP role. They have a new scope. And all of a sudden, it's not only is it overwhelming, but it's that, how do I let go of what I used to do and let the people who are now reporting to me do that? And when you get to those higher levels of responsibility, it can be really blurry to figure out which pieces do I hang on to, because I've created them and generated them, and which pieces go to the people who now report to me. And so those are some of the kinds of things that we sort through, if somebody's in a new role or has that new scope to their work. Because the skills that got you here will not automatically carry you forward and ensure that you are successful in this new role. And coaching is going to accelerate that transition. Now, when you're in that transitional space, too, sometimes there are some wonky things that come up. Like, again, if you got promoted internally, let's say from VP to SVP, there's a really good chance that some other high level players who were at your same VP level were in the running for that position. And so you may not know that, because obviously, that's not going to be disclosed to you unless your peer who didn't get the promotion, you knew from them personally that they were in the running for the promotion. But if they didn't tell you personally, then that information is confidential, and your HR team has that, and the people who made the hiring decision to promote you have that, but you don't necessarily have that. So sometimes there's these wonky peer relationships, or I should say reporting relationships, of your former peers. And I think the higher level you get in the organization, the stranger and harder that can be to navigate. So when you do find yourself in that new role, especially promoted from within, you can almost expect that you were in the running against somebody else. And again, these are top performers that we're talking about. So it's not like you and some slackers, it's you and other top performers. And so preserving those relationships and making that new reporting structure work can sometimes be a little bit tricky. And that's, again, a great place for an executive coach to step in and help you out with it. All right, and then the third type of coaching I wanna talk about is when there is a perception gap. So there is something that is outside of your field of awareness that maybe you don't even know isn't working that great. You keep getting the same feedback, you can't figure out why, or you sense some things off, but you just can't name it, or maybe it's none of those, but you know that you want that next level of achievement for yourself. You know that for you personally, like what keeps you up at night, what drives you is a certain level of success in your career and in the organization, and you know you're going after that. And again, there are going to be things about how you perceive yourself that differ from how other people perceive you. And so coach is a great way to surface what you can't see from the inside, from where you currently stand. And when I work with coaching,

clients, I always bring up, again, at this point, the metaphor of an athletic coach. And let's say it's baseball, so that you used to play or softball. So it's, you know, it's springtime now, it's baseball season. And so as I'm recording this anyway, I mean, you might be listening to it whenever, but right now, as I'm recording it, it's springtime, it's baseball season. And my 15-year-old son plays baseball, and I played softball when I was in high school and even a little bit as an adult. But when you have a coach, the coach is going to show you or explain to you that you're dropping your arm on the swing when you're, you know, hitting the ball, and that that's making you hit pop flies, when instead you want to be hitting line drives and, you know, grounders to the outfield. So the coach can see what you're doing in a way that we can't see what we're doing inside of, in the athletic case, our physical body. And so in the executive space, it's not necessarily inside of our physical body, although if you're giving presentations to large groups of people or that sort of thing, then it might be. But most of the time, it's going to be things about your performance that you can't see. Maybe it's turns of phrase that you use, maybe it is just the way you comport yourself, your executive presence. So any number of things like that, you can't necessarily see and identify things that might be working to your disservice in the same way that a coach can from the outside. Now, so those are the reason, the three top reasons for getting a coach. The first again is a plateau. You have reached sort of that you've, for all intents and purposes, you've flatlined to a certain degree at, at a very high level. Okay. So you didn't flatline early in your career, but you're at a very high level and things just don't seem as exciting. So that's the plateau. The second one is the transition. So something big has just happened in your career. You're at a whole new level of the game. And then the third one is a perception gap. So again, you just want a higher level of success and you can't see what you can't see. And this is what a coach can see. Now we have just a few minutes left and in these last couple of minutes, I want to just give you a few tips on how to vet a coach so that you don't waste time or money if you decide you want to work with a coach. So first chemistry call, you need to have a call to see if there is a there there in terms of the chemistry. A coach needs to be somebody that you trust, somebody that you have easy rapport with, somebody that you can be vulnerable with. So you want to make sure you have that call and it can last from anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. In that coaching, uh, vetting call, you want to ask what their coaching philosophy is and what their approach to coaching is. So I come forward with this right away when I'm coaching somebody and I say, Hey, my, my perspective on coaching is that you have all the answers. My job is to be in dialogue with you, to ask good questions, to be that mirror, to show you a reflection of yourself where you might see something in your own behavior that you hadn't seen before. And I always say, my job as your coach is not to give you advice. And every once in a while, I will be tempted to give you advice. And if I actually follow through and give you advice, I say like this, this is what I do. I say, I'm going to bracket this, this is a piece of advice, take it or leave it. This is me, uh, stepping to the edge of my role as your coach to give you a piece of advice. Try this if you want, see if it works. If you don't want, let it go. Okay. But ask for their coaching philosophy, see what their approach is like, see if that fits for what you're looking for. Um, another thing to look for is someone with real world leadership experience, not just a certification. Now a certification is great because I really, I mean, I've been through coaching training myself and taking, taking extra courses and so on in coaching. And so having a certification is fantastic. But it should not be the only thing they have. The person should also have some sort of grounding, you know, boots on the ground type of experience in organizational life, ideally in increasingly, uh, increasingly high levels of responsibility. Um, and then the final thing to suss out when you're evaluating whether or not somebody would be a good coach for you is make sure that they're not just going to tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. So this is where they're going to be, um, you know, open and comfortable, giving you the tough love to let you know that, um, that they are not just going to pat you on the back and give you all kinds of sunshine and roses, but that they are willing to have the uncomfortable conversations with you. They are willing to show you those things that are outside of your field of awareness. They are willing to push you to be a better version of yourself as a leader in your organization and in the role that you're playing. All right. So this week, I want you to honestly ask yourself, are you out of plateau? Are you in some sort of a transition? Are you sensing any patterns in your leadership that might sit outside of your field of awareness? Are you really pushing yourself to accelerate your career and to move into that top half of the org chart in your organization, or for those of you who are already there, are you willing to, and are you wanting to really push yourself to be the very, very best leader that you possibly can be? If any of those are true, it is absolutely worth having a conversation with a coach. Again, not because something is broken, but because you take your performance seriously and you want to perform at a higher level. Coaching is not a confession that you need help. Coaching is a decision that you want to grow and be more successful. All right. I will link up a couple of other resources on coaching to the show notes in this episode, the show notes for this episode can be found at https://JanelAnderson.com/266 for episode 266. Be well, my friends, and have a great week.