Points Raised From Jeremy Robinson’s HCI Interview With Jon Westover, PhD

This week’s blog includes the Human Capital Institute’s HCI Podcast Jon Westover, PhD did with me last week. Westover’ HCI podcast is rated as one the twenty most influential and popular podcasts in the HR world.

This conversation builds on many of the ideas I’ve been writing about — particularly the role executive coaching plays in shaping the future of HR leadership. In this episode of the Human Capital Institute Podcast, I join Dr. Jonathan H. Westover to talk through what real executive coaching looks like, why long-term design matters, and how HR partners and senior leaders can use coaching to create lasting cultural impact.

Listen on Apple Podcast Here

Westover is an excellent interviewer who listens well and asks great questions. He’s written an impressive collection of books on HR-related topics. Being interviewed by him, some of the key points I was talking about and continue to advocate for are:

HR Partners and Senior Leaders need to take stronger interest in executive coaching.

Going through excellent executive coach training programs themselves will help their HR work in multiple ways. By owning it in their careers, they could soar as executive coaches. By using it throughout the org HR function, they could help change culture and leadership depth in their organizations.

Several hundred HR Partners and Senior Leaders have already been trained at our www.icoachglobal.com executive coach training program over the past 22 years.

For some of them, iCoach Global has been both an executive coach training program and a leadership program. About half of our HR graduates have either gone on to build successful executive coaching practices or design effective executive coaching programs into their organizations. These EC programs are created for high potentials and talented senior leaders. They are never meant to serve leaders who are fully derailing.

Multiple research studies have revealed that these designed EC Programs have enhanced their companies’ competitiveness by attracting and retaining talent as well as boosting engagement scores of many in their employees.

Any org can call what they do executive coaching.

But #realExecutiveCoaching involves a designed longer-term process. When it started out, coaching was thought of as training with a tail. This allowed the client time and opportunity to practice new behaviors with a coach. Real behavior change, according to behavior change researcher Wendy Wood and her team, takes at least 93 days to happen.

Coaching platforms, which I warn organizations about, are a commoditization of executive coaching. They sell a week or a few weeks of coaching. They do not include a 360 study, stakeholder interviews, assessments or shadowing. They are not real executive coaching , but they brand themselves falsely under the name of executive coaching.

This is not good for the entire field of executive coaching- especially not the executive coaching clients and their organizations.

#iCoachGlobal will continue to speak up about this.

We want to train the best executive coaches. We also want the entire field of executive coaching to keep improving so that organizations and leaders can experience what a game-changer executive coaching can be when designed the right way.

We will continue to advocate for vigilance in differentiating what exceptional executive coaching looks like. If this is attractive to you in terms of executive coach training, we urge you to reach out to us and consider joining us at info@icoachglobal.com. I can also be reached at ceocoachrobinson@gmail.com.