Over the years, we’ve had the privilege of helping hundreds of healthcare leaders transform their organizations, build careers and relationships they’re proud of. And yet, we find some myths persist in our industry when it comes to executive coaching.
In this post, we cover three common myths that can hold leaders back from advancing their influence and careers.
Myth 1: “Executive coaching is a remedial measure.”
While executive coaching is far more common and understood in other industries, people in healthcare tend to think coaching is meant to fix someone. Honestly, we work with the opposite.
Our coaching clients are high-performing leaders who want to put in the time and investment to evolve their career, influence and relationships to the next level. It doesn’t make much sense, as an organization, to invest that much time and dollars into individuals who don’t have the same openness or willingness.
Myth 2: “An executive coach will tell me how to do my job.”
Rather than telling you how to do your job, an executive coach focuses on understanding your leadership posture. What are your communication preferences? What about your natural tendencies? What’s your work environment like? What are the key relationships you have?
Understanding these and other factors enables your coach to ask the right questions and guide you on strategies and principles you can apply successfully to different situations.
Myth 3: “An executive coach will help me make drastic, lasting changes, quickly.”
Occasionally leaders come to us and ask for a short-term engagement, as in three, four or six weeks. But new habits take far longer than that. The popular notion that it takes three weeks to form a habit is false; throw it out. In reality, research tells us it takes 254 days for behavioral change to happen.
With that in mind, having a coach alongside you for 6–18 months while you experience what it’s like to shift the way you lead is where you see huge, transformational change.
Prior to my MEDI Leadership coaching experience, I had a coach from another organization. MEDI was completely different. They went deeper, helping me to transform my leadership posture. Since working with MEDI Leadership, my professional and personal life have come into balance, and I’m certain I would not have accomplished all that I did without the guidance and relationship with my MEDI coach. ~ JAYME PU’U, V.P. Internal Affairs, HMSA
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