Executive Coaching and Leadership Development Training Course

Course overview

Coaching is the most misused word in leadership development. It is applied to advice, to mentoring, to feedback, and quite often to a manager telling someone what to do in a friendly voice. Actual coaching is something narrower and harder: helping a person reach their own conclusion, which requires resisting the strong pull to supply the answer you can already see.

This course builds that discipline and the system around it. It covers coaching frameworks and the structured conversation, the contracting and confidentiality that make an executive coaching relationship possible, the assessment and feedback that give it something to work on, and the wider leadership development architecture, since coaching a few individuals well does nothing for an organization that has no pipeline behind them.

Why most internal coaching is not coaching

The obstacle is structural. A manager coaching their own report cannot fully suspend the power relationship, and both parties know it. The manager has a view on what the person should do, an interest in the outcome, and the authority to decide anyway. That does not make the conversation worthless, but it is not coaching, and pretending otherwise produces a conversation that is neither honest direction nor genuine exploration.

The organizations that get value from coaching are clear about which conversation they are having. They separate the developmental conversation from the performance decision. They contract explicitly on confidentiality. And they accept that a coach who reports to the same person as the client is constrained in ways an external coach is not.

Course objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Separate coaching from advice, instruction and line management.
• Contract on scope, reporting and what stays confidential.
• Question a client without steering toward a preferred answer.
• Delimit coaching from clinical territory and hand the case on.
• Commission assessment only where the evidence supports it.
• Surface what nobody inside the organization will say.
• Engage a leader whose results protect poor behavior.
• Close a session on a commitment nobody else imposed.
• Decline to promise a return the data cannot show.

Course outline

Unit 1: Foundations of executive coaching

• Coaching a sponsor pays for and a manager cannot do.
• Outcome evidence a sponsor weighs before funding a coach.
• The power a coach lacks over a client the sponsor employs.
• Engagements that changed a client and ones that only cost.

Unit 2: Coaching frameworks and models

• The point a coach starts advising the sponsor's leader.
• Solution-focused coaching for a client the sponsor sent.
• A framework fitted to the person, not to every client.
• The action a client commits to and a sponsor never sees.

Unit 3: Core coaching skills

• Questions a client can only answer to an outsider.
• Listening for what a client will not tell the sponsor.
• Silence in an hour the client's manager does not control.
• Challenge a client can hear from someone off the payroll.

Unit 4: Assessment and feedback

• 360-degree feedback a sponsor reads and a client disputes.
• Psychometric instruments a sponsor buys and never checks.
• Feedback a senior client hears from no one on staff.
• Turning feedback into a development goal a sponsor can see.

Unit 5: Contracting, ethics and boundaries

• Three-way contracting between coach, client and sponsor.
• Informal remarks a coach makes to a sponsor about a client.
• The boundary at which a coach refers and stops billing.
• Ethical codes no regulator enforces and no sponsor checks.

Unit 6: Coaching for leadership development

• Presence and delegation as goals a sponsor pays to fix.
• Working with a leader the sponsor protects for results.
• Coaching a leader into a role the sponsor announced.
• Team coaching a sponsor wants and a team has not agreed.

Unit 7: Building a leadership development system

• Leadership development where coaching is one paid part.
• Confidentiality a sponsor's own employee cannot promise.
• Evaluating what a sponsor got from a client's coaching.
• An engagement that a sponsor renewed for being pleasant.

How the course is delivered

Sessions combine structured explanation with documented case material: coaching conversation transcripts, feedback reports, contracting documents and development plans that participants read, critique and rework in discussion. Worked examples take a coaching conversation apart to show where the coach started advising. Participants bring their own coaching challenges to the room, and time is set aside for them. The course is educational and does not certify participants as coaches; coaching credentials are awarded by professional bodies through their own assessment. The course is not therapy and does not provide clinical or psychological advice. Those coaching their own reports often pair this course with Coaching and Mentoring for Employee Development.

Who should attend

• Senior leaders who coach other leaders as part of their role.
• HR directors, talent leads and organizational development professionals who commission or deliver coaching.
• Internal coaches and mentors working with senior people.
• Consultants and independent practitioners building an executive coaching practice.

About EuroQuest International Training

EuroQuest International Training was founded in 2015 by a team with more than 25 years of experience in professional development. We run over 1,000 courses and have trained more than 15,000 participants. Our head office is in Bratislava, Slovakia, and we deliver courses through hubs in Dubai, London, Barcelona, Istanbul, Vienna, Paris and Geneva. Courses are built and reviewed by practitioners who have worked in the fields they teach.

Frequently asked questions

Will this qualify me as an executive coach?

No. Coaching credentials are awarded by professional bodies against their own assessment and supervised practice hours. This course is educational and does not certify participants or confer any professional standing.

Does the course include a live lab?

No. There is no live system or technical environment. Participants work from documented coaching material, transcripts and worked examples analyzed and discussed in the room.

Can I coach someone who reports to me?

Partly, and the course is direct about the limits. The power relationship cannot be fully suspended, so the honest approach is to be clear about which conversation you are having and to separate development from the performance decision.

Related courses

• Leadership Development and Succession Planning
• Developing Leadership Skills for Senior Managers
• Executive Leadership and Emotional Intelligence
• Performance Management and Leadership Development

Register for this course

Choose a city and date from the schedule above and register online, or contact the EuroQuest team for group bookings and in-house delivery. Our advisers can help you decide whether this course or a broader leadership development course fits your remit.