Professional Executive Coaching Across Australia

Listening is probably the first coaching skill that any prospective coach or manager learns, and yet it is often the one that is least used, even by competent coaches, as it becomes buried under an avalanche of more sophisticated tools and techniques. Greif, S. (2013), Conducting organizational-based evaluations of coaching and mentoring programs”, in Passmore, J., Peterson, D.B. and Freire, T. (Eds), The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Coaching and Mentoring, Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, pp. 443-470.
The objective of this master’s degree is to train professionals and executives so that they can apply the coaching methodology to their daily activities at the personal, team and organisation levels, and to provide them with resources that will strengthen their leadership and emotional intelligence.



At the very least, the coach needs to be aware of what the executive is talking about and able to discuss it on an intelligent level; in some cases it is essential to have enough understanding of the process to be able to review the results with coachees as well.
In a co-created coaching space by the client and the coach, the coach helps the client understand how the influences above and below the surface interact and provides the support during the learning, transformation and growth of the individual or team.

With individual needs varying considerably, executive coaching provides opportunities to develop fresh perspectives on personal challenges, enhance decision-making skills, create greater interpersonal effectiveness, improve leadership performance, overcome work-related anxiety, and increase confidence.
Not surprisingly some of these have been discussed previously in the coaching-related literature (Williams & Palmer, 2009 ). However, a relatively unknown methodology that can help leaders develop and embed their coaching skills involves the use of tips, updates and prompts to action.
Aligning with Briner’s (2012) criticism of coaching research, the quality of existing coaching evidence is questionable, for instance the rigorousness of the research methodology and outcome evaluations; the appropriateness of sampling strategies ( Athanasopoulou and Dopson, 2018 ; Grover and Furnham, 2016 ). Regarding coaching as an intervention for developing people (either behaviourally or psychologically), fundamental questions concerning the effectiveness of coaching and the factors essential for an effective coaching outcome need to be answered through the scientific research process.

Andrew is concurrently Acting Vice President for the Optus Human Resource Group, Vice President for the SingTel Group’s Corporate Sustainability and a Leadership and Talent Coach to over 130 of the Optus Future and Emerging Leaders over the past few years.
Cathleen’s coaching topics have spanned across executive presence, career development & transition, people engagement, team effectiveness, emotional intelligence, interpersonal relationship, leadership effectiveness to business strategy, process excellence and sales effectiveness.

In our experience HR’s ability to manage the logistics of often-complex program roll-outs, whilst keeping key stakeholders such as senior managers engaged and enthused, is a key factor determining the successful implementation of a coaching program (Long, Ismail, & Amin, 2012 ). We want to emphasise that this is not an easy task, and some organisations may not have the required HR capacity.
Executive coaching has been applied extensively in management learning strategy to support organisational outcomes according to the annual survey of the CIPD ( 2015, 2016 ): three quarters of the organisations surveyed offered coaching to their employees as well as 69 per cent of them expected to increase their capacity for coaching.