In the face of ever-shrinking budgets and less resources to devote to employee development, many companies face a similar problem: providing current and potential leadership with critical professional development opportunities.

Executive coaching programs often span more than a year, in which a coach helps the participant develop skills and augment behaviors necessary for future success. These engagements are known as skills coaching and are designed to enhance the skillset of the participants.

Yet, skills coaching fails to heighten one’s strategic self-awareness – the understanding of one’s strengths, weaknesses, and behavioral tendencies and how these characteristics compare to those of others.

Awareness coaching, on the other hand, uses assessment results and a series of short coaching sessions that put the ownership of development on the participant. In such engagements, the employees receive a series of short coaching sessions supported by personality data, where they receive suggestions for behavior changes geared toward increasing workplace performance.

Finding cost-effective and impactful methods for leadership development is crucial to success. Using the power of assessments to make leaders aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, rather than teaching them new skills, or ways to improve their existing behaviors, employers can ensure they have a bench full of high-potential employees ready to step in to key leadership positions.

To learn more about awareness coaching and to see a case study of how one company experienced positive results through this method, review our white paper, Awareness Coaching.