There are many ways to grow a leader. The idea of leader development originally came from the sports world.

Benjamin Carter was one of the first life coaches. He started helping develop leaders during his career as a college football coach.

Eventually he wanted to help more people. He achieved that goal through motivational speaking and private coaching sessions, often with executives who wanted to be more effective.

Life coaches provide general guidance, support, advice and sometimes training. More specific kinds of guidance are used for emerging or prospective leaders.

Leaders need to be able to organize. They need to be able to manage their time wisely. They need to be able to remain calm during times of crisis. They need decision-making skills.

The elements included in leader development training vary. The advantage of one-on-one training is that it can be customized to suit the individual or the individual organization.

Your goal might be to become a leader. You might want to become a more effective leader. You might want the current leaders in your organization to become more effective. Every individual is different.

Helping you to identify your goals is the first step for the typical executive coach. But even that step is unnecessary if you have already identified your goals.

There is no off the shelf blueprint for teaching leaders to become more successful. You will actually develop your own blueprint as time goes by. Coaches give you the tools that you need to do that.

Ongoing support is one of the things provided by most coaches. By the time you get to the ongoing support part of the process, you will have defined your goals and created a plan for achieving them. You will know how to measure your success.

The ongoing support provided during executive coaching helps to keep you focused on your goals because it is very easy to lose sight of them. You will also get feedback, an unbiased opinion of how you are doing.

Who benefits? Individuals and organizations of all kinds benefit from focused training.

Research has shown that training alone increases productivity in the work place by over 20%. Training does not usually include the ongoing support or other coaching techniques used by professionals.

Certain leadership development coaching programs have been shown to increase productivity by over 80%. It is a win-win situation and everyone benefits.

Tags: executive coach, executive coaching, leadership development, leadership development coaching, life coach