Mental Health Professionals are needed as trained Executive Coaches My firm, Anderson & Anderson, APC has provided Emotional Intelligence Coaching for âdisruptive physiciansâ and physician leadership since 2008. We are the largest provider of coaching for this niche in the U.S. In my coaching experience, men who may be experiencing symptoms of anxiety, depression or disruptive behavior/impulse control are far more willing to accept coaching as opposed to psychiatric evaluation or psychotherapy. There are no stigmas associated with executive or emotional intelligence coaching.
There is clearly a need for research to understand the prevalence of psychopathology in the clients of executive coaching clients and its impact on the process of coaching them. There is no doubt that coaches will be faced with clients suffering from significant mental-health problems, mood, anxiety and personality disorders.
There are no state standards for executive coaches in the U.S. Coaches are not mental-health clinicians who are regulated; however, professional practice does require informed knowledge of mental-health issues and needed intervention. Having sufficient knowledge to be able to identify clients for whom therapy is the appropriate option, and the skill to refer them to an appropriate qualified mental health professional should be required core coaching competencies.
For those clients who do not need therapy, but whose pattern of behavior and personality make them challenging to coach, a psychologically sophisticated understanding of personality, and the common ways it is expressed in organizational and work settings, can be enormously useful.
A basic goal of developmental coaching for challenging executives is to help them shift their behaviors from âdisruptiveâ toward emotional intelligence. By understanding our clientsâ needs, motivational preferences and values we can help them develop more useful and adaptive patterns of external behavior and, hopefully, more integrated, satisfying and mature inner experience. Anderson & Anderson, APC and Incubator Media is collaborating in the introduction of our three month online course on Emotional Intelligence Coach Certification. This training will include Pre and Post EQ-i-2.0 Assessments as well as a structured curriculum that includes coach supervision.
