WE are noticing five primary trends that are driving the interest and uptake of executive coaching in Saudi Arabia today. Firstly, there is the sheer scale of complexity and challenges that leaders are having to deal with on a day to day basis. This is unprecedented and having a dedicated executive coach to help unpick, and make sense of the intricacies of incredibly dynamic and turbulent environments, both external to and within organizations, is liberating for many leaders. Related to the above is the rate of change and how this is driving leaders to become increasingly responsive and adaptive within their roles. Leaders who have the essential skill sets, mindset, or behaviors today, are quickly finding that these are no longer sufficient to effectively impact their businesses or organizations tomorrow. So, within this context, the executive coach is an important personal ‘learning partner', helping leaders to adapt and to effectively integrate new and essential capabilities. The third trend that we are noticing is the need for leaders to effectively execute strategy and leverage growth opportunities at pace. The market conditions over the past few years have been fraught, however many organizations, have ambitious visions and the determination to achieve these within tight time frames. This often takes place within a highly diverse and changing demographic workforce. Thus, leaders often encounter challenges associated with intercultural intelligence effective collaboration and execution, and how to lead millennials, an area of extensive Ashridge regional research, which we integrate into our coaching practice. The fourth and fifth trends, notably ‘localization' and the increasing performance expectation of managers and leaders within public sector organizations. Saudization, affords local nationals a fantastic opportunity to gain leadership and management perspectives and experiences, much earlier in their careers than their global counterparts. Our rule of thumb or estimation is about 10 years, as there are opportunities and needs to accelerate up their organization hierarchies. To effectively fulfil these key roles, it is necessary that local nationals successfully navigate their upward transitions and their internal working relationships skillfully, by effectively acquiring the necessary capabilities, credibility, and confidence to succeed, and therefore is a key area where working within a one-on-one confidential executive coaching relationship, can be a significant enabler. So along with opportunities, come increasing responsibilities, and we are seeing higher performance expectations and accountability of public-sector managers and leaders. Saudi Arabia's 2030 vision, asks a great deal from their public-sector managers and leaders, to develop new skills and make a significant contribution to enhancing the quality of life in Saudi Arabia. These require targeted and specialist support, which executive coaching can make a valuable contribution. As already mentioned, the combination of the pace of change, level of complexity both from within and outside of organizations, the growth opportunities and the pressure to execute quickly are already fairly unique, and in addition the cherished local culture is an important factor for executive coaching. Leadership in particular, is a phenomenon that arises from and within a culture, and with the change of Presidency in the United States, we can see the stark difference between leadership orientations being laid bare. On a broader scale, American leadership is different to European, which is not homogeneous, as there are significant differences the Nordic and Mediterranean leader's orientations. Likewise, leadership across our region is not homogenous and therefore contextually unique. It is essential therefore that executive coaches here understand the cultural context, heritage and norms in order to skillfully and sensitively establish effective coaching relationships in order to add meaningful value. Another characteristic of the regional coaching market, is that most coaching services are being provided by individual operators, however, there is an increasing expectation from organization leaders to provide a consistent approach and quality of coaching services, as well as being able to demonstrate collective coaching outcomes, possible through a single source coaching provider, and underpinned by the largest global coaching outcomes research, recently undertaken by Ashridge. In addition to the one-on-one executive coaching discussed in this article, there are other coaching practices. From our extensive regional research into Gen Y or millennials, it is evident that Gen Y's responded particularly well to leaders who have a coaching orientation as part of their leadership repertoire, where they want to learn from those who have more experience and expertise, but don't want to be instructed or directed - that just doesn't cut it for them. So, a number of leading organizations are developing a coaching culture within their organizations, by equipping their leaders with the core coaching skills, so that they can coach their people on the job, real time within the flow of everyday work. * The writer is Managing Director of Ashridge Middle East
