Executive Coaching and Mentoring Skills

Executive Coaching Skills is a five-day foundational course delivered by Mars Training Centre internationally — in London, Dubai, Paris, Geneva and Muscat — designed for senior leaders, HR professionals and aspiring internal coaches who want to develop the practitioner-level skills behind a credible coaching conversation.

Coaching at executive level is not advice in a softer voice. It is a distinct discipline with its own contract, ethics and craft. The coach holds a confidential space in which a senior leader can think more clearly than they could alone, surface what they have been avoiding, and choose what to do next without being told what to do. The leaders and HR professionals who develop coaching skills well find that they are not only better coaches; they are better managers, better partners and better consultants in every conversation that involves another senior person trying to think out loud.

Across five focused days you will work through the foundational coaching frameworks — contracting and ethics aligned with ICF and EMCC standards, listening at depth, the GROW and CLEAR models, working with limiting beliefs, the use of self in coaching, and the supervision discipline that distinguishes professional coaching from advice-giving in another costume. The cases are drawn from the United Kingdom, Europe, the Gulf and Asia, and the work is delivered by senior practitioners with accredited coaching experience at executive level.

What You Will Learn

• Define executive coaching precisely and distinguish it from mentoring, consulting and therapy.
• Contract a coaching relationship in line with ICF and EMCC ethical standards.
• Listen at the three levels the coaching profession trains — to content, to subtext and to the field.
• Use open, powerful questions to surface assumptions and possibilities.
• Apply the GROW, CLEAR and OSKAR models in real conversations.
• Work with limiting beliefs, internal conflict and the role of values in executive decisions.
• Manage your own presence and use of self in the coaching relationship.
• Hold confidentiality and the boundaries between coaching and the wider employment relationship.
• Begin a structured supervision practice to develop your own coaching craft.

How You Will Benefit

You will leave with the foundational skills of an executive coach, together with a Mars Certificate of Completion.

Your organisation will gain a senior leader or HR professional whose conversations produce more thinking and better decisions in others, and an internal coaching capability that scales the impact of senior leadership across the business.

Who This Programme Is For

This programme is designed for senior professionals who want to develop coaching skills, including senior leaders who coach their direct reports as part of how they lead; HR business partners, heads of talent and learning and development directors; internal coaches working toward ICF or EMCC credentials; senior consultants who want to bring coaching into client work; senior public-sector and government leaders building coaching capability; and family-business principals coaching the next generation. The seniority floor is senior manager and above.

How the Week Unfolds

Day one defines what executive coaching is and is not, and establishes contracting and ethics in line with ICF and EMCC standards. Day two develops listening, presence and the coaching relationship, including the three levels of listening the profession trains. Day three works on questioning and the conversation itself, applying the GROW, CLEAR and OSKAR models in live practice. Day four goes deeper, into limiting beliefs, internal conflict, values in executive decisions, and the use of self in the coaching relationship. Day five consolidates the week with confidentiality and boundaries, the beginnings of a structured supervision practice, faculty coaching and a personal action plan.