IT director Karriem Shakoor observed a trend amongst high-performing professional athletes: They all had individual performance coaches. It made him wonder: Should he get a coach to up his game?

His own manager supported the idea, and his research revealed that lots of CEOs employ small business coach training. So Shakoor, who has actually worked in IT consulting since 1991, employed a coach to assist him to take his management skills to the next level.

Shakoor began dealing with coach John Baldoni in 2009. They had actually scheduled in-person meetings and talked on the phone to go over extra subjects as they occurred. A coach, says Shakoor, is different from a mentor or an employer.

The preliminary goal was for Shakoor to enhance his executive presence and executive style, and a six-month evaluation, based on feedback from company executives, revealed he had certainly improved in those areas. Nonetheless, Shakoor continues to consult with Baldoni for an hour every month or more as he works toward his supreme goal of one day becoming a CIO.

Shakoor can’t indicate any one work situation where coaching helped him score rather than set out; however, it’s his total ability to assess and successfully navigate different management risks that have improved.

Could a business coach do the exact same for you?

Typically, IT Network services experts have not taken advantage of such services at the exact same pace as senior supervisors in other fields, CIOs and other business leaders. However, that’s changing as tech executives and their business – to begin recognizing that IT can acquire as much from training as others in the C-suite. In fact, coaching might be even more beneficial to IT leaders, especially those who rise through the ranks on the strength of their technical competence instead of their management experience.

Fortunately: As IT demand for coaching services has actually risen, there’s been an increase in the variety of coaches with experience in either IT management or training IT leaders, says Suzanne Fairlie, founder, and president of nationwide executive staffing firm ProSearch in Ambler, Pa., who regularly advises coaching to CIOs.