For executives, a coaching session often offers the only opportunity for them to take time to focus on themselves, reflect, get personal insights, make shifts in their thinking and implement that new thinking and behaviour. Lynda Aurora, director of executive coaching in Asia-Pacific for Impact Coaching & Consulting, said that while few organisations in Hong Kong have a coaching culture, using executive coaches is an effective way to support senior management changes and help individuals struggling to be more effective in their communications with fellow managers and other employees. Myles Downey, a coach and director of studies at The School of Coaching in Britain, defined executive coaching as: 'The art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another.' Most often in the form of a one-on-one focused conversation, such coaching is intended to enable an executive to reflect on key issues that affect his or her effectiveness, explore the options, decide what action to take and then implement it. A change of chief executive at 3S Swiss Solar Systems saw general manager Michael Raber implement a coaching exercise. 'I used executive coaching over four to five months to get my people to work together because our CEO was leaving the company and we needed to stabilise the management team,' he said. 'We learned more about how to lead people. I learned about my strengths and weaknesses. There was discussion about different types of people, how to deal with them and how to bring together these styles and personalities.' Mr Raber brought in an external coaching company, and together with other senior managers they analysed the situation, assessed the people involved and devised a programme comprising coaching sessions roughly every two weeks. Each session was followed by practical implementation of the recommendations, then an analysis of what had been done and how it could have been done better. The exercises helped improve the whole organisation. 'It was something that we achieved together and it was what kept the management team [together] and proved a really valuable experience,' Mr Raber said. 'Executive coaching shows you what you are doing and how you have an effect on people that you can't see for yourself.' Executive coaching is a suitable intervention for executives who need to develop their soft skills in terms of their leadership and communication style. It can dovetail with executive education: the latter focuses on hard skills, for example, marketing, strategy and accounting, while coaching focuses on soft skills that most people normally learn by trial and error. Ivo Hahn, managing director Greater China of executive search firm Stanton Chase International, said: 'The biggest challenge for executives is not necessarily their knowledge, per se - it is their personality and ability to interact with others and influence them to act.' Kathleen Slaughter, dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business, Asia, said executive coaching provides a welcome addition to the hard skills learned in a more classical type of executive education. 'Executive development programmes are usually delivered away from the organisation. You take people out of their work environment and put them in a learning environment. 'Executive coaching is generally done in the organisation in real-time. It is an additional tool and specific to the individual - it is one-on-one,' she said. She said that executive coaching was part of a good executive development programme. '[Human resources professionals] have said: 'Here are our plans for executive development; part of it is mentoring, part of it is coaching, part of it is education programmes, and part of it is action learning'.'