What Is Leadership Coaching?
In today’s competitive business world, there’s no doubt about the importance of developing leadership skills in their workforce if companies want to stay ahead of the game and meet their demanding goals and targets.
As the market changes, so do the needs of companies. While leadership has always been a part of the company culture, it’s also changing.
Excellent leaders should be able to lead a company to success, help their teams become more productive, and create a workplace culture that’s unique to the company.
But despite this, there are still many organisations who fail to address these essential needs.
Indeed, a recent survey of more than 4,500 workers and managers by the Chartered Management Institute, conducted by YouGov, revealed some alarming statistics.
It found that:
82% of those who enter management positions haven’t had any proper training – known as “accidental managers”
26% of senior managers and leaders, and 52% of managers claimed they’ve had no formal management or leadership training.
31% of managers, and 28 per cent of workers, have left a job because of a negative relationship with their manager.
Those companies that are bucking the trend, and value the importance of leadership, are investing in an essential business strategy – leadership coaching.
So, what exactly is leadership coaching.
Explained quite simply, leadership coaching is the conscious process of developing an individual’s competencies and talents to make them a more effective team leader.
This is predominantly achieved by asking them open questions!
A fundamental principle of Leadership Coaching is that the Leader already has the resources inside themselves to resolve their challenges; the experienced Coach, knows the right questions to ask.
What is the question you need to be asked right now? Photo Diane Helentjaris Unsplash
Leadership coaches work with clients to help them achieve their professional and personal goals. They can help by identifying and working on their strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, emotions, feelings, and more.
Being coached in leadership skills doesn't mean you’re failing in your current position. Even the most successful people in the world work with coaches - helping them see themselves and their situation from a different angle and show them new skills, all of which can help improve performance, build self-confidence, improve communication, and help create stronger relationships with peers and subordinates.
There are different types of leadership coaching programmes available.
Team Coaching
This focuses on helping improve leadership performance at team level. Though coaches might engage with individuals, the central goal of business coaching is to support teams develop strategies that allow them to meet their departmental and organisational goals.
The emphasis here is on improving collaboration and coordination within the workplace.
Executive Coaching
This is geared toward executive leadership and is a one-on-one coaching experience. Rather than working with a team of leaders, as with Team coaching, an executive coach will help high-ranking organisational individuals improve their management and leadership skills.
Executive coaches are usually hired externally and undertake several sessions with executives. While this is commonly used to support individuals new to leadership positions transition into their new roles, it can also be useful for more senior executives seeking a fresh perspective.
Strategic Coaching
Like executive coaching, strategic coaching is geared toward top-level leaders.
The difference is it’s primarily focused on supporting high-level executives focus on their long-term goals and determine the most effective paths they can use to reach them.
Behavioural Coaching
This is focused on an individual's behaviour and how it plays into their leadership style and effectiveness.
This type of leadership coaching might involve analysing and changing behaviours - supporting leaders better connect and communicate with their teams.
Resilient Leadership Coaching
This is my specialism! Resilient Leader Coaching can encapsulate all the above and to be fair, most Leadership Coaches will touch on all examples outlined, too.
However, the approach I take focusses on what it means to each of my clients to be a Resilient Leader. Everyone is unique and we tease out how we can apply the principles of Resilient Leadership to their specific circumstances.
Look out for the next articles in this series – “How to Engage with Leadership Coaching,” “The Importance of Leadership Coaching,” and “The Benefits of Leadership Coaching.”
If you need further information about these approaches, or any other resilience topic, please contact russell@theresiliencecoach.co.uk.