The field of coaching for leadership has existed for several decades now, but what does leadership coaching do? Does it make your employees better leaders or provide you with the tools to become a better leader yourself? While coaching can do both, there are many more benefits that come from learning from an effective leader, such as how it helps with employee retention, motivation and performance.
What is Leadership Coaching?
Leadership by coaching is a way of helping you to become a better leader, or in some cases, it may just be used to help coaches themselves learn new skills and techniques that they can use to help their teams grow and develop. The coaching is similar in many ways to sports coaching. A sports coach can see improvements and advise their athlete, but improvement will only occur if the athlete is willing to grow and develop. Coaches take the responsibility of helping individuals with leadership training to become a better leader very seriously as every employee deserves to have a great leader.
How is Coaching for Leadership Done?
Since the Covid-19 Pandemic most coaching sessions have moved to a virtual online meeting format. This is very effective way to run these sessions as it is not limited by geography or time zones. The Leadership Coach and senior leaders can ensure they have privacy to focus on the coaching session. The sessions are often monthly but at times, when there are several people issues occurring, individuals may like to have more frequent sessions to obtain support on addressing the situation. Sessions are usually one hour in duration with payment made in advance of the session.
What Does Coaching for Leadership Do for a Person?
One of the biggest benefits of a leadership coach is that they can help relieve your stress and improve morale, performance and engagement of your team. When you are learning your leadership style and skills it can be challenging to know how to approach different situations. There is no set approach to situations but over time you will build your skills and confidence. To accelerate this many people undertake leadership by coaching to improve their leadership effectiveness.
Benefits of Leadership in Coaching
1. Coaching for Leadership Creates a Culture of Development
There are many benefits of a leadership coach, and one of them is that having coaching in place encourages not only the individual to develop themselves but also teaches them how to develop their people. As you develop your coaching leadership potential you will spend more time developing your people. With this development and growth your people will begin to perform at a higher level which will result in better performance outcomes.
2. The Coaching Leadership Style Improves Employee Engagement
Another benefit of leader coaching is that it improves employee engagement. Most individuals want to grow and develop and they also have aspirations for career development. Many do not know what they need to do to obtain a promotion. Good leaders know how to coach and develop their people, not only for greater performance outcomes, but most importantly for the individual team member’s benefit. The approach of coaching leadership is greatly appreciated by team members and increases engagement and motivation as a result of the leadership impact.
3. Building Coaching Skills for Leaders Improves Employee Performance
One of the biggest benefits of leadership mentoring is that it will improve employee performance, and this is because they will be more motivated to learn and get better at their jobs. Good leaders know how to pull their team members together to truly operate as a team. It is this way of working that delivers a greater level of performance than each individual working in isolation. Coaching team members on self-development techniques enables them to continue to improve ongoing.
4. Coaching and Leadership Improves Team Dynamics
Another benefit of leadership coaching is that it improves team dynamics. During leadership mentoring individual leaders will develop skills including being more creative and having an effective communication skills with your team. One of the key skills leaders need is effective communication and developing this within your team. One of the most common breakdowns of team dynamics is poor communication. Through coaching, leaders can improve their communication skills, creative thinking, leadership in different environments and team maturity.
5. Leadership Coaching Improves Trust
One of the best benefits of coaching for leadership is that it will improve trust between leaders and their team members. Leaders cannot be effective unless their team trusts them and is willing to follow. Everyone knows that humans make mistakes. Being open and authentic in who you are and your path to grow as a leader will build trust among your team. Your team will feel better about their work, and see the effort you are putting in to grow yourself so you can develop them. This level of trust is critical to developing a high performing and engaged team.
6. Top Leadership Coaches Help You Boost Morale
Working in a team can often mean individuals feel neglected if their leader does not regularly engage with them. This engagement needs to have purpose and be focused on the individual’s needs around development. Showing a genuine interest in helping members of your team to develop areas they are keen to grow in will boost morale. Learning how to have effective development conversations with your team members is one of the biggest benefits of coaching. Helping your people grow is not only a morale booster but is usually a performance booster as well.
7. Best Leadership Coaches Help You Improves Productivity
There are many different benefits of building your leadership potential through coaching, but one of the most important ones is the improvement in productivity. By having leadership coaches who provide tailored coaching to their employees, particularly so they learn how to develop themselves, will lead to higher productivity. This is because they will have better problem-solving skills, leadership skills appropriate for other work environments, and even higher levels of honesty and integrity.
8. Coaching Based Leadership Improves Morale
Another benefit of leader coaching is that it improves morale. If an employee is able to become a better leader through their coaching, they can improve morale in the team because there are no more issues or conflicts within the team anymore. This is because the coaches actually taught them to be more professional and how to handle conflict in a better way. When an employee has higher morale, they work harder and more efficiently, which leads to better productivity.
9. Communicate More Effectively
One of the greatest benefits of leader coaching is that it helps leaders to communicate more effectively. There are many different types of communication that a coach can use to best help their students learn and develop. These include group and individual feedback, coaching, sharing successes, sharing failures, and so on. Most important is to learn the skill of building effective communication within the team not just from the leader to the team. Effective communication results in clarity of purpose, work goals and objectives.
10. Helps Focus On Individual Needs and Goals
The best way to help people learn and develop their skills is to focus on their individual needs and goals as a leader. Having focused one-on-one leadership development allows for individualised coaching that suits your leadership style or helps you to develop your leadership potential.
11. Help Create a High-Performing Culture
Choosing the right leader as mentor and coach can help you to create a high-performing culture in your team. As you grow and develop your leadership skills you will put your learnings into practice immediately. You can work with your coach in a dynamic way if people issues arise. Applying your learnings into developing your own team will lift performance and make your team more productive.
12. Helps Develop Emotional Intelligence
A core anchor of leadership is to understand and develop emotional intelligence. This can happen through leadership development which will focus on emotional control, awareness and how to deal with situations in the workplace.
There are many different benefits of having an experienced leader conduct your coaching conversations, which is why a lot of professionals seek out the right leadership coach for them. When looking for a coach that is right for you, it is important to look for one that will tailor the coaching to your needs not simply follow a stock standard process. Let’s face it, people leadership does not follow a stock standard process as every individual is different, so your leadership coach should deliver the same.
