What is Leadership Coaching?
What is Leadership Coaching? (and why is it important)?
What is Leadership Coaching?
Leadership coaching is a relationship between a coach and a client that is aimed at making the client a better leader. It is a formal one-on-one relationship in which the coach and client collaborate to understand and assess the client’s leadership developmental tasks, challenge existing constraints while exploring new possibilities, and ensuring accountability and support for achieving goals and sustaining development.
Leaders seek leadership coaching for many goals. Some of them are as follows:
- Enhancing leadership skills to meet the demanding standards (i.e., performance management).
- Developing new leadership skills to meet new or changing job requirements (i.e., change management).
- Developing leadership capabilities in preparation for future positions (i.e., talent management).
- Developing leadership capabilities to increase employee satisfaction and long-term opportunities (i.e., career management).
- Ensuring leadership breadth and depth for building and leading the organization (i.e., organization management).
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Why is leadership coaching important? 4 Indisputable Reasons:
The praise of leadership coaching is fine but you might wonder whether leadership coaching is even something to invest in for your organization. There are many reasons why it is not just something to think about but a need to be invested in carefully with the long-term development of your organization in mind. You need to be acquainted with the following scenarios:
1. Rapidly-changing
work environment
Wider social, economic,
and political changes affect the work environment, most notably on the
workforce composition, job requirements, and organisational structures. In
India, demographic and societal changes have resulted in a younger, more
diverse, and educated workforce, as well as a generation of tech-savvy
employees. Not only must leaders lead a diverse workforce, but they must also
bring employees with varying perspectives and expectations together to work
toward a common goal.
2. Unpredictable
dynamics of the business world
Additionally, leaders are
expected to perform in an environment that is more cognitively and socially
complex, uncertain, dynamic, political, technological, and global. Such a
radical shift implies that expectations of a leader must also be transformed.
Leadership coaching enables a leader to deal with these dynamics with
remarkable acuity.
3. Trickle-down effect to other employees
Leadership coaching has evolved
beyond the traditional one-on-one interaction with an emphasis on the
individual’s development. Leaders learn the importance of building rapport and
collaboration with the employees instead of coldly managing them. Organizations
are recognising that leadership coaching benefits not only leaders but also other
employees since there is greater transparency and trust in the organisation
because leaders develop better relationships with their subordinates. The
trickle-down effect is very visible and real among the employees in the form of
smoother processes and increased productivity (Anderson et al., 2009)
4. Learning skills and knowledge and new insights
Coaching enables the leader to
acquire and apply new leadership techniques that are specifically tailored to
the leader’s weaknesses. Just one session can introduce a leader to the nuanced
experience and insights of the coach adding to the overall ken. To put into
points, these are the benefits of leadership coaching.
a. Increase of current
competencies
b. Join existing skills to
bank on a new career or business opportunity
c. Acquire a new skill or
capability
d. Troubleshooting issues or
problems
Key benefits of opting for leadership coaching programes
Leaders are the guides, navigator and torch-bearers for any organization. The success or failure of the organization depends heavily on the decisions which leaders make. Hence, organizations invest in leadership coaching programs to help both the leader and the organization create powerful and sustainable results. Effective leadership Coaches increases the performance of a leader. It also engages leaders by challenging them to think, act and ultimately learn for themselves. It is the leader who influences the employees and a seasoned leader will consequently bring better outcomes and create a strong impact. Some of the notable benefits of leadership coaching are as follows:
- Helping leaders adapt to the changing work environment and being effectively responsive to the same.
- Increasing leader’s skills, motivation, personality, identifying developmental goals and overall efficacy.
- Building leadership skills to deal with a heterogeneous, tech-savvy and disparately educated workforce.
- Leadership Coaching provides a systematic structure to examine the multitude of variables that are important to increase the leader’s understanding of his/her field and improve overall knowledge, cognition and effectiveness.
- Increasing rapport, trust, commitment and collaboration with the employees.
How can leadership coaching transform the life of leaders?
1. Help achieve the goal
which the leader wants.
While the leader selects the objective of the coaching session, the coach
serves as an expert and trainer, being an avid listener in the process.
Leadership coaching consists of a range of activities, from assisting
individuals in learning a new computer system to assisting individuals in
broadening their perspective on the work of the company. Whatever might be the
issue, the leadership coach can fix that through communication.
2. Get valuable and
honest feedback
For leaders, getting honest is extremely
important but rare. Leaders are always prone to be wrongly influenced given
their important position. A coach is the one with whom the leader can discuss
his/her vulnerabilities, incompetency, pressing issues etc. The coach will not
just absorb them but provide insightful feedback to the leader to solve his/her
troubles.
3. Develop a temperament
for learning
Top positions holders of any niche have one thing in common: they are always
open to learning. If a leader has opted for coaching, then he/she already
possesses the willingness to learn. Coaches can be extremely effective if they
find that their client is willing to learn and assess their lives openly
without many hitches.
4. Bring vision into
reality
The coaching process gives the leader’s purpose a set of measurable and
workable goals. To attain the most value from executive coaching, think about
desired results which a leader can attain by talking to someone who holds
expertise in that particular niche. Providing clarity over the goals also
enhances the motivation of the leader to achieve them.
5. Get ahead in the
competition
Today, the competition for success is tough. If leaders don’t increase their
potential, then a better candidate might just be lurking in the corner.
Coaching ensures that leaders always stay ahead in this competitive environment
and achieve their long-sought career goals.
6. Developing the muscle
for self-reflection
The best quality of leadership coaching is that it makes leaders reflect on
their lives. They analyse their strengths, weaknesses, problems,
vulnerabilities etc. in the process and just one session can bring out a lot of
self-reflection. Powerful questions asked by coaches can create the most impact
and provide new perspectives to the leaders. Here, the aptitude of the coach
can work wonders in many ways.
Even if the leader chooses not to tread upon the coach’s mentioned objectives, the process of self-reflection and contemplating deeply can be worth the investment.