Coaching As A Leadership Style

Coach-style leaders are also great at giving constructive feedback to improve an individual's talents, specifically when it comes to achieving goals and having the confidence to tackle new projects or problems.

Coaching as a Leadership Style

Providing opportunities for team members to take on challenges and work together to find solutions is important for coaching-style leaders. Their goal is to create a team that works extremely well together and leans on each other's strengths to overcome obstacles.

Though reports indicate that personal leadership styles like coaching leadership and servant leadership are on the rise, some organizations still operate heavily under top-down structures. This can potentially make coaching leadership difficult to implement.

Coaching every person on a team means that coaching leaders need to adapt to the needs of the individual. Not only can this be time-consuming, but it can be very challenging to lay out unique plans and goals for every single team member.

The coaching leadership style aims to build strong relationships and address the unique needs of each individual team member. Coaching leaders typically take a mentor-mentee approach to leadership, focusing on a balance of praise, support, and constructive feedback.

The things that make coaching leadership a successful style are also the things that can make it challenging, especially for younger leaders who may lead teams of more tenured members or are trying to implement the style in organizations that take a more autocratic approach.

The time commitment involved with coaching leadership must also be considered since the one-on-one nature of the style is what really makes it shine. If a leader cannot commit the time to address each team member, the style may falter.

Leadership training and taking a coaching approach to leadership can be a great way to help teams hit their goals and drive results. But what, exactly, is a coaching leadership style? Why is it effective? And how can you use it to improve performance and take your team to the next level?

There are a number of different organizational leadership styles. And all of them take a different approach to leadership. For example, some companies embrace servant leadership, which focuses on leaders supporting employees. Others lean toward democratic leadership, which involves employees in leadership decisions. Still other organizations swear by strategic leadership. And others? They may embrace charismatic leadership, authentic leadership, situational leadership, or a blend of multiple styles.

So, for example, under this leadership style, there would likely be a clear consequence for missing a deadline. And leaders would likely keep that consequence, even if the employee missed the deadline for a valid reason, like a family emergency.

This leadership style varies greatly from the coaching leadership style. The coaching leadership style is more flexible and fluid. While on the flip side, the transactional leadership style is more rigidly structured.

The transformational leadership style is arguably the most similar style to coaching leadership. They are both focused on goal achievement and improving performance. However, the transformational leadership style is more focused on organizational transformation. The coaching leadership style is more focused on supporting growth at the individual and team levels.

Coaching leadership style is centered around developing employees and teams. So, in order to be an effective coaching leader, you need development skills. For example, coaching leaders need to be able to visualize long-term goals for their team. They also need to be able to create development plans to help individual contributors, and the team as a whole, hit those goals.

Emotional intelligence is one of the most important elements of effective coaching leadership. Effective coaching leaders need to be perceptive, empathetic, and compassionate. They also need to showcase humility in leadership.

Athletes need to be able to trust and talk to their coaches. And with the coaching leadership style, employees need to be able to trust and talk to their leaders. This requires a certain level of accessibility and approachability.

A highly experienced, global leadership coach at the highest levels, I founded and lead The Miles Group (TMG), a boutique consulting firm based in New York City and focused on executive development, leadership assessment, and top-team effectiveness. TMG coaches aspiring leaders at all levels who want to reach their maximum potential. I spend my time coaching first-time CEOs and advising many Boards and tenured CEOs on executive leadership development. An author and co-editor of the best-selling business book Leaders Talk Leadership, I also co-authored Riding Shotgun: The Role of the Chief Operating Officer as well as Your Career Game: How Game Theory Can Help You Achieve Your Professional Goals. I currently reside in Atlanta, Georgia, and have lived in Kenya, South Africa, Iraq, Argentina, and Canada.

I am a professor in the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University and have been an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford University for over 20 years. Before that I was on the Oxford University faculty from 1995 to 2000. I have also taught on executive education and MBA programs at Stanford, Harvard Business School, IMD, LBS, INSEAD, Oxford, McGill, USC, Duke, Darden, and Cambridge. I have authored 28 refereed journal articles, 10 books, and have over 3,600 Google Scholar citations. For the last 20 years I have worked with Henry Mintzberg. teaching on and running leadership programs.

Coaching leadership is one characterized by collaboration, support, and guidance. Coaching leaders are focused on bringing out the best in their teams by guiding them through goals and obstacles. This leadership style is very much opposite to autocratic leadership, which is focused on top-down decision making.

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your own leadership style can help you better identify which approach is best for your current role. Check out our ebook, 10 Leadership Styles You Should Know, to learn more about different approaches to leadership and when and how to apply them.

This coaching style is recognizable through its commitment to partnership and collaboration. Leaders behave as coaches, communicating well, enabling creativity, and motivating and allowing staff the autonomy to make decisions and do a good job. Short-term firefighting is replaced by longer term strategic thinking (Berg & Karlsen, 2016).

Adopting a coaching leadership style can align activities to business and personal goals and put in place a culture where mistakes are permissible and collaboration is constructive (Berg & Karlsen, 2016).

Before the 1980s, a command-and-control approach was typical in the workplace, with managers giving out work in an autocratic style. Since then, more inclusive, authentic, and collaborative styles have been favored, including transformative approaches such as CLS (Chartered Management Institute, 2020).

Very informative I am moving from the 80s autocratic style to coaching leadership style so I have to rethink how I work to achieve this for me and my team. Investing time seems to be the way forward and greater listening skills. I am finding it a struggle but plan to work hard at this change my behaviour

Companies need to offer their managers the appropriate tools and support to become better coaches. And if they want to be sustainably healthy learning organizations, they must also develop coaching as an organizational capacity.

That said, coaching is not always the answer. There may be times when all team members are productively getting on with their work, and the right approach to managing them is to leave them alone. This approach, which we call laissez-faire, appears in quadrant 2.

To see this in action, watch below our all-time favourite vintage video of Sir John Whitmore, Co-Founder of Performance Consultants and co-creator of the GROW Model, demonstrating the impact of a coaching leadership style in contrast to a traditional management style.

Clients and alumni frequently report back to us their successes following the adoption of a coaching style, including measurable improvements to engagement and the bottom line. Among the most immediate benefits is typically a reduction of stress both in team members, who feel more empowered, and in leaders, who no longer feel that they need to provide all the answers.

Coaching Leadership Style: this article provides a practical explanation of the Coaching Leadership Style. Next to what the definition and theory is, this article also highlights hte characteristics of this leadership style, the relationship with the Situational Leadership Model and the Advantages and disadvantages. Enjoy reading! 041b061a72