Benefits of Leadership Coaching

Everyone needs a coach to help them improve! Coaching of Supervisors, Managers, and those thinking about leadership positions, adds tremendous value for both the individuals and the organization.

Many of us at one point or another have looked back and said “I wish someone had told me that when I was a lot younger!” The truth is, we all need coaches in our lives – a trusted person who can help us work through challenges, explore options, and occasionally hold up a mirror to show us our blind spots.

What is Leadership Coaching?

In most cases, leadership coaching arrangements are simply one person helping another to solve people-oriented work problems. In formal arrangements, the coach is generally experienced in problem solving techniques, and the job expertise in question, and therefore is able to assist the coachee in working through their challenge. Coaching is not simply advice-giving, nor is it counseling. When the relationship is more of a low key arrangement, focused on the coach’s advice, this is often referred to as mentoring. Coaching arrangements can be one-time challenges, or can be on-going in nature as the coachee requires guidance along their development path, to arrive at their best answers to problems.

Some of the most effective coaching sessions that I’ve conducted have involved helping the coachee to see themselves from someone else’s perspective - thus revealing a blind spot, and resulting in an ‘ah-ha!’ moment and a breakthrough. Coaching is different from simply advising, it is more akin to facilitating thought-process breakthroughs.

Leadership Coaching Benefits For the individual:

There are many benefits to the individual being coached. A few of the more often cited benefits are;

• Helping to set objectives or clarify goals;

• Exploring the consequences of various choices;

• Exploring and understanding alternative perspectives;

• Helping to reframe situations to see the positive aspects of opportunity, or to simply avoid overinterpretation or negativity;

• Coachees learn more about their thought processes and potential blind spots or logic gaps;

• Raising awareness of one’s leadership style which brings more consistency to behavior;

• Defining strategies for overcoming problems;

• Increasing confidence in decision making.

Leadership Coaching Benefits For the Organization:

Of course, when the coached individual benefits - so does the organization as a whole. Leadership coaching is a true win-win for any organization!

• Committing resources to coaching Demonstrates commitment to the coached employee’s development and growth;

• Seeing the investment, Increases the coachee’s engagement and loyalty to the organization;

• Supports higher performance levels from the individual and consequently, their team;

• Strengthens the leadership bench for succession planning.

What Makes a Great Coach Great?

There are many articles on this topic! Consistent themes are that great leadership coaches must have strong business acumen in the industry and/or function in which they are coaching so that they are coaching from a basis of experience. They also need strong emotional intelligence and listening skills. Coaches must provide confidentiality, accessibility, and have a service mind-set. To truly get the most value out of coaching arrangements, they often are long-term and consistent, so that the coach can help the individual develop over time.

For more information on the coaching services offered by Boosting Leadership LLC, please go to our Leadership Coaching page.

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