Leadership coaching is a booming business which has gone from being exclusively available to C-suite executives to more main stream. What was once looked upon with scepticism, fear and stigma is now praised. As CEOs, managers, SME owners and leaders have discovered that it works. Coaching in organisation and leadership settings is an invaluable tool for developing people. Let’s have a look at what leadership coaching is as and what the top benefits are you can gain from it?
What is Leadership Coaching ?
Leadership coaching is a process that focuses on enhancing performance for leaders at all levels to achieve short- and long-term goals. Coaching is personalised, customised, usually conducted one-on-one for a defined period of time and with a specific business purpose in mind.
“The benefits of coaching; 80% of people who receive coaching report increased self-confidence, over 70% benefit from improved work performance, relationships and more effective communication skills. 86% of companies report that they recouped their investment on coaching and more (source: ICF 2009)”.
10 Benefits of Leadership Coaching
- Improved Self-awareness
- Higher Level of Empathy
- More Situational Awareness
- New Ways to Respond
- Achieve What You Want
- Leverage Your Strengths
- Improved Relationships
- Higher Motivation
- Fast-track Your Ambition
- Someone in Your Corner
1. Improved Self-awareness
Leadership coaching will help improve your self-awareness as well as make you become aware of what beliefs or attitudes may be holding you back. We will uncover your blind spots and identify what triggers you. A coach will tell you the hard truth that others won’t because they look up to you, you are their boss, pay their salary etc… As much as we like to think that others see us as we like to be seen, this isn’t always the case. While we judge ourselves on our intentions, others judge us on our behaviours.
Furthermore, others will view our behaviours differently according to their own intentions, experiences, values, behaviour.. it can be a vicious cycle depending on how self-aware we are and how much feedback we solicit. Coaching provides a way of accessing and confronting the hard truth that others may not tell you. It also provides an objective space to process those truths and learn to deal with them in a safe environment.
In a leadership role you are constantly judged on the impressions you make. Coaching will help you build skills to see yourself more clearly: to question your assumptions about yourself, get curious about where you’re strong and where you need to grow, and learn to see yourself from a more neural or “witness” perspective . Once we have an accurate picture of how we are perceived, we can start to identify where we can improve.
2. Higher Level of Empathy
Awareness of other, otherwise called empathy. Empathy is that special something that allows people to feel how another individual is feeling. Chances are if someone empathizes with a problem you have, you feel it. Empathy is a powerful tool that helps you connect to the receiver. Empathy leads to understanding other people’s emotions and enhances interactions with business colleagues and friends. Furthermore, people will easily be led by you and seek your counsel.
People with high emotional intelligence are better leaders, in part because of empathy. People under your leadership need to know you hear them, understand them, and more importantly, that you care about the situation. As your coach helps you boost your emotional intelligence quotient, you will see a positive impact on the team.
3. More Situational Awareness
Coaching can help you become more aware of potential risks in certain situations. You’ll learn to see how you respond to what’s happening around you. This will help you anticipate things that may occur and think about the accurate response. It helps you step out of “fight or flight” response mode and switch to a well thought out tactical response.
Coaching can increase your resilience and adaptability in the face of huge transformation and ensures you are more capable to handle the challenges you encounter.
As a leader you might run into problems because of the inaccurate assessments of people around you. You may lose good employees because you don’t recognise and support their capabilities, or keep poor performers too long because you think they’re better than they are. You can over- or underestimate someone’s ability to have an impact on your career success. A coach will often have more neutral and accurate perceptions of those around you than you will, and will share those perceptions with you.
4. New Ways To Respond
You will learn new ways to respond. Marshall Goldsmith, leadership coach in the U.S., wrote a book called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. We all have a set of capabilities and responses that may serve us well now, however to get to the next level you’ll need something else. For example, as a leader it’s no longer just about you doing your job perfectly. You need to bring your team together and ensure they’re all working in sync toward the company goals. Once you learn to see that your success now depended not only on the quality of your own work but also on your ability to inspire and direct others you’re leading the team. It’s about learning new skills and shifting your Mindset.
5. Achieve What You Want
An effective coaching engagement can help you get clearer about your goals and dreams, and about what you’re capable of doing in order to achieve them. Plus, they are a powerful support system on your journey: someone who knows you very well and wants the best for you, but is a neutral third party. Unlike your family, friends or your employees, your coach isn’t dependent on you. They can be honest with you about how you’re doing, reminding you of what you’ve said you want to achieve and letting you know what you’re doing that’s supporting your intentions or getting in your way. Finally, and most importantly, your coach can teach you new ways of thinking and operating, new skills that will allow you to better reach your goals and create the life and career you want.
We’ll identify your goals followed by creating an action plan backed up with accountability to ensure you succeed. Leadership coaching leads to greater productivity, more promotions with a lower risk and larger profits. Coaching of leaders in a new role reduces the time from which the leader starts to contributes to the organisation.
6. Leverage Your Strengths
A leadership coach can help you identify and leverage strengths that you already have, but that you may be underestimating at the moment. Building your self-confidence and leveraging your strength is key part of the process. I coached a female leader who had a real gift for envisioning products that would appeal to customers in the coming seasons. She somehow thought that wasn’t a big deal. “She said to me a, “Doesn’t everyone do that?”. I helped her see the uniqueness and value of this capability and how to lean into it in order to use it more effectively for the benefit of her team and the organisation.
7. Improved Relationships
Social skills make up the fabric of successful relationships, whether it’s in the workplace or elsewhere. Leaders with high emotional intelligence, have an abundance of advanced social skills. They have excellent communication skills, which mean they can lead without coming across dominating. Because they negotiate effectively all parties feel like it was a win-win situation. They are skilled at combining their leadership and negotiation skills to help accomplish the goal.
8. Higher Motivation
Higher levels of motivation kick in as you start to see success. Who doesn’t feel a rush of adrenaline when they see their goals accomplished? It all begins with self-awareness. When people are self-aware they discover intrinsic motivation. Combined with using self-regulation they channel that motivation in the right direction. It’s no wonder motivation is a crucial ingredient to being successful and happy. In the workplace, it is the driving force behind the difficult task, long hours, and seemingly impossible obstacles. Without motivation, you would have no workforce.
9. Fast-track Your Ambition
We all grow and develop through a series of experiences over the years. Leadership coaching condenses the entire process down to a matter of months. A leadership coach can prepare you and put you in the position to have a perspective about dealing with a wide variety of situations. They can also help you to develop certain skills and techniques to enable you to do your work better.
Leadership coaching helps boost your powers of cognition, helping you to view things in a different way, open your mind to unconscious bias, assumption and areas in which you’re likely to derail. This allows you to view the information which you’re receiving objectively and rationally, and filter through it more quickly to allow you to get to the point where you can add value to the organisation quicker.
When your mind broadens in one area, the tendency exists that the expansion overflows into other areas, as well. One of the key elements of emotional intelligence is the ability to view situations from other people’s perspective (coming back to the empathy); when this occurs, your eyes are opened to new viewpoints. In other words, a flexible mindset replaces rigid thinking. By exercising your brain, you boost cognition which will benefit your work in many ways.
10. Someone in Your Corner
Are you facing more tasks than you have time? Employees, managers, CEO’s, board members and stakeholders applying the pressure? Is work squeezing out life at home? I get how stressful life can be, as a leadership coach I can help you manoeuvre through the challenges of life and work.
Coaching provides an environment of support to help you to think through challenging issues and decide how you feel about them before you make the bold moves needed to lead. It can be lonely at the top. Having a leadership coach provide a space to hear your own voice, to talk something through and gain perspective can be super helpful. I’m there to support, challenge, encourage and provide confidence when you need it most.
You Can Accomplish the Extraordinary
In summary, the world is full of amazing people doing amazing things. Sometimes those amazing people can use a little help taking their amazing work to the next level. I love seeing my clients transform when they take full advantage of the opportunity. When you, go into a coaching engagement with an open mind and a willingness to grow, learn and sense of humility. Then you can see the above mentioned benefits plus increased self-confidence, improved work performance, healthier relationships and improved communication skills. I believe it’s worth both the time and the investment.
Are you ready? Like any new endeavor, working with a coach can be challenging and even a little scary. But if you’re brave, committed and curious, you’ll find the coaching relationship can be a powerful catalyst to becoming the person you most want to be.
Our work together will be inspiring, deep, one-on-one and will uncover blind spots and opportunities to help you succeed. Let’s start the conversation, you are one call or email away from leading and living at a whole new level. You can accomplish the extraordinary!
