Why Coaching is a Successful Leadership Style

Good day everyone

Welcome back to the Café

Here is a piece of training I shared with a student this week.

I hope you find it helpful.

Why Coaching is a Successful Leadership Style

What comes first into your mind when you hear the word “coach”? Do you picture a basketball team with someone shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with someone pacing and calling out the players’ names?

Coaching is no longer reserved for sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?

Coaching levels the playing field.

Coaching is an emotional leadership style. It is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization.

This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of responsibility.

These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staff’s personal values and goals with the organization’s to pursue long-term directions.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence.

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one. This coaching builds up the confidence of the team members by affirming good performance during regular feedback. It also increases competence by helping members assess their strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members.

Usually, this happens in the case of a new staff. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks, holds regular feedback for the new team, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback are essential in establishing habits. Members learn the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement. They perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to attain team goals. In the process, they achieve individual excellence as well.

An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. To achieve harmony of music from the various instruments, members will practice their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops a high commitment to common goals.

A coaching leader balances immediate targets with the organization’s long-term goals and vision. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check.

The members are inspired and motivated by constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain increased motivation and commitment to the members’ shared goals.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.

Leadership by example is essential in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when they cannot practice what they preach. Leadership by example means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent in their field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals.

Through purposeful training and learning, members catch the coaching leader’s same good practices and attitudes, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, they are most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Coaching is a leadership style that requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team.

Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation, especially during crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time in each individual and team. Moreover, the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches.

Thank you for stopping by the Café. Would you please share it with someone who could benefit from it if you found this helpful? For more tips and resources, visit the website at thecafeboss.net. Please also feel free to buy me a cup of coffee. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/cafeboss2503