What Exactly Is Leadership Coaching?
In the broadest sense, whenever you are working with someone acting in a coaching or mentoring capacity in an ongoing relationship to; raise your awareness, grow as a human being, develop your leadership skills and effectiveness, work through some of the common challenges managers and leaders face, close gaps between where you are now and where you want to be, translate goals into specific actions, change behavior, increase the impact you are having, and generally get better results - you could be considered to be engaged in some form of leadership coaching.
Who Seeks Coaching
Most clients that come to leadership coaching tend to be proactive and take their growth and development seriously. They are
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(I know quite a few very effective and successful coaches who have no background in business or organization life, yet manage to add great value to their clients.)
On the other end of the spectrum, there are many coaches who are not only well-trained in the core coaching skills, but also have dozens of other qualifications and/or relevant personal experience in leadership issues. Let 's call this the "expertise" end of the spectrum. These coaches typically have training in a wide variety of assessments, team intervention protocols, or other specific competencies of common interest to leaders or their organizations. At this end of the spectrum, coaching is often kicked off with some form of assessment, or more elaborate intake process, which sets the learning agenda for the subsequent coaching.
In my experience the majority of leadership coaches fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Here, in addition to being well-trained, they typically do have some relevant experience as a leader, and often have accumulated additional knowledge on topics of frequent interest to their leadership clients such as: common leadership models and competencies, leadership and communication styles, team development, confidence building, stress management, etc. However, here in the middle of the spectrum coaches may not lead with assessments or have as much of a prescriptive approach. Typically the majority of leadership coaches tend to meet whatever agenda a client brings to
The primary goal of any training program is to prepare trainees to perform effectively on a specific post-training task. The trainer usually determines the training agenda, and trainees must adapt themselves to the process and structure of the training. In coaching the client sets the agenda and determines the goals to be achieved (Druckman.D and Bjork.R, 1991). That having been said, many trainers have excellent coaching skills, and coaches can be
Coaches need to have certain skills and knowledge to undertake the role. In my opinion a coach needs to be patient, supportive, interested, aware of others as well as self, attentive and perceptive. Such elements underpin effective coaching and a genuine interest in the person being coached.
Coaching is another role of a leader. The definition of coaching is "one who instructs or trains" (Coaching, 2017). For example, a coach will not only provide training, but also advise and provide guidance. To put this role into perspective, imagine a Soldier on a firing range. The soldier has been trained to successfully fire that weapon, but with coaching, they will be guided to sharpen their fundamental skills, thus improving their
One definition of coaching is “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance.” (Coaching for performance, Sir John Whitmore 1992). Or to expand on this; Simply defined, coaching is one person guiding another through a process, leading to performance enhancement. The applications can vary, support to achieve a specific project, helping an individual to do better what they already do well, or developing a skill they don't yet possess.
Boyce, L. A., Jackson, R. J., & Neal, L. J. (2010). Building successful leadership coaching relationships. The
Young Leadership: In seeking to examine, promote, and advance the success of Teaching and coaching in an organizational setting, the national and International Consortium for Coaching in Organizations is intended as a forum for all people involved in coaching in organizations: the organizational users of
Coaches should have sport specific skills as they need to understand certain technical aspects of the sport they are trying to teach. A coach needs to ensure that they have a good knowledge and understanding of their own sport and how the latest information in sport science can aid to develop performers, this is important so coaches can deliver demonstrations correctly and carry out good practice as if they were to demonstrate something wrongly then students could pick up bad habits by simply imitating and doing as their instructed. However if a coach is less knowledgeable in a particular area of sport they could use their transferable skills .
but at the same time a coachee will need a push to reach and achieve
Leadership and coaching go hand in hand in many ways because to coach is to lead, and to lead is to coach others. Indeed, leaders and coaches, whatever the title are really mentors within the context of a particular organization or activity. For centuries, scholars and philosophers alike have been trying to find a specific and complete definition for coaching and leadership, but have not had much success. True, leadership is, in part, decision making at the nth level; while coaching takes that decision making and often compartmentalizes it into split-second action (Rhodes, J., et al. 2000). In the era of gloablization, this has become even more critical now that there are so many divergent cultural opportunities that require new skills, approaches, and even that allow coaching to occur not just in the physical environment, but in the virtual as well, with no regard for geographic or political boundaries (Drucker, P.F., et al. 2001).
There are a number of definitions to what coaching is; I feel that I can personally relate to the following definition:
There are fundamental personal qualities, coaching competencies and skills that are needed to become a good coach.
Coaching, however challenging, is a great way to influence the lives of others while also building their character. For as long as there have been sports, there have been people teaching the sport to the players and making them better at it. Coaches must have certain qualities in order to obtain success. One must also look at a coach’s motivation for his job, his passion for what he does, his methods for coaching, and how he became a coach in order to fully understand him. There are many questions someone may want to ask a coach about his profession if they are interested in coaching. Some questions would include: Why did he choose this as a profession? How did he get into coaching? What does one have to do to get a job as a coach? How
Coaching is the art of facilitating another person’s learning, development and performance. Through coaching people are able to find their own solutions, develop their own skills and change their own behaviors and attitudes.
Coaching is task oriented. The focus is on concrete issues, such as managing more effectively, speaking more articulately, and learning how to think strategically. This requires a content expert (coach) who is capable of teaching the coachee how to develop these skills.
Leadership is a difficult word to define and according to the Miriam-Webster Dictionary leadership is the “office or position of a leader” (Miriam-Webster, 2010). This definition is definitely not one that I would ascribe to when discussing leadership. My definition of leadership is “the ability someone has to motivate and empower others to achieve a goal.” Some may add to this definition, others may discard it altogether and have a completely different definition. In the end, leadership takes on many different forms depending on who is doing the defining and we end up asking ourselves, what is leadership and why do we care?