Coaching Leadership
Coaching Leadership
A subset of Transformational Leadership, a coaching approach places the emphasis firmly on your reports and away from the self. In this article Fredrik Malmsten, Consultant and Chartered Occupational Psychologist at Alumni, gives a brief overview of the methods and merits of using this as part of your leadership behaviours.
Letting go
Traditionally organisations might expect that they pay their managers well to have the right answers, but coaching leaders spend their time asking powerful questions instead of serving up solutions. A coaching leader has their focus on developing their individual reports and the team as a whole; they are willing to abandon complete control in favour of enabling their charges to find their own paths and solutions. A study found that coaching can lead to a 70 per cent improvement in work performance[1].
Coaching leaders ask open-ended questions, are very supportive and give constructive and objective feedback. Valuing progress and learning this approach fosters psychological safety, and when team members feel comfortable seeking feedback and making mistakes, they are more likely to take risks and be innovative. Research by Google[2] found that psychological safety leads to improved performance, better decision-making, and increased creativity.
The Language of Coaching
What skills do you have?
What have you tried?
What have you learned?
How can I help you develop?
Attraction & Retention
The latest generation of entrants to the job market are most definitely more values driven. They want a role where they can build new skills and take an active part in new challenges; and they want to achieve more - faster. The autonomy of being coached rather than spoon fed with answers delivers this in abundance.
The Corporate Leadership Council, now a part of Gartner, found that organisations that focus on talent development have a 22 per cent higher shareholder return than organisations that do not. Coaching leadership helps retain and develop existing competency within an organisation; a valuable tool when the war for talent continues to rage. A study conducted by Gallup[3] found that engaged employees are more productive, have higher job satisfaction, and are less likely to leave their job. In fact, organisations with engaged employees have 21 per cent higher profitability. By investing in the growth and development of employees, organisations can both increase their engagement and ensure that their talent remains competitive and up to date with the latest skills and trends in their industry.
Closer to the Customer
Management can often find itself too far away from the customer to find the best solutions to problems by themselves. Their team is more likely to be in closer direct contact and can better understand the issues from the customer’s point of view.
Using a coaching approach allows change to happen from the bottom up rather than imposing change from the top down; change is most successful when employees are able to think laterally and take calculated risks. Teams will not only develop a growth mindset through their own autonomy but also learn from their own mistakes and the success and failure of their peer group initiatives.
The Pitfalls of Coaching Leadership
Coaching means asking questions rather than offering solutions. Our brains enjoy finding solutions, they want to feel autonomy in the workplace and feel competent and satisfied with the work done – and being coached allows this.
However, coaching leadership requires a certain level of authenticity of thought. Unless a leader is genuinely curious about what their team can achieve, they will be waiting for them to come up with the solution that they have already decided is correct themselves; and simply hiding your motives is not coaching. If a leader thinks that they do have an answer to a problem, then they should ask permission to share that solution and then have a dialogue on how to approach that solution going forward.
Coaching works at many levels but it is important to note that it is not appropriate when it comes to performance or salary reviews, where a manager role is called for.
Fredrik Malmsten
Organisational Psychologist and Senior Consultant, Alumni
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Alumni
Successful leaders are aware of their strengths and know how to develop and make use of them. At the same time, they make sure they have the self-knowledge to keep their weaknesses in check. This is why Alumni’s leadership development courses focus on what a leader does best and how they can do it even better and this includes becoming an expert in a coaching approach.
Alumni makes extensive use of 360-degree interviews to enhance the self-awareness of business leaders. Personal interviews with our experienced consultants, as well as the organisation’s managers, colleagues, reports, and other stakeholders are designed to put a leader’s performance and behaviour into words. It delivers valuable insight into the strengths and weaknesses of leadership and is a powerful tool to improve leaders’ professional image and impact within their organisation.
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