LEADERSHIP COACHING

Leadership training and coaching

Leadership is the essential skill-set in today's global economy and the ability to coach others to deal positively and quickly with change of all kinds is the key driver of competitive advantage. In our knowledge-centred world all organisations need well-trained, and competent leaders who know how to coach people of all kinds in the most professional and high impact a way as possible.

Highly focused leadership development courses and coaching workshops need to be made available to all those people who need to be developed. These should be carefully selected, tailored to particular organisational needs and delivered in a wide variety of formats to achieve the best results.

Executive leadership coaching programs

Sometimes, it is extremely difficult to achieve desired results and organisational goals and targets despite all of our best efforts. Reasons can range from lack of focus and poor morale to inadequate collaboration among team members or simply too much conflict between people and teams. Whatever the reason, it’s important to quickly diagnose the source of the problem and find an effective forward solution. A high-performing team can take an enterprise to much greater success but it needs to be well coached if it is to do this.

Executive coaching is one of the best ways to develop a whole team of people (starting with the manager or team leader). Each individual is different and hence the methods chosen to coach that person should match his or her potential. With tailored coaching techniques, all individuals can be motivated and inspired to achieve higher levels of performance and results for him or her self and for the organisation as a whole.

Leadership style coaching
The leadership style used by a particular coach (internal or external) is always key to getting the best possible results. There are four coaching leadership “situationally specific” styles that can be used as follows:  

High energy/low empathy coaching style/behaviour 
Referred to as “Informing” because this style is characterised mostly by one-way influence and communication, in which the coach usually knows much more than the coachee. This style most often works most effectively when giving facts or straightforward information to a coachee. 

High empathy/high energy and engagement coaching style/ behaviour 
Referred to as “Persuading” because the Coach attempts to use two-way communication and relationship based support to get people psychologically to “buy into” the conversation. This style most often works best when the coachee needs to be enthused or presented with information that is compellingly beneficial or advantageous. 

High empathy/low energy coaching style/behaviour 
Called “Exploring” because the coach using this style tends to want the coachee to clarify information that they have offered and discuss ideas and issues in a two-way or collaborative type of conversation. This style most often works best in a longer conversation and the coach wants to get the coachee to open up or to share information about what they think or feel. 

Low energy/low empathy coaching style/behaviour 
Labelled “Enabling” because the style involves letting the coachee offer information with only limited or steering type responses from the coach. This is most often seen in situations where a coach asks open questions of the coachee and asks him or her to describe how he or she would respond (and elaborate in detail as much as necessary).

Communications coaching

When engaging in any kind of coaching, a coach can use one of four key communication styles (which the coachee can also utilise in response. These communication coaching styles are described below:

The Informing Style (Directive communication)
When using an Informing Style the communication coaching aim or goal is to tell or inform the other party about the problem, issue or subject to be tackled. When appropriately using this style the knowledge is likely to reside mainly with the communication initiator or sender (rather than the receiver) and the main requirement is to transmit the message as clearly as possible. The communication tends to be mainly one way or dominated by the sender. This is why this style is called “Directive communication” 

The Persuading Style (Feedback based communication)
When using an Persuading Style the communication coaching aim or goal is to offer information in a more enthusiastic way, and to persuade the receiver through fuller explanations. This allows some room for the sender and receiver to clarify with each other that the message(s) has been understood and that there is commitment to follow up action (if this is necessary). This is why this style is called “Feedback based communication”

The Exploring Style (Directive communication)
When using an “Exploring Style”, the communication coaching aim or goal is for questions to be asked and answered in the discussion. Although either the sender of receiver may initiate the questions, the receiver(s) is more likely to dominate and control the communication while the message sender is best left to offer general encouragement, rather than to suggest specific outcomes or actions. Hence, the communication style here is called “solution focused” 

The Enabling Style (Enabling communication)
When using an “Enabling Style”, the communication coaching aim or goal is to enable a greater depth of understanding where it is requested by the receiver, In other words, the communication style of the communication initiator or sender is likely to be passive and patient and responsive to the receiver’s questions or queries. Here the receiver(s) should dominate and control the communication while the message sender is best left to listen and offer support and encouragement in a gentle fashion. Hence, the communication style in this instance is called “enabling” because it seeks to let the other party in the conversation talk.

Senior business leadership

If a leader has ineffective interpersonal skills and low levels of flexibility in his or her approach, their chances of succeeding are greatly reduced. However, increasing levels of flexibility is often difficult for some senior business leaders and even many training workshops, seminars or other group learning interventions can make little difference. This is why executive coaching is a very real and potentially highly effective alternative for developing senior business leadership.

Typically executives with low levels of flexibility are not as well regarded as leaders. They often also have trouble relating to other people and are usually more concerned about their own personal situation than may be healthy for the wider team. As a result, interpersonal skills may not develop and the leader may feel or become even more isolated.

Since senior business leaders should ideally have superior interpersonal skills, coaching interventions will work best by measuring interpersonal effectiveness on the wider team. This can be done with style based assessments or pre-designed surveys or in one-to-one interviews with individuals. This helps to guide the coaching effort to follow. 

Team building leadership

Organisations have long embraced teamwork as an effective way of doing business but teams seem to be becoming more critical to success in the modern world.

Leaders are finding themselves as members of all kinds of teams, including (amongst many other kinds) virtual teams, autonomous teams, self-directed teams, multi/cross-functional teams, cross-border teams, and action learning teams. 

In many case in today’s fast-paced world, managers have to operate as both members and leaders of many of these different kinds of teams (often at the same time)and engage in a range of team building activities to ensure that they get the best out of people. This makes the need to be an effective coach even greater and managers need to have a wide array of effective coaching strategies, techniques, methods and skills to draw upon.

Coaching motivational skills

A key point is often missed in the debate about what constitutes effective motivation of individuals and the deployment of good coaching Skills: This is that effective employee motivation to act and coaching in general is a great deal more than just problem solving (as and when the need arises). Many people misinterpret coaching as only a broadly corrective process aimed at a specific problem or at the shortfalls of an individual. Actually, coaching should be more often focused on positive issues, without a particular “problem” presenting itself at all. In this respect, a whole range of specific organisational “challenges”, “opportunities”, and “issues” can be the main motivating force.

Leaders need to be as active and engaged in their “positive” or “opportunity-sided” coaching roles as they do when they face specific problems. In fact, the most effective leaders are extremely active when things are going well. They coach and confer with employees on how to maintain and sustain the current state of affairs or develop strategies on how to move closer to their visions and values. In short, good leaders are not satisfied with mediocre performance. Hence, to achieve the full potential of individuals and maximise employee contributions, leaders need some restless dissatisfaction with the status quo, to encourage others to reach new heights.

Effective managers will typically spend 70-80% of their coaching time in positive one-to-one sessions with their team members. In this way, every individual is motivated individually and encouraged to make their best unique contribution for the good of themselves, the team and the wider enterprise.

The coach as the teacher
Coaches are often also regarded a “facilitator” of learning, with the coachee being the one primarily responsible for the learning to be “taken on-board” or used as he or she sees fit.  However, there are times when an effective coach (at least for a short period) acts as a teacher. So when does this occur?

In any coaching assignment there will be times when the coach may know as much, if not more, than the person being coaching. This may have come about as a result of past direct experience on the part of the coach or in coaching another person who has faced (and overcome) similar challenges or issues. In these cases, the coach can often successfully move into a more directive style with the particular coachee (with his or her permission). In other words, a coach might say “I have had some experience in this area-can I make a couple of suggestions on possible forward paths that you may like to consider?”

This more directive “coach as teacher” approach occurs most often when there is a “hard” skill to learn, like “assembling a compelling presentation to the management team” for example, or “covering a checklist of major headings ahead of a budget review meeting”. This is akin to sports coaching when a coach will focus on a particular skill (like putting in golf or volleying in tennis) knowing that the overall game of the person that he or she is coaching is at a very high level (and adjustments in these specific areas will help generally).