As an organisation grows, the need for leadership coaching within it increases. From satisfying customers to working well with partners and employees, to embracing the use of technology, leadership coaching can make a big difference in an organisation. And it doesn’t matter if you work in the United States, The UK, or China, coaching can make a huge difference.
But what is leadership coaching? How can you implement it within your organisation for your leaders and their (SLT) leadership teams? This article will explain everything you should know about leadership coaching.
What is leadership coaching?
Leadership coaching refers to the process of helping individuals to build their awareness personally and strategically and the competencies and skills required to work well in their role. It also helps them collaborate more effectively with other people within or outside of their organisation. As leadership coaching assists people to recognise their talents, they tend to use more of these talents and have more confidence to carry out their duties.
Given its benefits, leadership coaching is not only important to individuals, but can also have a huge impact on the development and success of an organisation and especially its culture. If you want to take your organisation to the next level, more focus and cross-organisation alignment on strategic goals, developing these alongside your people’s personal goals, then this is a powerful combination. It’s well worth investment in leadership coaching for your staff and benefits can be measured more than you think.
Step-by-step guide for implementing leadership coaching in your organisation
Are you ready to implement leadership coaching in your organisation? Things to do;
Have a structure for leadership coaching
Before you start investing in leadership coaching, it’s crucial to have objectives that you want to achieve with the coaching. Enlist champions and clarify chief sponsors of the programme. This will help to keep track of the progress of the coaching.
It’s important to create a structure for the coaching process. Basically, you can start by determining the individuals in your organization that need leadership coaching. The more senior the coachees, the greater the potential of coaching to make a difference. Though the truth is that leadership coaching may not be for everyone. It’s equally important to identify those that not only need it most but have the greatest to gain. After identifying these people, you need to determine when they need leadership coaching. The current career path of individuals is the main factor that will assist you to know whether they need the coaching now or later. Other criteria to think about is do you support your highflyers to excel further or those with challenges such as on PIP (personal improvement plans – those with specific ‘issues’).
Do you have the right resources for accommodating leadership coaching? This is an important question you must answer as you try to create a structure for leadership coaching. This is not just money to run the programmes, but perhaps the process and structures to bring all the learning into the organisation, meetings, reviews, EAP (employee assistance programmes) alignment to HR / Talent Management goals etc.
Communicate with your staff
Don’t wait until you have hired a leadership coach before informing key stakeholders. Let the staff know as early as possible so that they can start preparing for the programme/their development ahead. You should also keep them abreast of the benefits, time commitment, content, structure of leadership coaching and those involved in the process. Also, make sure that the stakeholders know the objectives of the leadership coaching.
Establish an enabling environment
Leadership coaching is bound to bring lots of changes into your organisation if you’re serious about bringing it in. There are few, if any, better ways to develop your people both efficiently (it aligns to needs) and effectively (it’s proven to work). Unfortunately, the change can lead to inconveniences and challenges for your staff too, especially at the initial stage. If the environment is not welcoming to the change, it will be difficult for people to adapt and bring in their upgrade skills a, values and competencies.
Therefore, you need to establish an enabling environment that encourages people to share their thoughts and feelings about their coaching and also be more open to reveal their vulnerabilities. Skilled coaches have this understanding central in their mind to support the programmes carefully. Regardless of how people feel at the initial stage, the environment must be able to support them and their growth.
Partner with an expert leadership coach
Leadership coaching requires the coach to have lots of experience and expertise. So, if you are not a professional leadership coach, you may have a hard time coaching your staff or indeed create issues. You often see internal Hr or Talent Management staff taking quick courses in coaching or taking on life coaches to carry out corporate roles as they are cheaper. HR, Organisational development people have a lot of skills across many areas from payroll, recruitment, managing budgets, employment law and process etc. It’s simply not possible for them to also be expert leadership coaches. The level of skill needed for leaders coaches should not be underestimated. Some of the best coaches have taken 20 years or more to hone their expertise, with many thousands of coaching or training hours. When choosing a professional coach go for experience, similar programmes run before with testimonials, and if they have both corporate experience and psychological – emotional (is best) training then that’s a good start to answer the big question: How do I choose the right leadership coach?
In view of this, you shouldn’t hesitate to hire an experienced leadership coach that can offer high-quality. We’re aware of a few, here’s one that specialises in leadership coaching for teams. As they use psychometric tools that actually develop leaders this can save much time in creating efficient programme design, speed up the progress of growth once it starts and pin-point strengths and vulnerabilities in a profound manner. (At this point we should note that these EQ assessments show strong evidence of development aligned to personal and work goals whereas personality or other psychometrics cannot do this). By hiring an expert, you will work with someone who understands how they can help your staff to develop the right leadership skills from a diverse range of perspectives (workplace, personal , corporate ways of work, business acumen, psychological growth, leadership imperatives and pitfalls etc.)
Be clear when partnering with a leadership coach. It’s very useful to first identify the specific skills you want the coach to have, their way of working and the existing culture of your people. Also, look at their experience in the field and determine whether they are right for your organisation or not.
Practice what you preach
It’s not enough to teach your staff how to grow, communicate, collaborate etc. and use their leadership skills to achieve the goals of your organisation. You as a sponsor or leader need to walk the walk. In other words, you need to show them how to lead and collaborate with others by practising what you preach. Show them how it is done and you will be surprised by how others will learn quickly. Sponsors and leaders must be the first to engage in culture change programmes. They must be seen to lead.
Allow your team members to grow
Leadership coaching is more than merely learning the skills required to be a leader. It is a long-term process that involves giving people room to develop their ‘authentic’ way of being, their style as well as the relevant competencies for their role, people skills and awareness of what great leadership is. Therefore, after the leadership coaching, you should notice significant changes to how people think and work. You may want to think about the KPI’s that these relate to before and during the programme to show and measure change.
Also, you need to make your staff comfortable enough to come to you whenever they need further clarification or assistance on how to be a good leader at work. You must note that people will make mistakes as they try to collaborate with others, but they can learn and grow from their mistakes. Give them space and support to do so. Similarly, you should continue to understand what resources can help them grow and do your best to provide these explicitly showing you are listening to them. This builds trust which supports leadership skills development
Let people prioritise their duties
While trying to develop their leadership skills, your team members must not forget their duties. They shouldn’t get caught up in the overall agenda of the organisation and, as such, overlook their duties. As they perform their duties, they can practice the skills they look to develop; communication, collaboration, empathy, and other important skills that a leader needs.
Keep track of the results
Leadership coaching requires a commitment of time, money, and effort. Therefore, as an organisation, it should offer you a good return on investment (ROI). But how do you know the ROI of leadership coaching? By measuring its results. Notably, the results can be numerical or not but there are ways to make the qualitative measurable;
How has leadership coaching improved the overall performance of my organisation? What has my boss noticed? Looking at my annual reviews of things to work on – these can be scored year on year. Look at how you could measure enhanced collaboration or minimise silos? Is there any improvement in communication among various teams, particular challenging relations easing? Are my employees comfortable with the process? Do you use an annual survey and track changes? These are important questions that can help you to keep track of the results of leadership coaching as you implement it.
We hope you learned a little from this introduction to leadership programmes and we wish you lots of success with implementing leadership coaching in your organisation.