Coaching skills; the key to exceptional leadership

Ten compelling reasons to prioritise investing in coaching skills for your leadership team

With so much written on what a good leader looks like, it can be overwhelming and tricky to decide where to invest time and money to support your leaders to be the best they can be.

There are many ways to approach such a conundrum…

• whether you decide to invest in greater clarity around defining your unique leadership culture and working back from that,
• or perhaps looking to the future that’s coming our way in order to be prepared for the skills needed to face it,
• or perhaps just copying what your competitors are doing, do what everyone else is doing

There is however a way to simplify your life…by focussing on the one super skill that you will most definitely need to include regardless of which route you choose (except the last one.. that would most certainly lead you into troubled water).

And that is focussing on the skills of Coaching for Leaders.

Here are ten reasons why investing in coaching skills for all your leaders will be the best investment decision you make:

1. Talent retention will improve - coaching skills enable leaders to have more powerful, honest, creative and collaborative conversations with their people. Meaning people won’t leave because they have a sh*t boss (the number one reason people leave organisations is poor leadership and management).
2. Profits will soar - when you embrace a coaching approach to leadership, the creativity in a business starts to soar. With more creativity comes more effective decision making and problem solving. People are encouraged to become solution focussed and not problem obsessed.
3. More time to focus on the future and strategic review - With a more empowered team (through a coaching approach), leaders end up with more time to focus on the job of leading (rather than fire fighting).
4. Navigating risks becomes easier - Building on the above point, with leaders more able to look to the future and review what’s working and what’s not working, your organisation becomes even more resilient and resourced for facing into future challenges.
5. Team morale improves - when people feel seen and heard, they experience a greater sense of belonging. Coaching skills give leaders the tools they need to be able to do this for all people.
6. Performance of teams and individuals soars - coaching teaches us how to unlock the potential in others, rather than tell individuals what to do or share how we would do it, coaching enables leaders to help their people discover their own way of solving problems, which is way more empowering and resourceful in the long term.
7. Inclusion and diversity thrive - coaching gives us the skills to be able to meet individuals where they are in their own worlds. A bi-product of developing coaching skills, is the capacity to hold a non-judgemental space, to get more curious about different ways of being and to access empathy over sympathy. Important skills if you really want to embrace diversity in your business.
8. Creativity thrives - at the heart of coaching skills lies a powerful question, ‘what if…’ It encourages us to believe that more is possible and to get creative around challenges. Creativity enables flow and swallows stagnation.
9. Wellbeing and resilience blossoms - when people feel empowered and engaged, there is space for creativity and inclusive cultures are cultivated, wellbeing and resilience becomes the norm and burnout a thing of the past.
10. Great place to work - imagine a workplace alive with the benefits from the above nine points. Now, who would want to leave a place like that?

If you’re curious about the potential for your organisation to thrive through prioritising coaching skills for leaders and managers, my advice is to start small.? Get your board or most senior team together to learn the skills first. You’ll soon start seeing the results and want to roll it out across all other leaders and people managers in your organisation.

To find out more about our approach to developing coaching skills in leaders, email [email protected] for a no obligation brew and a chat.