For me, I wish I had some foundational coaching skills in my early career as a manager, executive and business leader.
I cannot state the power that having this one skill in making your life as a leader not only so, so much easier, but as a KEY in unlocking the potential of your team for breath-taking performance.
So my first book given to me as a senior manager for a large corporate business by Max Landsberg called the 'Tao of Coaching' available on Amazon on the link here, was a sea change in my thinking about helping my team to maximise performance.
One of the key reasons why the concept of coaching made so much sense to me, was because of my performance in sport at a high level. Understanding the power of a great coach to maximise my performance was a given - and so it was very easy to see the benefit in a business setting.
Ok, so now that preamble is out of the way, I would like to provide some outcomes highlighting the power of coaching and some key tools and tips to start you on your business coaching journey.
- Builds Self-Awareness and Accountability: By applying the principles of coaching will help your senior leaders reflect on their strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots, enabling them to adapt their leadership style and take responsibility for outcomes. This clarity boosts decision-making and reduces friction in team dynamics.
- Aligns Vision and Goals: By facilitating discussions around shared objectives, a leader-as-coach ensures the team isn’t just working hard but working together toward the same priorities, reducing silos and misalignment. I cannot stress the importance of how coaching should build a team dynamic where everyone in the team know EVERYBODY'S role and responsibility.
- Enhances Communication and Trust: By having a more coaching approach to relationships can encourage open dialogue, active listening, and constructive feedback, which strengthens relationships and resolves conflicts that often plague senior teams under pressure.
- Drives Problem-Solving and Innovation: Rather than providing answers, coaching prompts team members to think critically and creatively, fostering a culture of agility and resilience—key for navigating complex business challenges. Those who you who remember my writings around 'Test the Thinking' will understand the power of this approach. This approach allows you as a coach to understand how your team is thinking and therefore helps to open up opportunities for change and mindset issues on performance.
- Boosts Engagement and Retention: We have the stats on this through our work with coaching senior leaders over the last 20+ years. Senior leaders who feel supported and challenged through coaching are more motivated and less likely to burn out or disengage, preserving institutional knowledge and stability.
So a few tools and techniques on coaching approaches that you can use TODAY.
- The GROW Model (for me the best model for handling people in a purposeful way)
- Leadership annual 360-Degree review (see our model here)
- Powerful Questions (Test the Thinking - example here)
- Active Listening and Mirroring
- Delegation Tools & Techniques (see our previous newsletter here)
- Strengths-Based Coaching (e.g., Clifton Strengths)
- Action Learning Sets
- SMART Goal Setting
- Start Small: Begin with one-on-one sessions (30-60 minutes monthly) to build trust before scaling to team coaching.
- Model Vulnerability: Share your own challenges and growth areas to normalise the process for senior leaders.
- Tailor to Context: This is super important to note. A CFO might need data-driven coaching, while a CMO might thrive on creative problem-solving—adjust accordingly.
- Measure Impact: Track KPIs like team engagement scores, project completion rates, or revenue growth to quantify coaching’s effect. Our 360 Leadership Survey is a fantastic process as a means of capturing year on year quantitative and qualitative data. The data does not lie folks.
So if this is the first time that you considering a coaching style to your leadership capabilities then just start and reach out here if you want some reassurance on the approach using the link here.
Believe me. By adopting these tools and techniques, a business leader can transform their senior team into a more cohesive, adaptable, and high-performing unit. The key is consistency—coaching isn’t a one-off fix but a mindset shift that compounds over time.
