The leadership coaching style is an optimal leadership style to develop the autonomy of your team members and promote learning through mistakes (supervised!).
First of all, you should know that being a leader coach is not the same as being a professional coach! That said, you can use powerful tools from professional coaching and add the coaching approach to your toolbox.
In this article we will see what a coach is, in what context the style of leader coach is most appropriate and three tools to implement it.
What is a coach?
In English, a coach is a type of bus that allows you to travel a long distance.
Neither the driver nor the bus decides the path for you. At some point you made a decision to go somewhere, chose your transportation company, bought your ticket, all in the hope of getting to your point B successfully!
A coach is a person who accompanies you from point A to point B. In professional coaching, point B is decided by the coachee. In business, you and your manager probably have an agreement on point B. This is usually what comes out of performance reviews! Several “B” points to reach!
And a leader coach?
A leader coach can use certain tools from professional coaching to create autonomy and motivation in his team. He accepts not to have answers to everything, or to give the answers at all times even if he has them. He accepts that there is a process of learning, trial and error, while having a clear goal in mind.
For example: if someone on your team wants to get a more senior position, the manager will gradually give more room to that person, while managing risks and offering clear guidance, according to an established objective.
In what context is the style of leader coach appropriate?
The coaching leadership style is appropriate when a person is motivated to learn, wants to develop and there is a goal to achieve.
These elements are key: 1-motivation 2-goal and clear results to be achieved.
If you don’t have this, the tools below won’t lead to the results you want.
Now let’s see what tools from professional coaching you could use.
How to be a leader coach? Three tools.
1. Ask questions
A coach leader asks more questions than he answers!
Tell yourself that when someone comes to you with a question, they often have an idea of the answer! We generally observe a need to validate or discuss a possible solution rather than a need to have the solution.
Promote autonomy and accountability by asking more questions.
Example #1
You receive a question such as:
- What do you think I should respond to such and such a customer?
- What are the priorities this week?
I invite you to answer with another question:
- With the information you have, what would be your answer?
- Let me know what priorities you see, and we’ll see what adjustments need to be made next.
In many cases, the person’s answer will be the right one and you will only have to thank them for their question.
This is not trivial. You will create a sense of motivation and confidence.
Example #2
You make a request to someone on your team. To make sure the person understands and has everything in hand, you can ask one of these questions:
- How will you go about making it all on time?
- What are your steps?
- What is your game plan for this file?
- If you need help and I’m not available, how will you be able to find the answers?
Example #3
A person makes a mistake. Be curious. Ask:
- What happened?
- What do you learn from this? (the leader coach is there to allow the other to learn)
- What will you put in place to avoid repeating this mistake?
- What could you teach others to save them time and avoid this mistake?
Example #4
A person is stuck in a task or folder, try:
- What exactly is blocking it?
- How can you get around this?
- What options do you see?
âš Be careful, questions such as: “Don’t you think you should do this or that?” are not really… Any questions. These are opinions with question marks!
Favor open-ended questions, i.e. those that require you to develop an answer.
2. Listen and reflect
To adopt a leader-coach style, listen more than you talk. The more you listen, the more you will observe situations that are repeated and offer reflections easily.
Before giving a reflection (feedback on what you observe), always ask permission. This will create openness in the other person, that is to say that the other person will really listen to you more.
“Will you allow me to give you feedback?” can work wonders!
Examples of reflections
- I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but every time you work with this person / or on this type of file, you have more questions. Did you notice?
- If so, follow up with “What do you need to be able to manage your files more smoothly?”
- You often ask me about clarifying your priorities and that it blocks you in your work when you don’t get the answer quickly. What could be put in place to make it easier for you to access the answers and move forward more easily?
A reflection always ends with a question. You can ask the person to validate your perception or share a solution.
This other blog article also talks about questions and listening, read it by clicking here.
3. Invite action
What is the best way to learn? I often say that you can read books about learning how to ride a motorcycle, but only by riding it will you really learn all the nuances and gain confidence.
Theoretical learning alone does not have a great impact in practice. A coach knows that. That’s why it propels you into action between each coaching session.
As a leader coach, your role is to leave space for the other person to learn, but these actions can very well be suggested by you, as long as they serve the objective (point B) and are accepted by the other person.
Example: Let’s say you’re coaching someone to delegate more. Give him a mandate to delegate a task to someone you trust this week and get back to you with the result. If the person doesn’t know how to do it, give them your best trick and ask them what they could try! And little by little, you invite him to delegate more, then you will ask him what his next step will be and finally the person will be autonomous on this goal. Unlike mentioning to a person to delegate to each of their performance evaluations, but without support… You’ll get results by getting people to act and follow up on what you’ve been telling yourself!
In conclusion
The leadership coaching style is a style during which the leader invests in learning people, developing their strengths and solving their weaknesses. Its goal is to grow and promote autonomy.
If you want to learn more about the six leadership styles, read this article.
If you would like to learn more about the essential skills of certified coaches, come and consult them on the ICF Quebec website.