You are the executive CEO of a successful owner operated enterprise in Wrexham, your business generates over $500K EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes), you feel like there is potential for more and you intend to take your company to the next level? If this is you schedule a call with one of our executive coaches to estimate the ROI of executive coaching for your business.
The right questions indicate best leadership quality
Managers need the space and time to actually manage. Managing people is tough, really, really tough. Employees ask for the managers' trust and compassion, so managers need to be able take the time to establish trust, starting conversations off with questions like, “How are things going?” and, “How can I help?” Such open questions potentially trigger a diverse and remarkable dialogue on various subjects, including but not limited to progress, improvement engagement, culture, productivity and performance. And, probably most important, they help identify the fires before we’re at high emergency alarm status.”. Reality-focused questions to ask are for example “What are the key things we need to know?”. The leaders should hone into what their team members have as a reply. Are the leaders missing something important? Are the managers talking about operational problems but missing out on the human side of things? Or the other way round? When coaching managers get their subordinates to slow down and think this way, they often lose themselves in contemplation and then an idea comes along, and off they go, engaging with the issue on their own with new inspiration, fresh energy and a new perspective. This step is crucial, because it stops team members from overlooking pertinent moving parts and leaping to conclusions. The manager's job at this point is just to ask the right questions and then get out of the way.
Coaching your team to higher performance and responsibility
Great leaders implicitly have internalized the transferability of emotions. This process is also known as emotional contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1993). Great coaching managers are careful with their reactions in times of crisis or emergencies. They wait for better opportunities to generate empowerment, inspiration and excitement when a new momentum is needed within the team and become proactive in avoiding fires they have become used to put out themselves. Ongoing crisis management cannot be an effective leadership style. A better approach to work is to delegate authority using cooperative leadership style and put trust into the team and let the team members learn to handle complicated situations themselves.
How do coaching and mentoring contribute to leadership development
As a coach, it is helpful to clarify the role beyond just being a manager. For a manager to be effective in coaching his team it is necessary to specialize in professional and executive presence, as well as to improve strategic communication and presentation skills. According to Mouratidis, Vansteenkiste, Lens, Sideridis studies on the self-determination theory has shown that feedback loops motivate intentions to continue pursuing targets and fosters dedication and commitment.
The role of coaching in performance management
A research on the effectiveness of leadership coaching in organizations made by Jones, Woods, & Guillaume, 2016, has shown that leadership coaching has a positive effect on overall organizational outcomes (e.g. EBIT) and more specific outcomes such as leaders’ skill set evolution, leadership development, personal growth and emotional status. Coaching makes leaders remove mental and emotional barriers from their management style. This helps coaching managers see a clear route to success of the mission. This helps them to think more strategicly and make better and more effective decisions. As a consequence the orgranization generates better results.
Which coaching skills for managers can help them transform into leaders
Improving managers' leadership coaching skills is an iterative loop, depending on the feedback which will provide the team leaders with valuable insights into areas where they can improve. Instructor feedback form serve to get valuable information from the team members, with which the leaders can develop their skills. Great leaders assist minimize the “noise” and distractions that tend to get in the way of a team member's ability to figure out what’s going on and how to react. Great leaders know how and when to ask the right question at the right time, when to give feedback, when to advise, how to get the person to focus on one thing only, and how to gain dedication and commitment. Managers can do this, but they have to let go of a few limiting beliefs and implement a few mindsets and skill sets.
In most companies executive coaching goals are not achieved
According to the self-awareness of many managers about their coaching skills, most of them assume that they are good at it. But actually the contrary is reality. A recent study in which 3,761 executives assessed their own coaching skills has shown the discrepancy with how those skills were perceived by their direct subordinates. The results did not align at all. 24 percent of the executives significantly overestimated their coaching skills, rating themselves as above average while their team members ranked them in the bottom third of the group. That is a significant divergence. The authors of the study concluded that if managers think they do well at coaching but actually they are not, this poll suggests that those managers might be worse at coaching as they imagined.
How to build management leadership competencies
It’s easier said than done to become a coaching manager because a completely different mindset is required to pull it off as an everyday pattern throughout all management levels of a company. At most firms, a big gap still yawns between aspiration and implementation. Bridging that gap is key. Great leadership does not happen from one day to the other. Instead great leaders are made through dedication, commitment, and execution. By taking the initiative and proactively working to become a better coaching manager, the manager will not only elevate his own performance, but more importantly the one of his team members, and by extension, his organization. Even though it is easier and faster to just do telling and commanding taking the coaching route is really worth the effort. In the beginning coaching tends to be slower because it requires some patience and time to begin with, and it takes deliberate exercise in terms of learning by doing to get really good at it. It is an investment in human resources that has a higher return than any other management skill. Team members learn, grow, develop, improve performance and results, subordinates gain more recognition, and organizations increase their bottom line. Entities that choose to take that route should first focus on how to develop coaching as an individual managerial capacity, and then on how to turn it into a company wide one.
The fine line between situational leadership and executive coaching
Situational coaching represents the otimum zone to be in in the context of a manager as a coach. All managers should pursue to become expert at situational coaching. Situational coaching involves balancing between authoritive and cooperative leadership style depending on what the current situation requires. Managers as coaches should first focus on and become really good at non-directive coaching, until it becomes almost an instinct, and only then start to mix that newly strengthened capability with the implementation of management by objectives and directive coaching.
The benefits of leadership team building and coaching skills
Great leaders deploy peer-to-peer coaching. Coaching offers some of the most effective and most valuable learning in an organization. Coaching managers tend to use their regular staff meetings as a collaborative problem solving session. This builds cohesion among their team members, and inspires them to think together about how to solve urgent organizational situations and challenges. It is also a very effective and rational way for the leader to coach multiple team members in one setting simultaneously, thus maximizing efficiency.
True leaders deploy employee engagement to nip fear in the bud
Managers shoud do their best to destroy fear in the workplace. According to Edmondson, 2002, managers that assist team members develop purpose in their function within the team do not experience fear among their team members. When a cohesive, vision-focused taskforce collaborates and deploys team members’ strengths toward common objectives and targets, the accomplishment gets accelerated. According to Nelson et al., 2002, employees improve performance when they sense purpose, recognition, morale, significance and overall job satisfaction. Managers should practice improving effective communication skills in every interaction daily. Modeling these skills, as a manager or leader, will set the expectation for the entire organization and reduce fear within the team. According to Jonsdottir & Fridriksdottir, 2020, practicing active listening, in particular, will help communicate respect and attentiveness to team members and their needs giving no grounds to any fear to develop among the employees.
Ways to implement the leadership coaching process
When Human Resources hires an external coach it is primarily focused on helping managers address specific issues and challenges. Some companies hire such external coaches to assist with further leadership development. Human Resources staff have a significant and unique chance to expand their function in coaching management. Compared to a personal development journey, any growth requires time, commitment and dedication. Even though a coaching training is always a good move, great leaders can start improving these skills today, independent from any budget restrictions or limitations.
Has coaching become the sixth management function?
Everybody involved in management should know about the five management functions. French mining engineer Henri Fayol defined the role of a manager as consisting of five functions of management: planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling. Another theorist, Luther Gulick, chunked commanding and controlling into one function being directing and added staffing, reporting, and budgeting, also known as POSDCORB, which is still used nowadays in management. So, how does coaching and leading fit into all of this? Leadership is one of the most vital management functions completely overlooked by these theorists. For the realisation of a mission an effective leader has to provide clarity, guidance and purpose. Without it any mission is set for failure. This can be accomplished best by switching from commanding and directing to a non directive leadership style.
Getting the best from a coaching oriented leadership style
What makes the difference between an effective, inspired team and a desperate one? What are the issues teams are confronted with within a business? How is it possible to turn the tables and reverse the situation? What is your company’s vision? How clearly is it communicated with its employees? How well is it recognized and shared across all levels of management and staff? Coaching by objectives and bt visions can assist the managing leader and his / her team comprehend the significance of shared and individual values. Which values and rules is the company's culture built on and made of and what is their potential of making the business grow and thrive? What is needed to build an effective team where each subject is energized and inspired to contribute the best of him- or herself? Cooperative leadership coaching style is the tool for a manager to effectively resolve issues within a team, increase their performance and significantly improve the quality of the communication and experience of the team members. As a result the bottom line increases as well for the company.
Why developping strategic leadership skills is important
Managers should seek ongoing training. If the leader wants his team members to engage in constant ongoing improvement of skills, then the manager is going to have to lead by example and educate him- / herself first. The manager should consider seeking out training to improve his / her leadership skills, whether it’s one class, a leadership certification program, or completing a more formal executive education or coaching program. Nowadays the manager has various options to get higher education be it through an online or a presential program or a combination of both. Getting more educated leads to better qualification and once these fresh new skills are implemented and shared with the team the effects will be noticed.
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