Does a coaching style of leadership replace all other leadership styles/approaches?
The coaching approach is not only reserved for those who aspire to become a professional in the accompaniment of individuals, groups or teams or for human resources professionals who find that their interventions tend to become even more strategic after specific coaching training, it is also for managers who aspire to understand “The art of one to one: the coaching style” as Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee explain in Primal Leadership.
Primal Leadership (first released in 2001) is still a must read for leaders interested in broadening the range of their effectiveness. In it, Goleman outlines 6 leadership styles and encourages us to develop our ability to flex into all 6, developing them and knowing when each is appropriate. Goleman’s 6 Leadership Styles are: Commanding, Visionary, Democratic, Coaching, Affiliative and Pacesetting. He advises to use Commanding and Pacesetting sparingly and with caution as they both have significant fallout if overused.
A Coaching Leadership Style/Approach has potential for huge impact on the performance, loyalty and joy of those you lead, with no risk of fallout. That said, it is not the only one leaders need. It does not replace the need to for the other 5 styles and once you begin to see the innovation and commitment it unleashes, it is likely to become one of the styles you most commonly draw on.
Defining a coaching style
A coaching leadership style is one that recognises the talent in those they lead – it means cultivating a habit of noticing each person’s unique contribution, calling it out in them by acknowledging what you see.
It also means not settling or simply accepting that you’ve been dealt a ‘bad hand’ with a team you’ve inherited. The number of times I hear managers complaining about the quality of people they’re ‘stuck with’ far outweighs the reality. 9 times out of 10 the people themselves aren’t the issue. It is often true that people show a lack of engagement, loyalty and don’t go the extra mile – however, it is just as often true that the behaviour is as disappointing to them as it is to you as their manager. What they need is for you to step up as their leader. To seek to understand the impact of culture, systems and structures that have called out this “mweh” state they’re in. To listen for and call out their value and to make the alignment between opportunities inherent in their role with what drives them as people. A coaching style of leadership equips leaders to call out the best in individuals/teams and to create environments where personal conviction and self-leadership, not command and control, drives personal accountability. These are the most productive environments. The places people clamour to come work, the cultures which allow you to have your pick of the best of the best who want to come work with you.
Our CEO tells the story of how, as a high-achiever herself, she used to gravitate to the ‘top 10% of exciting people’, truly believing that most people weren’t as interesting or exciting to work with. A few years into her coaching career she realised that her world view had changed completely. The shift was that she now had the tools and the skill to both see and call out the interesting, exciting parts of people and discovered that the talent she was only able to see in 10% of people previously she now saw in over 60% of people she works with. The pool of people is the same, the result is completely different.
Margaret Heffernan’s Ted Talk of “super chickens” tells more on this story.
A coaching style includes holding people accountable to their actions, producing a high level of accountability. It requires the courage to have the hard conversations, establishing true agreement around mutual expectations and performance and following through on the established outcomes – even if that means someone needs to leave the company as they’re not living what has been agreed, or they cannot agree to what is required of the job.
How does a coaching leadership style impact culture and performance?
Over the past 13 years of my career and in my more recent role as Chief People and Purpose Officer on Virgin’s V Team, I’ve seen how purpose-driven businesses go further, faster and reach greater heights.
Holly Branson
As described above, we as leaders need to shift from feeling stuck with a “meh” team to noticing and calling out the best in our team, while bringing new skill and permission to hold people accountable and to part ways when staying together isn’t a fit.
All people have a desire to be seen, valued, belong and to have impact. What we want to be valued for and what we want to impact differs. Developing a coaching leadership style enables you to see/hear people in a way that they feel seen and valued which, in turn, enables you to connect their desire for impact with the opportunities their job offers. This shifts their motivation from doing what they’re told to do, to doing what they’re internally driven to do. It also means that you hold them accountable at a higher “core purpose” level, freeing you from micro-managing oversight.
When a coaching leadership style becomes one of your primary styles you create a culture where your people are inspired to create great ideas, and where your people connect their purpose to something bigger than themselves. As a leader you realise your purpose is to serve others; continually inspiring your team to become the very best version of themselves, lifting the organization to a higher level of performance.
Ken Robinson
The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued.
When employees feel valued, they will contribute more and perform better at work. They tend to be more engaged, passionate, and incredibly loyal.
What are the limits of a coaching leadership style?
Of Goleman’s 6 leadership styles, the top three across all leadership levels were democratic, coaching and visionary styles. These three styles are highly positive and create resonance within the organizations with the potential to boost performance. A wider range of leadership behaviours in upper leadership positions has been shown to be associated with increased leader effectiveness.
This makes intuitive sense, as coaching focuses on connecting the individual/team with the company vision – if the leader over relies on coaching, the team gets’ confused as it appears the leader has no vision. Likewise, there are times a command and control leadership is needed – times where lack of an urgent response will have dire consequences or when tough decisions need to be made. As leader, you may get input, but it is clear that the final decision is yours.
Some decisions aren’t critical and it will be impossible to get agreement from everyone – those times you may need to lean into a democratic leadership style.
Once you’ve developed competence in all 6 styles, you may move seamlessly between them, using multiple in a single day or even a single interaction.
Like all the styles, a coaching leadership style has its limits, and it brings incredible value in most contexts when it is developed as a dominant style.
Be a great leader and remember to listen with the intention to learn from your team not just supply a response. Use your teams knowledge, advice and wisdom to improve and achieve anything!
Keith Fisher
Interesting Study on use and effectiveness of Goleman’s Leadership Styles from the UK’s National Library of Medicine
What does it take to develop a coaching leadership style?
Being a leader isn’t easy. It’s easy to bark out orders and dismiss someone if they are not performing, but that’s not really leadership – leaders like that may have been tolerated in the 18 and 19 hundreds, but it never passed as leadership. It takes the real, hard work of self-leadership to effectively coach, inspire, and motivate your team to perform at their optimum best. That’s the fundamental difference between someone others desire to work with and someone people tolerate because they have a leadership title. Being a leader is both a privilege and a responsibility. As John Maxwell says, “you must be willing to pay the price of leadership if you want the perks of leadership”.
Developing a true coaching leadership style requires more than a change in language, or simply reading a book about it. It requires courageous self-leadership. A willingness to let go of old ways of being-and-doing in order to make space for and try out new ways of being-and-doing.
A coaching style is so counter-intuitive that, as a leader wanting to develop the skills you need to commit to a process over time. A process that takes you through various stages – a stage of awareness that creates openness – a stage of letting go and being OK with ‘not knowing’ – a stage of trusting and trying out new learning until it becomes integrated behavioural learning – an acceptance that cycling through these stages is your new reality.
There are a number of good coaching skills programs for leaders out there and we’re particularly proud of the impact of ours. If you’re reading this because you’re wondering how to instill more of a 21st Century approach to your leadership culture, we invite you to consider our program as one of your options.