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Leadership coaching has two meanings: working with an organization's leaders to help them maximize their abilities and effectively lead their teams. 

These two definitions collide in organizations where leaders are coached and use a coaching style with their teams, resulting in a coaching culture throughout the organization.

The leadership coaching model emphasizes active listening over lecturing, probing questions over answers, and presenting leaders and teams with options rather than directives. This coaching model is designed to help leaders and their teams maximize organizational resources to achieve self-defined goals.

Leadership coaching tends to be less directive than the previous “command and control” management style that dominated the business/organizational world (Ibarra & Scoular, 2019).

Leadership Coaching Style vs. Leadership Coaching

Leadership coaching is a broad category that includes many different coaching styles.

In a Harvard Business Review article on leadership coaching, Ibarra and Scoular (2019) use a two-by-two matrix to describe basic leadership coaching styles:

Directive coaching

A “directive” style of coaching (similar to “command and control” management in the past) consists primarily of telling team members what to do and monitoring their progress toward organizational goals. As indicated by the Y-axis of the above matrix, this is a type of coaching in which “more information is put in.”

On the other hand, the X-axis suggests that this type of leadership may have the disadvantage of “drawing out less energy.”

Laissez-faire coaching

Coaching that is directive has its time and place. At times, a more “laissez-faire” coaching style may be used. If the people reporting to you have already been told what to do and are doing it well without further instruction, it's probably best to leave them alone.

You give people less ongoing information in a laissez-faire coaching style, and they also have “less energy pulled out” of them because you put them on auto-pilot.

Nondirective coaching

The “nondirective” coaching style is based on nonjudgmental listening and questioning. Teams are given little information because you are posing questions that help them find their own answers rather than telling them things.

Simultaneously, this type of coaching draws more energy from teams because it inspires them to seek their own solutions and make progress through their own efforts.

Situational coaching

Finally, “situational” coaching is what Ibarra and Scoular (2019) refer to as the “sweet spot” in their coaching matrix. In this form, coaches strive to strike a delicate balance between being directive and nondirective, alternating between the two to varying degrees depending on the situation's needs.

Overall, situational coaching provides valuable information while also drawing more energy from teams because members know they can be called on at any time to clarify their own problems and seek their own solutions.

The Benefits of Leadership Coaching

According to a review of organizational leadership coaching research (Jones, Woods, & Guillaume, 2016), leadership coaching positively affects both overall organizational outcomes (e.g., profitability) and more specific outcomes such as leaders' skill development and emotional status.

Top advantages of leadership coaching:

Self-determination

Coaching is said to equip leaders with the resources they need to do their best work. The best coaches learn their coachees' strengths and weaknesses and assist them in leveraging their strengths to overcome obstacles to their goals.

Goal progress support and reflection sessions with the coach are also intended to be motivating and thus empowering.

New information

Coaching provides new insights into various problems that a leader may face. Questions and discussions can bring to light deeper issues and assist the leader in overcoming them.

Free thinking

Coaching is intended to broaden thinking styles and encourage greater flexibility in thinking by asking questions that prompt the leader to consider alternative points of view on a problem.

Improved performance

Coaching that focuses on a leader's weaknesses significantly improves both attitude and ability. These skills include working with difficult or withdrawn team members and maximizing their talents.

Better communication

Coaches assist leaders in achieving maximum clarity in their messaging. They identify any flaws in a leader's communication style and have them practice ways to overcome those flaws.

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