Benefits of leadership coaching

"Coaching unlocks personal potential and paves the way for accelerated growth and achievement. It's a catalyst for creative thinking and leads to deeper insights about yourself, others and situations." Vicky Crane, Benefits of leadership coaching.

Are you thinking about leadership coaching? Whether you have tried coaching before, or have never experienced coaching, it is useful to consider what can be gained from working with a coach. Or, perhaps you are thinking about introducing coaching within your organisation and want to consider the merits of using this intervention on a wider scale. There is a wide evidence base to support coaching as an effective means of improving the performance and well-being of leaders at all levels. Let's consider the wide ranging benefits of leadership coaching.

Coaching or mentoring?

Benefits and purposes of coaching and mentoring are similar.

• Both are founded on the premise that organisational benefits will occur when individual performance is improved (Swart & Harcup, 2013; Ford, Kraiger, & Merritt, 2010).

• Both seek to support the leader’s self-awareness, decision making, interpersonal skills and goal achievement - and improvements in these areas are likely to impact positively on productivity and motivation which ultimately impact on results (Blackman et at, 2016; Jones et al, 2016).

• Both provide emotional benefits for the leader, e.g. improved positivity, self-perception, self-efficacy, and well-being plus reductions in stress, anxiety and loneliness (Seligman, 2002; Theeboom et al, 2014).

• Supporting leaders to flourish is perhaps a social and ethical obligation. It is in everyones interest to have happy leaders and happy teams. There are many organisational benefits such as reduced turnover, reduced absences and increased job satisfaction leading to better output (Jones et al, 2018; Grant et al, 2009; Ozkara San 2015; Seligman 2002).

Whilst similar, there are perhaps distinct reasons for selecting either mentoring or coaching.

Mentoring derives from the concept of ‘apprenticeship’ where experienced craftspeople passed on their knowledge and skills, and therefore mentors often have leadership / sector experience and tend to be matched to colleagues who are new to leadership or recently promoted into a more senior leadership position. In practice, they often offer a 'blend' of mentoring, advising, and coaching. Mentoring tends to take place over an extended period of time (e.g. a year or longer), making it extremely beneficial for younger leaders, helping them to grow and mature within an organisation.

Mentors can:

·        Assist leaders to solve their own problems;

·        Acting as a catalyst or sounding board;

·        Offer links to people or resources.

Smith (2007) broadens this to include critical friend, guide, listener, role model, strategist, supporter, tactician, teacher.  Jacobi (1991) extends the idea of ‘linkage’ to include increasing the mentee’s visibility, extending protection, aiding in career development and influence expansion.  For internally appointed mentors there are advantages to the organisation, e.g. development of “critical-constructivist” relationship (Crow, 2012) in which mentor and protégé learn together; mentor satisfaction and gratification from mentoring, and mentors inspired to perform better as leaders (Aravena, 2018).

Mentoring can be thought of as more ‘pull’ whist coaching is perhaps more ‘push’, e.g. “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance.” (Gallwey, 2001). The origins of the word coach in English occurred in the 1500s in reference to 'carriage', implying that at its core, coaching is about helping people get from where they are to where they want to be. Coaching is often for a shorter time period with a specific focus.

The International Coaching Federation see coaching as 'Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential - coaches honour the client as the expert in his or her life and work and believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole.' www.coachfederation.org

The ICF identified four key responsibilities of coaches:

• Discovery, clarity and alignment with what the client wants to achieve;

• Encourage client self-discovery;

• Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies;

• Hold the client responsible and accountable.

"I can state with great clarity that having an effective coach has made a significant difference in my ability to grow and develop as a senior leader. There was a time that I believed that I could push forward on my own [...] but I have learned that having someone in my professional life to serve as coach, sounding board, and accountability partner has had a significant impact on my job performance and my ability to grow and meet the growing challenges of my job!" Division President, Fortune 1000 Enterprise. (Longenecker & McCartney, 2020)

Why should senior leaders invest in coaching?

Coaching is especially valuable for seasoned executives and leaders because of its transformative capacity.  Experience leaders are already established, already have habits and ways of working. One theme of coaching can be considering how to unlock untapped strengths and support the leader to assess and realign their activities in order to reach improvement.  How can the leader work differently? How can the leader improve their own performance? Benefits can be derived from digging deeply into current practices, behaviours, skill-set, decision making, thought processes, and can support the leader to objectively review their beliefs, values and assumptions. The coach can help the leader to achieve ‘transformation’ (Dagley 2010; Jowett & Passmore, 2021), as in:

A significant shift in...

• World view

• Self

• Ways of thinking

• Behaviour

• Capacity

To break the chains of habit and typicality, the coach provides the structure, questioning, reflective activities, pattern spotting, probing and exploring that helps the leader to wrestle with issues (Dagley, 2010; De Haan et al, 2011) and address the problem Mezirow (1990) describes as “what we perceive and fail to perceive, what we think and fail to think” because of our current frame of reference. Change is hard to achieve, particularly when trying to achieve this alone. A benefit that many leaders and organisations value in coaching is its ability to foster changes in behaviour.

Coaching can also help leaders to see issues, events, themselves, their team and their organisation with greater clarity.

For me, one of the key benefits of coaching is how it can enable the leader to create a 3D mental construct of themselves, of their environment, of issues they face, of situations, or even of the organisation as a whole. It literally creates the space and objectivity needed to view issues in a totally new way. Clients are able to examine the construct from different angles, play about with its shape, see it with greater objectivity, make links and connections that were previously obscured, and see the variables and factors at play. Coaching can help leaders to see blind spots, become more accurate in their self-awareness, increase objectivity and be better placed to act with clarity and intentionality. This can bring about benefits for the coach, but also for others they work with and ultimately benefits the organisation.

For some leaders, the coaching benefits can be about re-learning how to thrive in the workplace. Organisations operate at tremendous pace, leaders are often dealing with rapid change, sector level issues can become particularly tricky, and leaders usually have to manage different generations of employees. Many middle leaders, for example, have found coming to terms with leading and managing Generation Z requires a new set of skills and understanding. Coaching can therefore be the companion to leaders on their worklife journey, offering the chance to re-establish themselves and 'go again' with renewed enthusiasm.

One key benefit of coaching is how it copes with the complex. It can help the leader to take into account Nadler and Tuschman's 1997 congruence model - of the three primary inputs to the system of environment, resources available and history of the organisation. "We might begin to consider not what is the situation but how it is situated." Coaching, unlike group training for leaders, can take account of the unique situation and the full set of variables. Digging deep into complexity of an issue can help the leader to focus on the right changes. This links to Rittler and Webber's topology of problems where they define 'tame problems' as complicated problems that have probably occurred before and are resolvable through a series of non-linear acts, and 'wicked problems' that are complex rather than complicated, have no right or wrong answer, no 'stopping point', are novel, where any apparent solution also generates problems, and has to take into account a large amount of uncertainty. In coaching, it may be necessary to ask questions which help the leader to consider if they are categorising a problem as tame, wicked or a critical situation. And by doing so, they can consider how best to approach it. Mazirow 1990 talks of coaching helping leaders to tackle 'disorientating dilemmas' - when an individual can not make sense of the present by using past frames of reference. The coaching enables the leader to examine own values, beliefs and assumptions to arrive at new meaning. In these cases, three layers of critical reflection can be useful : reflecting on content (what people perceive, feel, think and act on); reflecting on process (what people perform and function, and their perceptions of the way they do); reflecting on premise (why people do what they do). This is an example of how coaching can aid leaders in undertaking very specific types of reflection that make thinking more impactful.

"Exceptional coaches distinguish themselves where the work is complex, idiosyncratic, personally demanding, uncertain and poorly communicated. Executives experiencing the work of exceptional coaches tend to find it both challenging and rewarding." Dagley, 2010. Coaching recognises the complexity of leading an organisation and the challenges of leadership and as such the journey is unmapped and unscripted. It is not always possible to know where coaching will lead. It provides a space in which to explore and uncover unanticipated benefits are well as planned for outcomes. And this is one of the beauties of coaching. It is calls on the rigour of science and research, and at the same time has the ethereal qualities of an artform.

"As if the coaching conversation is a pebble being thrown into a pond, questions are the catalyst that sets off a reaction. The ripples of a coaching conversation often reach well beyond the actual conversation itself." Julie Starr, the coaching manual, page 6.

10 benefits of leadership coaching

Transformative

Coaching can be transformative, changing the way you perceive situations, think and act. This can fundamentally shift your leadership style and leadership effectiveness.

Vitality, job satisfaction, motivation

Coaching can breathe fresh vitality into your work, helping you achieve increased levels of job satisfaction and higher levels of motivation. This can help you achieve goals and have greater impact.

Serenity, perspective, flow

Coaching can increase feelings of serenity by helping you gain perspective, process emotions, explore difficult situations, find and resolve issues, realign thinking. This can help you to find your state of ‘flow’ at work. An improvement in your emotional state can often bring about improvements in effectiveness and efficiency.

Strengthening & learning to excel

Coaching can enable you to build on your strengths and celebrate your unique profile, and this in turn can help you develop your authentic leadership style.

New habits & improving systems and processes

Coaching can help you to analyse current systems, processes, ways of being and ways of doing. Coaching can help bring intentional thought into action, develop new habits, and improve systems and processes.

Leverage research and best practice

Coaching can support you to explore best practices, leverage research, and consider the variables that influence outcomes. It can help you have greater clarity on the current picture, gain new insights and support you in setting out plans for a brighter future. Coaching can help you implement effective practice.

Relationships & team effectiveness

Coaching can help you to have a better, deeper understanding of yourself and others, aiding relationships and improving team effectiveness. Increasing self-knowledge can lead to improvements in inner harmony, greater self confidence and higher self-efficacy.

Sustaining

Coaching can help sustain you through difficult times and provide protective space to help process tricky situations.

Reduce feelings of isolation

Don’t walk alone, have someone to talk to who understands the issues leaders face.

When you consider the benefits of coaching, can you afford not to invest in this intervention for leadership development?

The leader as a variable on the impact of coaching

Does everyone benefit from leadership coaching? In order to achieve the benefits of coaching, it is important to understand what coaching can and cannot offer and gain knowledge of the optimum conditions that are likely to lead to its success. For example, the leader needs to adopt an open mindset in coaching sessions, have a willingness to change, be honest and open, and 'wrestle with issues' (Dagley, 2010; De Hann et al, 2011). Leaders willing to be vulnerable, self-reflective, open to ideas and committed to the process are likely to see the highest gains from coaching. The contracting process in which coach and coachee set out how they will work together is therefore of critical importance, and the coaching relationship is paramount.

REFERENCES related to coaching benefits:

Aravena, F. (2018). Mentoring novice school principals in Chile: what do mentors learn? International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 7(3), pp. 219-230.

Blackman, A., Moscardo, G., & Gray, D. E. (2016) Challenges for the Theory and Practice of Business Coaching: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence. Human Resource Development Review. 15(4), pp. 459-486. https://doi-org.ezproxy.uwe.ac.uk/10.1177/1534484316673177 [Accessed 12 February 2024].

Dagley, G.R. (2010) Exceptional executive coaches: Practices and attributes, International Coaching Psychology Review. 5(1), pp. 63–80. doi:10.53841/bpsicpr.2010.5.1.63. [Accessed 23 January 2024].

de Haan, E., Culpin, V., Curd, J. (2011)  Executive coaching in practice: What determines helpfulness for clients of coaching.  Personnel Review. 40(1), pp. 24-44.

Ford, J. K., Kraiger, K., & Merritt, S. M. (2010). An updated review of the multidimensionality of training outcomes: New directions for training evaluation research. In: S. W. J. Kozlowski & E. Salas (Eds.), Learning, training, and development in organizations. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 3–64. 

Grant, V. (2015) Isolation, stress and tears … the truth about being a headteacher. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/feb/03/headteacher-how-deal-with-stress-isolation-tips Guardian Newspaper. [Accessed 02 February 2024].

Jacobi, M. (1991) Mentoring and Undergraduate Academic Success: A Literature Review. Review of Educational Research. 61(4), pp. 505.

Jones, R.J., Woods, S.A. and Guillaume, Y.R.F. (2016), The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of occupational and organizational psychology. 89 (2), pp. 249–277.

Jones, R.J. (2021) The business case for coaching. In: Passmore, J. (Ed). (2021) The Coaches’ Handbook. Routledge, p13.

Longenecker, C., & McCartney, M. (2020) The benefits of executive coaching: voices from the C-suite. Strategic review of HR, 19 (1), pp22-27.

Mezirow, J. (1990) Fostering critical reflection in adulthood. Jossey-Bass Inc.

Ozkara San, E. (2015) Concept Analysis of Nurses’ Happiness. Nursing forum (Hillsdale).

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Passmore, J (Editor) (2021) The Coaches’ Handbook, The Complete Practitioner Guide for Professional Coaches. New York: Routledge.

Seligman, M.E.P. (2002) Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfilment. New York: Free Press.

Smith, A. (2007) Mentoring for experienced school principals: professional learning in a safe place. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning. 15 (3), pp. 277-291.

Swart, J. and Harcup, J. (2013) If I learn do we learn: The link between executive coaching and organizational learning. Management learning. 44 (4), pp. 337–354.

Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., van Vianen, A.E.M. (2014)  Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology. 9(1), pp. 1-18.DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2013.837499