When you hear the word “coach”, what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the players’ names?
Coaching today is not just reserved for sports teams. It is now one of the most common and important concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?
Coaching levels the playing field.
According to Daniel Goleman, coaching is one of six emotional leadership styles . Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders implement in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when members of a group or team are qualified and motivated, but do not understand the long-term goals of an organization. It includes two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team forces members to work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have the same level of ability and commitment to a goal.
A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. A coaching leader also manages different perspectives, so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests.
In a big organization, leaders need to align the staff’s values and goals with those of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.
2.Builds up confidence and competence.
Individual coaching is a wonderful example of situational leadership at work.
It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedback; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. A leader may adopt a more coaching approach for less experienced members, depending on the individual’s ability and commitment Usually, this happens
in the case of new staff. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks holds regular feedback for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.
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Promotes individual and team excellence.
Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement so that they perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. They also achieve individual excellence in this process. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. To achieve harmony of music from the different instruments, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble and as a result, they individually improve as an instrument.
Develops a high commitment to common goals.
A coaching leader balances the pursuit of immediate goals with long-term goals toward an organization’s vision. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; And creating an action plan to achieve those goals can help keep members motivated and committed to shared goals.
Produces valuable leaders.
Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he cannot preach or practice what works. A coaching leader loses credibility when he cannot preach or practice what works.
This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent in his/her field, communicate openly and encourage feedback, and have a clear idea of the organization’s vision. Through biased and purposeful learning, members pick up the same best practices and behaviors from the coaching leader, transforming them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member has good coaching experience, he or she is most likely to do so when given a formal leadership role.
Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team.
Your members expect you to be the last to give up or bail in any situation, especially in times of crisis. A coach leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time in each individual, and the whole team. Moreover, the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.
