The coaching leadership style is probably one of the newest and most guiding form of leadership. Rather than making all the decisions and also delegating the tasks yourself like that in the autocratic leadership style, the coaching leader usually takes the lead in order to get the best out of his team. A coaching leader should also not be confused with a coach, but he does have coaching skills. These skills help him develop and improve as well.
The basis of the coaching leadership style is the dynamic interaction between the leader and the employee. It also gives the rise to the valuable insights. It is done by the means of providing and receiving the feedback and asking questions which motivate the conversations. A good coach always ensure that the learning process of his client is promoting independence as well as responsibility over the employees.
A coaching attitude of a leader always ensure that the employees always continue to work independently without even removing the initiative from them. Coaching leadership always ensure that the employees are performing the work independently and are quite involved in their work.
Conditions for the effective coaching leadership
As coaching and leadership have a very fine line of difference within, the leader should always have several additional competences. The coaching leader is always closer to his employees than the leader and would probably know the employees better.
The coaching leader always makes sure to look where the opportunities exists for their employees in order to improve themselves. This element makes sure that everybody within the structure of work is involved in a productive lifestyle.
As far as social skills are concerned, when the leader functions as a coach, the employee could easily call on him in case of personal problems. In this process, a lot of privacy related situations could be discussed. These matters must be handled with professionalism so as to create a vert safe climate for the employees, for which it’s important that the coaching leader has integrity.
Along with that, good communicative skills are also quite invaluable in each of the leadership styles, including the coaching leadership style.
Pros and cons of the Coaching Leadership Style
Adopting a coaching leadership style can work relatively well, but is not always as effective as desired. However, the natural leaders could easily switch between styles at the right time. Some of the pros of coaching leadership style are –
Positive organizational culture
A coaching style always encourages the sense of responsibility and commitment in the employees. The reason is because the leaders express the feeling towards their employees which they believe in the qualities and competences which they have.
Self-Development
A coaching leader offers the employees with a lot of freedom to brainstorm the tasks which must be carried out. Coaching leader can just be defined the words of ‘Try this!’ That’s all.0
Knowledge
The leader is always closer to the activities on the work floor than an external coach, which means he has a better idea of the on goings in an organization and that he can monitor it very well.
Cons of Coaching leadership
It has unmotivated employees
Coaching does mean developing the qualities within, but when the employees don’t feel motivated, they won’t invest any kind of effort in their personal development.
It’s not the key to productivity of an employee
Coaching is mostly used to solve the unproductivity of an employee. However, this element can have different causes, where therapy could be a better option than coaching.
