It’s been said time and time again, “every coach needs a coach.” Managers, executives, business owners and entrepreneurs, hold essential leadership roles within their organizations that require on-going  coaching to continuously lead with a fresh perspective, expand knowledge, increase confidence to manage with heightened decision-making skills.

My question to you, who is coaching your leadership?

One skillset in a leader’s toolbox must be the ability to coach. Coaching leaders cultivate their followers for the times ahead rather than just current business tasks and immediate objectives. Focusing on coaching requires relationship building and constant dialogue that makes clear employee expectations and how their work contributes to the organization’s vision.

Coaching leaders focus on personal development and employee perspective which leads to synergy and team collaboration. Using coaching techniques brings out the best in people so that the people bring out their best in work environments. Whitmore, in his book, Coaching for Performance, agrees that coaching draws out the best in teams and individuals leading to improved performance and productivity. Research has also shown that there is a 21% business improvement when coaching leaders are in action.

As a consultant, I’ve learned that the idea of improved performance and increased productivity is glamorous to many leaders. However, when one must do the work to produce the outcome, glam turns into gloom. Coaching is not gloomy but rather misunderstood.

Let’s breakdown the misnomers of what coaching really is. I’ll start with what it is not.

1. Coaching is not consulting. Consultants give advice by making strategy recommendations. When consultees receive advice, they are not able to make their own considerations and these experiences decrease their ability to successfully problem solve in the future.
2. Coaching is not counseling. Counselors are licensed to provide treatment to individuals as a means of healing traumatic past events that act as barriers for reaching the counselees’ potential in the present.
3. Coaching is not mentoring. Mentoring is sharing experiences, adding value to and abridging the gap between what’s happening in the mentees life now and what the mentee wants to see happen soon.
4. Coaching is not discipling. Discipling is where one gives advice and/or biblical content. The disciple’s focus is on growing their faith in Christ, obedience to God’s word and spiritual growth. The transformational process stems from a supernatural perspective.

Conversely, coaching is a powerful transformational process where the leader as coach uses the questioning “key” to unlock the personal and professional potential in their followers. This leads to the extraction of the coachees’ barriers, improved thinking, awareness, responsibility, and the ability of the coachee to make stable and sustaining choices for future success.

There is a coach in every leader. It’s time to unleash it.