Leadership coaches work with high achievers and executives to hone their skills in a way that helps them bring positive changes in their life. They help them grow their achievements that enhance their credibility and achieve a more motivated and inspired approach to their work and the people they are leading.
Here, I will talk more about how important it is for good leadership coaches to be leaders themselves.
What Does a Leadership Coach Do?
Leadership coaching helps clients in various areas of their life to help them reach their maximum potential in their professional lives. They are different from business coaches and life coaches and are specifically focused on honing an already high achieving person into an ideal leader that will boost their company and make it stand out among the rest with maximum employee satisfaction and productivity.
Some areas in which leadership coaches help a leader improve are as follows:
- Improving one’s leadership skills and approach to leadership
- Conflict management
- Becoming more assertive and charismatic
- Time management and realism
- Relationship with employees
- Handling different types of people in everyday business life
Leadership Coaches vs Leaders
When asked the question, does a leadership coach need to be a leader? I always say: No. A leadership coach’s main job is to be a good coach, not a good leader. A good leader can use their acquired knowledge and experience to further coach young people who are just beginning to dip their toes into the world of leadership.
But do I think it’s a requirement, or that only those who have been leaders can one day become leadership coaches? Absolutely not.
Not all coaches have to be leaders, similarly, not every good leader can make a good coach. To be a good coach one needs to be a good teacher. And to be a good teacher you need a certain type of temperament and patience, one that is vastly different from what you need to be a good leader.
Difference Between Leadership Coaching And Life Coaching
Life coaches help individuals to achieve their goals and dreams by improving their lifestyle and approach to their work and everyday life. This also includes their interpersonal relationships with their family, friends, and colleagues.
Life coaches not only help their clients lead productive lives but also happy ones. The market for life coaches is not that strong, as few people opt for such a thing.
Leadership coaches, on the other hand, have an entirely different demographic of clients. They work with people in executive positions in companies e.g CEOs or CEOs in training. They help them find practical approaches to their business and employee management to maximize their business performance and workplace productivity.
They provide fruitful advice and guidelines on how to transform not only a leader’s approach to their work but also on how to utilize one’s skill and talent to extract healthy levels of employee and company performance.
The Impact Held By A Good Leadership Coach
A focused and intelligent leader attracts an effective and efficient team. A leadership coach properly coaches a leader to reach high levels of personal and professional growth. This in turn has extremely positive effects on the way they run things in their company or team.
Once a leader is engaging, confident, and has strong skills, everyone has a marked increase in trust in them and puts in even more hard work with an increased loyalty that benefits the whole organization.
I believe that a good leadership coach ensures quick results and long-lasting ones. In today’s world, everyone is focused on instant fame and success thanks to social media and viral trends. People quickly rise to success and are forgotten even more rapidly. People in executive positions now need coaches who will help them rise above this unpredictability and face these challenges effectively.
Who Can Be A Good Leadership Coach?
So the question is if a person doesn’t need to be a good leader to be a good leadership coach, what does one need? Here are some things that I think are essential if somebody wants to be a good leadership coach who will inspire visible change in their clients.
- Patience and perseverance
- Flexibility
- Effective Planning Skills
- Being a good listener
- Invoking a sense of curiosity and motivation
- Asking the right questions to determine the client’s needs
- An appreciative attitude
A good leadership coach is programmed to help others enhance their good qualities and utilize their skills and talents to be good, responsible, and effective leaders. They do not need to lead themselves to make this happen.
Teaching and leading go hand in hand, but to be a good coach is different from being a good leader. The impact of a good leadership coach is felt by entire organizations, not just one person.
