Do You Need a Leadership Coach?

by | Mar 7, 2022 | Blog

Hiring a leadership coach can be an excellent idea, but it is a decision that many companies make too late in their career. There are many reasons to consider hiring a coach:

  • New, or inexperienced leaders sometimes hire a leadership coach to learn essential leadership skills or gain confidence in a new leadership role.
  • New companies can benefit from early leadership training to define company culture and understand how best to represent that culture.
  • Seasoned leaders may hire a leadership coach to solve a specific challenge, or accelerate the success of a particular goal.

The goal of a leadership coach is to provide the leader with new skills and concepts that improve their confidence and reach desired results. The coach helps the leader to reach their goals by supporting them and guiding them to achieve their goals, as a coach would in any area of life. This is their job, to support you in reaching your agreed goals by training you in skills and techniques that will improve your work.

Leadership coaching differs from leadership training in this way. Leadership training is a broad-stroke approach that can help guide people with their goals, while leadership coaching is highly personalized and focused on your company goals.

Benefits of Getting a Leadership Coach

A leadership coach is a guide, a counselor and motivator, a partner, and an experienced conversationalist who can understand the intricacies of your business and industry with detached scrutiny.

Companies that choose to hire a leadership coach do so for many reasons. What they are looking for are answers, and a coach is a great way to learn more about the best ways to achieve your goals. Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits that business leaders feel that they gain from hiring a leadership coach.

Solidifies Essential Skills

Studies show that a new or inexperienced leader will solidify the habits of their entire leadership career in the first 3-9 months on the job. Working with a leadership coach early in your career is a good way to ensure that you adopt the habits of the type of leader you want to be and learn how to identify your weakness.

Achieve a goal

Everyone faces obstacles to their goal achievement. Sometimes, those obstacles can seem invisible. A leadership coach can work with a leader to identify the challenge that is preventing them from achieving goals and guide them on how to move through the difficult times with purpose, and confidence. Sometimes achieving a goal will mean making hard decisions, and a good leadership coach helps a leader through the decision-making process.

A Well-Rounded Leader

Great leaders often change industries, and each industry has its challenges. The style of leadership that works in banking, for example, might not work best for an eCommerce. Leaders who have lots of skills sometimes need to learn how to adapt those skills to support their team in a new industry. It is arrogant to think that there is only one way to do anything, and having someone advise on how to adapt is a valuable asset for any leader.

Gain Confidence

We all have moments when our self-confidence wavers. This can be due to internal and eternal experiences. Company leaders can face challenges when having to make complex decisions, and while many such leaders have other people to discuss business matters with, having a trusted mentor that is outside the company can help a leader to find the confidence to make decisions based on the assessment of facts and a from a distance.

Faster Progress

Sometimes a leadership coach will have faced the same questions you have more than once, and they already have a few good ideas about how to overcome a hurdle. Rather than trial and error, an experienced leadership coach can guide you through the scenarios and tell you how they can apply to your business and your goals, moving you through the process faster.

Adapt Faster to Your Leadership Role

A 2012 study found that it takes up to one year (or more) for someone in a new role to become as productive as their predecessor. However, with a leadership coach at their side, new leaders can accomplish this much faster. They can integrate changes faster and improve the running of the business in the ways for which they were hired.

Conclusion

A leadership coach is an asset to your whole company. They can not only help to optimize the performance of your leader, but they can also help motivate your whole team. Whether new leaders are adapting to the role or an existing leader needs questions answered, there are many good reasons to have an expert cast their critical eye over your business.