Coaching Leadership

Also called: Conscious Leadership

A coaching leader focuses on identifying and nurturing the individual strengths of each team member and developing strategies that will enable teams to work better together.

This style is similar to strategic and democratic leadership, but it emphasizes individual employees' success.

A manager with this leadership style might help employees improve on their strengths by:

• Giving them new tasks to try

• Offering guidance

• Meeting to discuss constructive feedback

They might also encourage one or more team members to expand on their strengths by learning new skills from other teammates.

Coaching leaders focus on building trust and establishing strong relationships with their team members.

They foster an environment of open communication and psychological safety that encourages individuals to share ideas, seek feedback, and work together toward common objectives.

Why This Leadership Style Works

Coaching leaders actively support skill development and independent problem-solving. They meet ambitious business goals by creating a strong company culture and add to a business's long-term vision as valuable mentors, often even after leaving a company.

This leadership style can motivate employees as they feel supported on the team. It recognizes that each employee is unique and can build diverse and exciting teams where each employee offers something different.

This leader focuses on high performance, with employees who can communicate well and embrace unique skill sets to get work done. They also encourage team members to seek new challenges, learn from experiences, and continuously improve their skills and knowledge.

Potential Challenges

It can take a lot of time to develop employees with a coaching style, but mentoring isn’t effective for every employee.