Leader as Coach or Everyone as Coach?

Leader as coach

In this podcast we dive into the question of whether leaders should adopt coaching as a methodology for working with their teams. Is it time to finally get rid of ‘command and control’ for good, and be more curious about those you work with? Is the leader being a coach for the team a great idea, or an idea worth binning? And is there a better way?

Highlights:

• The question of leader as coach was first brought up in an HBR article (2019) by Herminia Ibarra and Anne Scoular titled "Leader as Coach."
• The article makes clear the growing recognition of the coaching approach to leadership
• This approach is intuitively attractive.
• There are challenges to adopting a coaching leadership style, which are historical (what makes a good leader) and in terms of perception (softness is not always welcomed), and potential gender bias.
• Coaching as a leadership skill is growing in Importance today: changing workforce demographics (Gen Z, millennials) favor a coaching style over command and control.
• The value of a coaching leader is that they create an inclusive environment, encourage diverse opinions, and contribute to building long-term skills and capabilities.
• Coaching is also has a high value and low implementation cost. 

Hurdles to implementation:

• Practice and naturalness: The need for leaders to practice coaching behaviors to overcome clunkiness and discomfort.
• Expectations and misconceptions: coaching is wrongly assumed to be time-consuming. In fact coaching as a leader can lead to better outcomes more quickly.

Conclusion:

• Embedding coaching behaviours in leaders is clearly not a DedX: an idea worth binning. There is a lot about it that is valuable. We conclude that having a leader as coach is great. The build on this is that coaching skills are valuable for everyone, throughout the organisation. 

Also mentioned:

AI - Pi:  your coaching buddy. John mentions this in the podcast - using Pi to practise your coaching skills by asking it coaching questions then getting feedback on it. If you are interested in the specifics of how this works, contact john@samsas.one

If you have any Dedx suggestions email us at team@samsas.one with the subject line Dedx Idea. We would love to hear them!

John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jadm/

Anna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-wesson-54989929/

Music credit: by Yevhen Onoychenko from Pixabay

Disclaimer: The ideas discussed in this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as serious business advice. Listeners are encouraged to do their own research and seek professional advice before implementing any of the ideas discussed.