Coaching As a Transformational Leadership Practice

Coaching As a Transformational Leadership Practice 2 Year Ago · 5 min read

Talyaa Vardar

Talyaa Vardar, MA, FCPC, MCC
Executive Coach, Psychologist & Art Therapist

What is leadership and coaching? Are they two separate entities or can they co-exist together? Traditionally, we think of leadership and coaching in the world of work as separate practices.

But the world has changed a lot and in the last few years and  coaching has become one of the most important leadership practices.

The Main Reasons Why Coaching Has Become Such An Important Leadership Practice Are: 

  • Together with globalization, organizations have become more complex and matrix structures. Such a massive change requires business leaders to decentralize their power by delegating more to their employees.
  • We see more diversity increasingly that requires leaders to learn more sophisticated ways of communicating.
  • Millennials don’t like to be told and wait as passive employees. They want to become thinking partners and take proactive roles in the workplace.
  • Performance evaluation has proven to be not as effective as expected. Human Resources professionals are looking at new ways of managing employee performance and coaching conversations have proven to create an impact on intrinsic motivation and accelerated results.
  • Increased volatility results in increased workload. So many leaders feel overwhelmed because of this. Micromanagement only results in increased stress, anxiety, and eventually burnout and it has proven to be least effective. As a result, coaching has become an essential workplace practice as a way of distributing shared responsibility by empowering others.
  • An increased pace of change requires all of us to become more agile. Coaching is about supporting positive change by increasing our perspectives. When our perspective changes, we gain speed and thus, become more flexible and agile. Today’s corporations require their leaders and employees to think fast and act agile. To achieve that, leaders learn to coach their employees from decision-making process to planning; from planning to take effective action steps.

Coaching is a thought-provoking communication practice. When managers integrate coaching into their habitual management style they contact their inner power and find the courage to share this power with the outside world. What else?

  • They start to listen better and allow themselves to learn from others.
  • They start to ask better questions that make their teams think more thoroughly.
  • They become better team builders. They create a space where every team member thrives.
  • They switch their language to “we” and “us” from “I” and “me”.
  • They stay updated as their people don’t hesitate to go to them and tell them about mistakes, progress, and other things.
  • They eliminate the fear of failure through coaching their teams.
  • They know how to motivate their people from within.
  • They value diversity and use strengths as a source of productivity.
  • They know how to balance productivity and optimism in the workplace.
  • They focus on progress and future success.
  • They are not afraid to provide constructive feedback.
  • They know how to support their people to prioritize their developmental areas and coach them accordingly.
  • They perceive conflict as suppressed energy and know-how to use that energy to re-energize team dynamics.

If you are a manager or a business owner who is authentically interested in integrating coaching into your daily management practice, you might want to check out our ICF-certified coaching programs.

Our Fast Track Core Foundations ICF Certification program (Module 1-5)  will help you to learn many creative ways of transforming your innate strengths into a powerful leadership practice that will allow you to create impact and be the change you want to see in your preferred audience.

Our Business Coaching ICF Certification Program will help you to understand a macro perspective of strategic business leadership and empower yourself from within by taking ownership of your personal business success story.

Whether you choose one course or the other, both pathways will ignite your inherent leadership capacity in a fulfilling way.