Leadership vs Coaching. What’s the difference?
Which is better? Leadership or Coaching?
What does your organisation need to be using?
First, let’s take a look at what each is.
Coaching
In every great story, a hero is looking for a guide to overcome a villain.
And not just any guide.
They are looking for a guide with a plan.
They are Luke Skywalker, looking for a Yoda to give them guidance to battle, and win against Darth Vader.
You can think of coaches as guides.
Coaching is a professional relationship that helps people produce extraordinary results in their lives, careers, businesses or organisations, helping them bridge the gap between where they are now and where they want to be. Coaches partner with their clients to design the life they want, bring out their clients own brilliance and resources to achieve excellence and create purposeful, extraordinary lives.
By creating clarity, coaching moves the client into action, accelerating their progress by providing greater focus and awareness of all the possibilities which exist to create fulfilling lives.
Coaches honour the client as the expert in their life and work and believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole.
It’s the coach’s responsibility is to:
Discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve.
Encourage client self-discovery.
Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies.
Hold the client responsible and accountable.
Ask the client quality questions.
Help the client learn and develop new skills.
Get the client back on track when they are derailed or stuck.
Coaching is a process that can be offered in different situations and different environments based on the needs of the individual.
This process helps clients dramatically improve their outlook on work and life while improving their leadership skills and unlocking their potential.
Leadership
Leadership is delivering outcomes through people.
Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act toward achieving a common goal.
In a business setting, this can mean directing workers and colleagues with a strategy to meet the company’s needs.
The person who successfully marshals their human collaborators to achieve particular ends is a leader.
A great leader is one who can do so day after day, and year after year, in a wide variety of circumstances.
An outstanding leader is also an expert motivator, project manager, strategist and performance strategist.
So then, which is better? Leadership or Coaching?
It depends on the needs of your organisation.
And the skill sets of the people within it.
Whether they are best suited to being guides or leaders.
And, of course, those who will be receiving the leadership or guidance.
It’s a matter of putting a microscope on your organisation at all levels, assessing the skills sets vs. needs within, and going from there.
The new norm? The leader, or manager, is a coach.
Rapid, constant, and disruptive change is now the norm, and what succeeded in the past is no longer what will succeed in the future. It’s just impossible for one person to have all the right answers and ignorant to think they do. To cope with our new norm, companies are moving away from traditional command-and-control practices and toward something very different: a model in which managers give support and guidance rather than instructions, and employees learn how to adapt to constantly changing environments in ways that unleash fresh energy, innovation, and commitment.
When people are guided, self-directed and empowered, the results are extraordinary.
Coaching with leaders and organisations is often cited as a highly valuable tool for developing people and businesses.
The Institute of Coaching cites that over 70% of individuals who receive coaching benefited from improved work performance, relationships and more effective communication skills. They also reported that a huge 86% of companies feel that they recouped the investment they made into coaching plus more on top. Studies show that coaching is effective at reducing procrastination and facilitating goal attainment, and there is a growing body of empirical research that supports the findings that business coaching does facilitate goal achievement.
The key takeaways?
Know your staff.
Know their competencies.
Know their needs and optimal development and learning styles.
And empower them.
Also, hire more people with coaching skills.
Understand how to get the outcomes and vision of the company delivered in the most efficient, effective way possible through its people.
