What is Leadership Coaching?

Leadership coaching is a collaborative process that helps leaders increase self-awareness, clarify goals, develop skills, and improve performance. It combines reflective conversation, feedback, skill practice and accountability to produce measurable growth.

When to Use Leadership Coaching

• New leaders transitioning into role
• High-potential talent preparing for promotion
• Leaders facing performance or people-management challenges
• Teams needing improved leadership behaviours
• Organisational change requiring adaptive leadership

Core Coaching Models & Frameworks

Step-by-Step Leadership Coaching Process

1. Engagement & Contracting: Clarify coaching scope, confidentiality, logistics, duration, and success metrics.
2. Assessment: Use interviews, 360-feedback, personality instruments (e.g., MBTI or others where appropriate), and performance data.
3. Co-Create Goals: SMART outcomes aligned to organisational priorities and leader values.
4. Design Development Plan: Mix of coaching sessions, skills practice, reading, mentorship and stretch assignments.
5. Implement & Coach: Regular coaching sessions (biweekly or monthly) using models like GROW; set between-session experiments and practice tasks.
6. Measure & Adjust: Track progress through milestones, feedback, and objective KPIs; refine plan as needed.
7. Sustain & Transition: Create maintenance strategies, peer support, and transfer of learning to daily practice; close the engagement with outcomes review.

Typical Session Structure (60 minutes)

1. Check-in & progress on actions (10 min)
2. Clarify focus for today (5 min)
3. Explore current reality & obstacles (15–20 min)
4. Generate options & experiment (15 min)
5. Agree on action steps & accountability (5–10 min)
6. Summary & close (2–5 min)

Powerful Coaching Questions (examples)

• What outcome would make this coaching successful for you and your organisation?
• What strengths can you leverage right now?
• What pattern do you notice in how you respond under pressure?
• What would you do differently if you were not afraid of failing?
• Who do you need to involve to make this change easier?

Development Techniques & Interventions

• Behavioral experiments: practice new leadership behaviours in low-risk settings.
• Role-play & rehearsal: feedback-rich practice for difficult conversations.
• Shadowing & mentoring: observe good leaders and debrief learning points.
• 360° feedback conversations: structured reflection on multi-source input.
• Action learning sets: peer coaching on real organisational problems.
• Mindfulness & resilience training: for stress management and presence.

Measuring Impact — Metrics to Track

• Behavioral KPIs: frequency of coaching conversations, delegation rate, 1:1 effectiveness scores.
• Business KPIs: team retention, engagement scores, productivity metrics tied to leader’s remit.
• Self-report & 360 ratings: pre/post changes in competencies.
• Outcomes of specific projects led by the coachee (on-time delivery, stakeholder satisfaction).

Sample Development Plan (90 days)

Common Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them

• Vague goals: ensure SMART outcomes linked to business impact.
• Conflicting expectations: align sponsor, HR and coachee at contracting stage.
• No practice between sessions: set small, measurable experiments and review them.
• Over-reliance on assessments: use data plus observation and narrative learning.

Ethics & Confidentiality

• Agree on confidentiality boundaries upfront — clarify what will be shared with sponsors.
• Obtain consent for any 360 feedback and data sharing.
• Maintain professional boundaries and refer to therapy when personal issues limit performance.

FAQ