The Impact of Coaching Skills on Leadership

By Bruno Raynal

Coaching and management are synonymous. If you aren’t focused on regularly coaching your team, there’s a good chance you’re not leading them as effectively as possible and an even better chance your sales are suffering as a result. Coaching creates an environment that naturally increases productivity, enhances collaboration, boosts morale, and improves performance.

As a manager, there are many coaching skills that impact your ability to more successfully lead your team. Here are a few of them:

• Problem solving plays a huge role in being an effective leader. Your team looks to you in a time of crisis-large or small-to take immediate, decisive action. Whether or not they buy-in to your decisions and follow your lead has everything to do with their respect for you. Gain that, and you will have a loyal team that trusts in your ability to solve problems before they can become disasters.

• Upholding accountability is important if you want to ensure employees take responsibility for both their individual and team performance. You make employees accountable when they understand exactly what their roles are, the goals of the department or company as a whole, and the consequences of not achieving those goals. Accountability is the skill that makes it easier to make informed staffing decisions.

• Encouragement is an underrated and often overlooked coaching skill. You need look no further than a football coach for a model-always telling his team they can do it, always believing in them. Coaching is building people up. This isn’t to say that a coach does not get upset, of course. A good coach tells the team that they are better than how they performed, and how they can deliver better results next time.

• Staying positive naturally follows the skill of encouragement. Coaching requires a positive approach to every situation. It is nearly impossible to be encouraging or solve problems with a gloomy outlook. A positive coach is a better problem solver, holds employees accountable with the right attitude, and provides encouragement when and how it is needed so the organization’s goals can be achieved.

It has been said that great coaches are made, not born. It’s true. Leadership can be learned and, in fact, must be learned for a manager to be successful. No amount of foresight and education can replace experience. Success relies heavily on a manager’s ability to connect with employees, read situations quickly, set achievable goals, develop action plans, and then motivate employees to get the job done.

Coaching and managing need to be viewed as coexisting behaviors. Succeed at one and you’ll succeed at the other. Your personal performance-your leadership-can have a huge impact on your team’s performance. Lead by example and motivate your team to follow you to achieve even greater success for your organization.

See what other skills are important to more effectively lead your team and learn more about ways to develop those leadership skills by visiting http://www.ThinkBlueThinking.com or calling 619.550.8052.

Bruno Raynal is the president and CEO of Blue Thinking, a business consulting and coaching firm. Bruno specializing in working with senior management to enhance their awareness of modern business practices and patterns so they can make informed choices, take the right action, and achieve their vision and goals. He provides both one-on-one and group coaching to build better teams. Learn more about Blue Thinking by visiting http://www.ThinkBlueThinking.com or calling 619.550.8052.

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