Do you know the value of leadership coaching? Does it matter? Well, it certainly matters if you are in a position of authority.

Are you an executive, a business owner, a supervisor of employees, or a coach? If you are in one of these positions, or any number of other positions, you definitely need to know the value of leadership coaching.

What is Leadership Coaching?

In short, leadership coaching is about helping to create leaders. The longer answer is that leadership coaches help build a leader’s ability to achieve short and long-term team or organizational goals. Leadership coaching is personalized and customized to fit within each individual’s leadership styles.

Leadership coaching doesn’t make leaders out of followers; leadership coaching makes more powerful leaders out of those individuals ready to lead. Leaders are most likely born and made!

What is the Value of Leadership Coaching?

Though there is not much academic research on the value of coaching, there have been a few studies that looked into how much value coaching provides.

A 2001 study by Merrill Anderson analyzed a leadership development effort put forth by a Fortune 500 company that involved its middle management. The results showed measurable financial benefits in work quality, productivity, employee satisfaction, and customer satisfaction. It was determined that the company experienced a 529% Return on Investment (ROI) from leadership coaching.

If you were to make an investment, any investment, would you be happy with a 529% ROI? I bet you would!

Other studies, and much anecdotal evidence points to great value when using a leadership coach to improve leadership skills for executive, managers, and coaches.

The Superhero Dilemma – Who Needs a Leadership Coach?

Though Americans watch plenty of team sports, we also admire and idolize the superstar; the lone wolf of athletics who rises above a team and accomplishes team goals by himself or herself. The same can often be said for business – we admire the lone CEO or business owner who enters the public consciousness because of great achievements.

This is the superhero executive – this is what we often hear about in the news. This fascination with superhero execs and the culture and climate in American business of individual exceptionalism makes it harder for other executives to seek out coaching help. To ask for help may allow for perceptions of weakness or incompetence. No leader wants to appear weak or incompetent!

Realizing the Value of Leadership Coaching

There are certainly great organizational leaders who never needed a leadership coach. Think about Steve Jobs – I seriously doubt he hired many personal leadership coaches. But what made Steve Jobs great is exactly what a leadership coach can do for other aspiring leaders. Steve Jobs had an innate ability to see the company from the outside, and to think about the organization (and its products or services) like someone standing in the near future, not in the past or present.

The value of leadership coaches is that they can view the organization and an individual’s skills from an outside perspective. They can also help define the future by identifying and clarifying goals. The value of leadership coaching is that coaches can see the forest through the trees – the big picture, if you will.

As business environment become more global and competitive, executives will need every competitive advantage they can find. The value of leadership coaching will become even more evident as leaders come to the realization that leadership coaching offers real value. In fact, when an executive hires a leadership coach, instead of showing weakness or incompetence, it shows leadership.

Any individual in the position of authority who fails to comprehend the value of leadership coaching will soon find that slogging through the muck of the business world gets tougher and tougher when they go it alone.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article… Thank you!

Fred Philips
Business Coach
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