Leadership coaching might evoke many different thoughts about sometimes abstract concepts of what it means to be a leader in today’s ever-evolving workplaces. Heck, even defining what a leader is can sometimes be a challenge, even if most of us think we can see leadership traits in those in our everyday lives.

Generally speaking, leadership coaching does involve many discrete yet interconnected traits of leadership so that current or aspiring leaders can benefit both themselves as well as their organisations. The results show themselves in some of the many benefits of leadership coaching, including the five listed below:

• Build Your Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of leadership coaching is that it empowers individuals to develop their emotional intelligence (EQ). This one benefit is sort of an umbrella over all of the others.

Leadership and EQ are correlated, so a leader with empathetic ‘people skills’ and a knack for understanding their own emotions in the workplace can strive for improvement in themselves and their colleagues.

• Provide Better Feedback

To get more into specific benefits, leadership coaching allows organisational leaders to provide better, more holistic feedback to employees during performance evaluations or during times of change and transition or when facing new challenges within an organisation.

This is achieved through practising reflective listening techniques and facilitation. Ironically, leadership coaching is itself coaching, but the process of facilitation is quite different. It’s a more ‘hands-off’ alternative to direct coaching that allows colleagues to introspect and communicate more openly with one another and is widely used in human resources and organisational psychology.

• Boost Employee Retention Efforts

In late 2021, organisations all over the world are going through what is now called the ‘Great Resignation’ with employees faced with labour shortages now seeking better-paying opportunities elsewhere at a rate not seen in, well, perhaps a century or longer.

HR departments have long complained about the challenges of employee retention, so the added pressure of employees leaving en masse during the pandemic years of 2020-2021 have only added more weight onto the already heavy burden.

Strong leaders can tap into the emotional and professional needs of employees, perhaps reinvigorating their sense of purpose within the organisation and hopefully reducing employee turnover rates.

• Increase Team Performance

The pressure often placed on teams to perform can be seemingly insurmountable. Great project managers and executive team members must understand this. Putting the right talent to work within a team is not a guarantee for success. Even the brightest engineers can have clashes of personality that can bring a product launch to its knees.

A good leader understands team members, irrespective of their skillset or experience, and tap into ways to inspire them and encourage them to perform more synergistically and with minimal conflicts.

• Shape Company Culture

Company culture is itself a tricky thing to describe. Surely, it goes far beyond the shallow ‘we’re a family at XYZ company’ and deeper into the beliefs, practices, and values of an organization.

Perhaps your company culture is written in the goals and vision of the company, perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps there are some rules that are written and some that aren’t. The attitude of leaders towards company culture can reshape an organization’s core values and beliefs so that it is better aligned with the current direction or perhaps the company’s desired direction by upper management.

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