When Daniel Goleman published Leadership that Gets Results in 2000, he identified six distinct leadership styles: coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching. At the time of publishing, Goleman remarked that coaching as a style was the least preferred, and least used, of all the styles in the 3000+ leaders surveyed.
Twenty years and one pandemic later, times have changed. Today, businesses across the world are recognising the power of building coaching cultures within their organisations and are investing in the development of their people as coaches.
Since the world went into lockdown a year ago, leaders and their teams have needed to adapt quickly to a transformed working world. I spoke with many people managers in March last year who expressed real concern about how they would be able to support their teams and achieve the results that they needed to, now that they couldn’t be physically with them. Listening in (and even jumping in…) to the work that needed doing was no longer a viable option in the newly virtual world.
On the other side of the table, we had teams who were battling the motivation and engagement hurdles of long-term, enforced home working within a pandemic. This recent Harvard Business Review report shows some of the collated mental health themes of the pandemic, where low engagement and difficulty focusing feature heavily. As a result, businesses and leaders have been wrestling with how they can best support the motivation of their teams, in the face of the varied challenges that COVID-19 has brought.
This dual context has required leaders to abandon ‘command and control’ techniques and move towards an approach which encourages their direct reports to think – and speak – for themselves. The role of the leader has transitioned from someone who spends most of the time directing, and towards someone who facilitates their team’s development: coaching, rather than telling.
Sir John Whitmore, one of coaching’s founding fathers, described coaching as ‘unlocking people’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn, rather than teaching them’. The pandemic has shone on a spotlight on the need for leaders to enable learning, by asking purposeful questions and listening well to the answers. At its heart, coaching is a communication skill as much as it is a leadership capability.
By taking this approach, leaders can build accountability and ownership in their teams – enabling individuals to take responsibility for themselves and their performance. Simultaneously, the non-directive style builds autonomy – an important intrinsic motivator, as Daniel Pink speaks more to in his book Drive.
With a hybrid model of home/office work predicted for many organisations in the future, the skills of coaching will continue to be well-positioned to get the best from people operating within this new context.
If you’re interested in an introduction to the coaching approach or looking for an opportunity to refresh on the fundamentals of a coach’s toolkit, I’ll be running a 90-minute virtual workshop on the topic on April 28th at 1.30pm UK-time. Please email Georgia.spiteri@adaptis.co.uk to confirm a place.
This blog was produced by Alice Burks, Consulting Director at Adaptis. With a Masters in Contemporary Culture, and currently studying psychotherapy, Alice designs and delivers leadership development programmes for our UK and international clients. She is certified as a Brain Based Coach by the NeuroLeadership Institute and has extensive experience coaching individuals at all organisational levels.