Adopting a Coaching Leadership Style
- Fern Beauchamp
- Jun 11
- 4 min read
Over the course of my career, I’ve come across all kinds of leaders, from the truly inspiring to the ones who make you quietly vow to do things differently.
Here’s what’s behind it: according to the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), 82% of UK managers step into their roles without any formal leadership or management training. No wonder so many inherit the belief that great leaders must have all the answers. The truth? The most effective ones ask better questions instead.
Research from the HCI and ICF (2023) shows a 72% correlation between coaching and higher employee engagement.
That’s why adopting a coaching leadership style isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s one of the most practical ways to build more self-aware, inclusive, and motivated teams.
Contents
What Is a Coaching Leadership Style?
A coaching leader develops people by asking powerful questions and creating space for reflection, rather than providing all the answers.
Coaching isn’t about telling...it’s about UNLOCKING
Coaching leadership is a style that focuses on developing individuals’ skills, abilities, and potential.
Rather than simply directing or managing, coaching leaders work alongside their team members to help them grow professionally and personally. Their priority is to help their team members reach their full potential, which ultimately positively impacts the business's bottom line.
A leader who adopts a coaching style typically:
Actively listens to others: This means paying full (full, full, full) attention to team members, seeking to understand their perspectives, ideas and challenges.
Asks powerful questions: Using open-ended questions to stimulate thinking and problem-solving skills.
Encourages self-reflection and problem-solving: Promoting self-awareness and learning from experiences.
Provides regular, constructive feedback: Offering specific, actionable feedback that helps individuals grow and improve.
Strength spot: Helping team members identify and use their strengths intentionally.
Supports employees in goal setting: Working with team members to establish and achieve meaningful goals.
Creates a safe environment for experimentation and learning.
Benefits of Coaching Leadership
What’s so great about adopting a coaching leadership approach?
A coaching leadership style can create numerous benefits for leaders, their teams and, ultimately, the entire organisation:
For Leaders
Reduced burnout: Leaders who try to solve everything themselves risk burning out. Coaching style leaders empower others and themselves.
Enhanced leadership skills: Coaching others improves communication, empathy, and emotional intelligence.
Increased job satisfaction: Oh, it can feel good! Leaders often find greater fulfilment in developing others than in a command-and-control leadership style.
For Team Members (and the Organisation)
Enhanced performance: By focusing on individual development, coaching leaders can help team members improve their skills and performance. This often leads to increased productivity and better overall results for the organisation.
Improved employee engagement: Coaching leadership empowers employees. When team members feel supported in their growth, they’re more likely to be engaged and committed to their work. In fact, a recent study suggests that “coaching leadership has a direct and significant positive impact on employee engagement” (Tang et al., 2024, p.10).
Stronger relationships: The one-on-one nature of coaching helps build trust and understanding between leaders and their direct reports. This can lead to improved communication and collaboration across the organisation.
Increased innovation: By encouraging experimentation and learning from failures, coaching leaders create an environment where innovation can thrive. Team members feel more comfortable taking calculated risks and proposing new ideas.
Boosted confidence and skill development: Coaching helps individuals acquire new skills and refine existing ones. And as team members overcome challenges and achieve goals, their self-confidence grows.
Better retention: Employees who feel supported in their professional development are more likely to stay with their organisation. This can lead to reduced turnover and associated costs.
How To Adopt a Coaching Leadership Style
The traits above describe what coaching leadership looks like. All of them are learnable skills, not fixed personality traits.
👀 Explore:
Inclusive Leadership and Coaching
Here’s something that often goes unnoticed: coaching and inclusivity reinforce each other directly.
Directive leadership (‘here’s the answer, do it this way’) implicitly assumes a universal context. It works best when the leader’s experience maps onto everyone else’s. Coaching doesn’t make that assumption. By asking questions and working from someone’s own goals and perspective, coaching leaders naturally create more room for different ways of thinking, working, and problem-solving.
This matters in practice. Coaching style leadership can help leaders:
Become more aware of their own biases and blind spots, because good coaching requires genuine curiosity about someone else’s perspective
Build psychological safety: the environment where people feel able to speak up, disagree, and bring their full thinking to a problem
Draw out perspectives they might otherwise miss, which is both the right thing to do and, consistently, the thing that leads to better decisions
Inclusive leadership isn’t a separate capability from coaching leadership. For most leaders, developing one tends to develop the other.
Challenges and Considerations
While coaching leadership offers numerous benefits, it’s not without challenges.
It requires a time investment from busy leaders in leadership skills development and in providing space for team members to learn and develop. It can be tempting for a busy leader to dive in and solve challenges, especially under pressure to deliver solutions fast.
Another option worth knowing about: leadership group coaching, where small groups of leaders practise coaching skills together under a professional coach. It tackles the time problem: one session developing multiple leaders simultaneously, with the added benefit of peer learning that solo development doesn’t give you.
For coaching leadership to be effective, there needs to be organisational support and a culture that values learning and development. A coaching leadership style may face resistance if the broader culture is very hierarchical or focused on short-term results.
Summing Up
Adopting a coaching leadership style can be a powerful way for leaders to empower themselves and their teams.
By focusing on individual development, building a growth mindset, and creating an inclusive environment, coaching leaders can drive improved performance, engagement, and innovation within their organisations.
Coaching leadership isn’t a personality type. It’s a set of skills. And skills can be learned. If you’re ready to develop yours, explore what’s possible.
