Volker Hartzsch is an experienced business leader who has founded several successful companies, including Hybrid Evolution Marketing Inc and Profit Business Systems Inc. This article will look at business leadership and how coaching can help professionals develop and polish their leadership skills.
All professionals need to have their thinking challenged at times. However, without sufficient support, working in a challenging environment can have a negative impact, eroding trust and driving down morale. In addition to challenging protégés, business leaders need to create a safe and supportive culture, assuring students that their voices are heard and that their values and feelings are understood. Recognising that coachees need to feel psychologically safe at work, coaches need to create an environment where risk-taking feels rewarding, maintaining an open attitude and remaining as nonjudgemental as possible.
Coaching sessions are not about the coach but the coachee. Ultimately, it is the student who should decide which aspects to work on and how to go about improving the problem. Although it is great when the coachee’s own agenda aligns perfectly with their own, coaches should never impose their personal priorities on the relationship. Business coaches need to facilitate and collaborate, focussing on their students’ needs rather than filling lessons with their own pet theories and life stories. Although the coach may suggest various options for responding to a particular problem, ultimately the decision should rest with the student.
Business leaders learn, grow and change in tandem with their real-world experiences. Coaches should help coachees reflect on past events, analysing what went well and identifying aspects with potential for improvement. Fostering experiential learning to fuel development, coaches should position their students for continual improvement long after the lesson has finished.
To be an effective leader, an individual must have a solid grasp of their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Similarly, coaches need to understand how their behaviours impact those around them, demonstrating self-awareness themselves to encourage their students to develop a similar level of self-awareness.
Coaching by either internal or external experts continues to be important and valuable in the business world. To understand the needs of their students, coaches need to listen carefully, paying close attention and repeating comments back to build understanding. Coaches should ask pertinent questions to draw out more information and stretch the student’s thinking. Great coaches challenge and support their students, coaxing them to think about issues from a different perspective, enabling them to uncover answers through inquiry, exploration and openness.
Coaching can have a huge impact on both an individual and organisational level, helping professionals to build stronger relationships, creating a common language for more productive conversations, and instilling a culture of psychological safety that increases engagement and fosters development.