Ever wondered what happens in leadership coaching sessions? In today's blog, we will share the journey, right from kicking off the chemistry calls, through the detail of what happens in leadership coaching sessions and then finish off with a little about how we know it's working.
Chemistry Calls
Leaders who are considering coaching have complimentary 'chemistry calls' with a few of our coaches; this helps both of them establish what good looks like from a successful set of leadership coaching sessions and identify if they both think that they would work well together to achieve that success.
The leader states their objectives and what they hope to achieve with working with a coach
The coach shares their approach and how they work with leaders to help them achieve objectives
They establish if there is a mutual connection to work together towards the coachee's objectives
Contracting
Once the leader and coach have agreed to work together, they then have a contracting session. This establishes several things and covers topics including:
Objectives
Roles and Responsibilities
Confidentiality
Commitment
Frequency
Support and challenge
Feedback for both coach and coachee
Record keeping
What Happens In Leadership Coaching Sessions?
Each coaching session will be unique to the leader, as they identify their goals, speak their truth about the realities impacting their goal achievement and plan the way forward.
This all sounds relatively easy, and at a high level, some might say it is. In fact, leadership coaching involves a myriad of tools, techniques and skills, carefully deployed by the coach whilst being a partner working alongside the leader to help them achieve their objectives.
A flavour of some of the things that happen in leadership coaching sessions can be found below:
Establishing sessional goals
Listening to and reflecting known and unknown feedback – this could be from the leader themselves and others, e.g. 360 feedback.
A debrief of a psychometric tool, such as Core Strengths™, Strengthscope™, EQ360™ or Hogan Assessments™ - raising the leader's self-awareness and awareness of others.
An exploration of the leader's thoughts and feelings that drive behaviours and unleashing their potential to take control of unhelpful and hindering patterns of behaviour.
Several ways of seeing and reflecting on a situation or challenge, sometimes offering a different perspective as devil's advocate and introducing techniques to think through challenges using a different problem-solving technique.
Time travel! Well, not quite, but often, a way forward or a resolution to a current challenge can be identified by using different timelines and timeframes.
A leader often asks the coach to help them find ways to be accountable to themselves and others.
Complex, challenging, and tricky situations and conversations are navigated in a safe, non-judgemental way… the exploring often leads to solutions that hadn't previously been identified.
Perceptual positions are explored. For example, look at the situation through the eyes of a customer, shareholder, employee in your directorate.
This is not an exhaustive list, and leadership coaching sessions are so effective because they are bespoke and unique to the leader's development. It is them, in their situation, with their thoughts and feelings that are experiencing this. Only then can we work together to help them release their unique potential.
What Happens After The Leadership Coaching Sessions?
In our leadership coaching, we build in measurement points, this enables the coach, leader, and sponsor (if appropriate) to establish a method for evaluation. The measures demonstrate if the coaching intervention is on track or off track. We measure at mid and endpoints in the coaching journey.
Where Do I sign Up For Leadership Coaching Sessions?
The great news is that we offer leadership coaching as our business, as usual, so visit our website and look at our team of coaches.
When you're ready to discuss your leadership coaching needs, call us on 03450 950 480 or email zoe@theleadershipcoaches.co.uk to start your success journey today.
