“Make haste slowly” is an important principle in coaching leadership, because leaders understand that even in the busiest moments, taking time to reflect, make sense of situations, and address emotions ultimately saves time by reducing conflicts and avoiding ineffective ways of working.
Coaching leadership
„A person who feels valued will always do more than is expected of them.“
What is coaching leadership?
Coaching leadership is a leadership approach where the best results are achieved by treating people equally, valuing them, and empowering them.
Coaching leadership is one of the possible leadership styles that a leader can use with their employees to create better collaboration and increase performance across the organisation.
Coaching leadership is especially well suited to organisations where people are valued, and where mental wellbeing, joy at work, and balance are important — enabling growth, innovation, and faster results.
Research highlights four key benefits of coaching leadership as an inclusive leadership approach: creating role clarity, increasing job satisfaction, strengthening commitment, and improving work performance.
What is characteristic of coaching leadership?
The behaviour of a coaching leader begins with personal attitudes and mindset. A coaching leader believes that every person has potential, and that their role is to unlock that potential and enable people to succeed. They take a genuine interest in their people and do not treat them simply as tools for achieving results.
A coaching leader creates meaningful goals together with their employees, enables each person to take responsibility in their role, supports people in adapting to change, creates a psychologically safe environment and role clarity across the team, and has established consistent team routines and activities that support good collaboration.
The most important tool of a coaching leader is active communication with their people, whether through one-to-one conversations or regular team meetings.
The four focus areas of a coaching leader are performance, collaboration, relationship-building, and supporting growth. To do this, they apply several valuable skills and practices:
Active listening and reflection as communication techniques that require full focus, understanding, responding, and remembering what has been said. They listen in order to understand, not to generate solutions in their own mind.
By asking effective and open questions, they support each employee’s own ability to find solutions, discover new opportunities, remove obstacles, and increase their openness to change and effectiveness in achieving goals.
Creating presence and holding space for pause, where the coaching leader does not fill the silence with their own words, but allows the employee to organise their thoughts and express them. This is how new solutions emerge and responsibility grows within the employee themselves.
Trusting people is an important capability of a coaching leader, supporting people in acting independently in their role and achieving the best possible results. A trusting leader allows people to do their work and does not interfere or micromanage.
High empathy gives the leader the ability to notice people’s different states, accept different personalities, recognise different emotions, and support and encourage people to make independent decisions.
A coaching leader focuses on the person as a whole. A person is not a robot who delivers results for the company; the company also creates value for the person. A coaching leader is an equal partner to their employees.
What is a coaching leader like?
A coaching leader is empathetic, has high emotional intelligence, is an excellent listener and questioner, holds a non-judgemental space, and is able to pause during a conversation. They are focused on development and growth, and support people in finding and implementing new ideas and solutions.
A coaching leader has a very high level of self-awareness and conscious self-leadership capability. This is the foundation of their leadership. To support this, they have a clear direction and vision of why they are a leader, what role they fulfil as a leader, and how they want to succeed in that role.
A coaching leader is also open to learning, growing, and developing themselves.
A coaching leader dares to be vulnerable and to acknowledge their own mistakes. As a conscious leader, they are able to manage themselves well in different leadership situations because they understand the reasons behind their behaviour and how they may impact both themselves and others.
A coaching leader also has their own thinking and development partners who support them in their role, help them make sense of their thoughts and questions, and grow their capability as a leader.
A coaching leader knows the answers to the questions: Why am I a leader? What kind of footprint do I want to leave behind? How do I succeed? What are my leadership principles? What do I do in order to succeed? Do you have these answers?
What are the benefits of coaching leadership?
Communication between the leader and employee improves — coaching leadership is based on open, honest, and regular dialogue. The leader listens actively, asks guiding questions, and helps the employee express their own thoughts more clearly and make better decisions. This creates a trusting and effective communication culture.
Both personal and team development increase — employees are given the opportunity to take more responsibility, learn from their experiences, and develop into independent thinkers. This, in turn, strengthens the capability and performance of the entire team.
Creating an encouraging and supportive environment — a coaching leader helps shape an environment where mistakes are part of learning and new ideas are encouraged to be tested. This supports psychological safety, increases motivation, and fosters innovation.
Organisational benefits — coaching leadership can help reduce employee turnover, strengthen organisational culture, and increase employee loyalty.
Long-term impact — coaching leadership increases productivity and quality in the long term, as employees work with greater commitment.
Thanks to the environment created through coaching leadership, the team becomes more effective, committed, and takes greater personal responsibility.
Coaching leadership style is suitable for:
- Developing people and encouraging initiative
- Supporting co-creation
- Creating a human-centred culture
- Creating meaning at work
- Building trust
- Preventing and resolving conflicts
- Generating ideas
- Managing performance
- Supporting planning and prioritisation
What are the challenges of coaching leadership?
The main challenges of coaching leadership are balancing one’s authority and enabling responsibility. Leaders may find it difficult to trust, share responsibility, avoid giving advice, and step out of the expert role. How can you trust without over-controlling?
Change takes time — coaching leadership requires a shift in mindset and behaviour from both the leader and employees. A culture of trust and self-development does not emerge overnight; it requires consistency and patience.
The myth that coaching leadership is “too time-consuming” — one-to-one conversations, giving feedback, and individual development take more time than a command-and-control style. In organisations with a fast work pace, time pressure can make this leadership style more challenging to apply. But does a directive approach really help unlock people’s full potential? Coaching leadership is like a game of chess, because the leader understands that the moves and approaches invested in people today will certainly pay off in the future.
Coaching leadership is not:
- Crisis-time leadership
- Listening without truly listening
- Guiding people towards your own solutions
- Using only one tool, such as the GROW model
- Leadership that is distant from people
- A leader who does not acknowledge their own uncertainty or mistakes
- Teaching, manipulation, or aimless chatting
- Overprotecting employees
- Putting the relationship above everything else
- Asking leading questions
Why is coaching leadership more effective compared to traditional leadership?
Firstly, by enabling employees to take responsibility, find solutions independently, and implement them, the leader saves time for thinking through, setting, and realising strategically important plans and goals. Although it may seem that coaching leadership requires more time for people, in reality, the leader gains time for more effective time management and focusing on priority activities.
Employee motivation and confidence increase — coaching leadership values each employee’s individuality and invests in their development. When employees feel that their opinion matters and that they are trusted, their motivation and willingness to take responsibility grow.
Team members’ skills and independence increase — traditional leadership often focuses on the chain of command, whereas a coaching leader encourages employees to find solutions and make decisions themselves. This develops critical thinking and increases the competence and commitment of the entire team.
Creating an open and trusting work environment — coaching leadership is based on honesty, listening, and continuous feedback. This approach helps build strong relationships that support collaboration, create psychological safety, reduce tensions, and prevent conflicts.
How can you successfully introduce and apply a coaching leadership style?
How
We do thorough preparation together, map the current situation and leadership culture in the organisation, and set very clear goals and expectations for learning, developing, and implementing coaching leadership.
Coaching leadership cannot be implemented in an organisation through a one-day training session. It is a 4–9-month development journey. A one-day training works well when the aim is to share information, increase understanding, and provide an overview of what coaching leadership is. In a one-day training, leaders can receive 2–3 tools for leading people, but this does not change leadership behaviour or improve leadership quality and capability.
For larger groups and more extensive coaching leadership culture implementation programmes, I work together with my good cooperation partner Aili Nurmeots. Together, we also wrote the coaching leadership handbook “How to be the leader your people truly need”.
Possible activities and timeframe for implementing coaching leadership:
- A free introductory meeting to map the specific need and goal, get to know each other, and clarify the principles of cooperation
- The duration, timeframe, and price of the training depend on the number of participants, the client’s specific needs, and goals
- Mapping participants’ skills and specific needs with the help of a preliminary questionnaire
- Delivery of training and practice sessions: 3–6 training days during a 6–12-month development programme
- We make interim summaries
- We create accountability partner groups to reinforce new knowledge and skills
- Applying practices in everyday work
- Sharing learnings from experience and analysing cases
If the topic interests you further, you can order the “Coaching Leadership” handbook. I also recommend reading the blog about coaching.
By applying coaching leadership, you increase your team’s performance and satisfaction!
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