What is Leadership Coaching?
Leadership coaching: You’ve seen it on LinkedIn. Heard it at conferences. Maybe even nodded along in a meeting about the new company initiative.
Is leadership coaching worth your time and money? Or is it another place where you’ll hear endless talk about "synergy"?
Leadership coaching is a structured, personalized process that helps leaders, or those folks on their way, improve communication, emotional awareness, decision-making, and overall team impact.
Leadership coaching isn’t a fad. It’s how well-intentioned but human managers stop winging it and start really leading.
And yes! It’s worth whatever you make of it. For folks in leadership positions – managers, team leaders, senior executives – developing critical leadership skills while refining their personal leadership style is a must-have.
Think of leadership coaches like personal trainers – not for your body, but your brain.
After all, some of the skills you're building on as a leader include emotional awareness, resilience, and the ability to inspire others – without losing your mind.
With corporate bosses expecting more from less, professionals today find themselves turning to coaching to better understand and communicate the impact of their work.
Whether you're leading a skunkworks project or heading an entire department, working with a trusted, external partner like a coach can be the difference between spinning in circles and becoming a leader who drives the company forward.
What Leadership Coaching Actually Is
Leadership coaching is not therapy, mentoring, or consulting. It’s its own thing.
Leadership coaching helps you become a more effective leader by unlocking what’s already there, focusing on the next most impactful step, and reminding you of your potential all along the ride.
There are many different approaches and leadership coaching strategies, but it should never be seen as a fix.
A coach doesn't tell you what to do.
Instead, a good coach helps you clarify your goals, recognize your strengths, see potential roadblocks before they happen, push back on assumptions, and build habits that align with the kind of person you say you want to become – in other words, a good coach brings true partnership, accountability, and high standards.
Why Invest in Leadership Coaching
When done right, coaching goes far beyond performance reviews and quarterly targets.
Coaches work with clients to truly understand their personal goals, responsibilities, challenges, and ultimately what drives them. This can look like intake forms, discovery chats, and assessments, but varies for each client-coach relationship.
A good leadership coach asks powerful questions, guides strategic thinking, and holds you accountable throughout the coaching process.
The more honest, vulnerable, and committed you are, the more likely you’ll have success.
Working with a coach can completely transform how you lead, think, and collaborate. It can unlock promotions, higher salaries, and career shifts that bring exactly the energy you crave.
Benefits of Leadership Coaching
After alignment, your coach will suggest an action plan that fits your specific needs and goals.
Staying committed between coaching sessions makes all the difference, otherwise progress will stall out.
Let’s say you’re aiming to build communication skills or boost emotional intelligence. If your coach shares tools, exercises, or specific workshops, showing up is just the start: You'll only gain the experience from implementing what you’re learning as you go.
By working with a coach who holds you accountable, over time, you’ll unpack what elements make up strong leadership. Understanding your values and motivations, how to build stronger, healthier relationships, and how to manage challenging conversations with clarity and empathy are all key elements you should be ready to explore.
Coaching pushes you toward leadership potential, supporting you as you align your personal values, professional actions, and unique strengths.
It can also be a space where you learn how to better recognize how emotions may be impacting your work, and when others may be responding emotionally in real-time. This is a key aspect for handling high-pressure situations and conflict more gracefully.
What to Expect During the Coaching Process
Leadership coaching is not a one-time conversation or a feel-good pep talk. While there are plenty of good vibes, it’s a strategic, personalized process that unfolds in stages.
It requires a two-way commitment of active listening, honest dialogue, and candid feedback received with positive intent. Sometimes it’s challenging, as anything worthwhile is.
Each phase is designed to provide leaders like you with the tools needed to develop new skills and lead with a confidence that feels authentic.
Initial Assessment
Before getting into the work, the coach will conduct a comprehensive assessment.
This step seeks to gain insights into your strengths, opportunities, and current approach. Depending on the engagement, you might go through 360-degree feedback, personality assessments (like DiSC or MBTI), or interviews to evaluate your leadership style, communication skills, and more.
It’s also when you clarify your personal goals, career goals, and any specific workplace or team challenges you need to actively support.
Coaching Sessions
Think of coaching as a relationship built over time.
Once your goals are clear, you and your coach will meet regularly for focused, confidential sessions, usually 30-60 minutes at a time.
These discussions are meant to help you explore your challenges in a brave space, reflect on your behavior and challenges, and explore new ways to lead more effectively.
Each session might center around a specific topic, such as handling conflict, delegating responsibilities, or leading through organizational change, but it’s up to you to steer the conversation and bring talking points for your coach to respond to.
The coach acts as a sounding board, offering fresh perspectives, strategic insight, and honest, constructive questions to guide and clarify your thinking.
Unlike async management training, this is about real-world application.
You’ll often bring current situations to the table, such as difficult conversations with team members, high-stakes presentations, or leadership dilemmas and get practical support to navigate them in return.
Progress Updates
No growth plan is perfect from the start, so regular check-ins and progress updates help you stay on track. These touchpoints are designed to share quick updates, get help about a specific challenge in the moment, make adjustments, and celebrate wins.
Staying connected to the coaching process between sessions means the coaching work stays aligned with your priorities as they change, especially if you’re juggling multiple roles or shifting into a leadership position with more responsibility.
These can be tracked asynchronously, and can also be audio notes, allowing freeform, messy thoughts to develop between sessions in a trusted space.
Staying in sync helps you generate more momentum and accountability, so your coach can do a better job keeping your eyes on your destination and avoiding burnout.
Action Plans
Applying what you learn is how the impact becomes real.
A coach will work with you to co-create personalized action plans, sometimes built using frameworks like the GROW model (Goal, Reality, Options, Will).
How it works in practice:
Define a clear goal
Assess your current reality
Explore your options
Commit the willpower to act
A coach will encourage you to try new approaches, be willing to make mistakes, and reflect on the results of what you’re learning in real-time, so you can become a more effective leader through practice, not just theory.
Coaching Tools
Depending on the coaching provider or the coach’s methodology, you may also use:
Leadership journals to document insights and decisions
Communication logs to track interactions, thoughts, and ideas
Emotional intelligence assessments to track growth in self-awareness, empathy, and regulation
Templates for constructive feedback, performance reviews, or onboarding new roles
All of this reinforces the belief that coaching is a process, not an event. It's about integrating leadership into your daily actions, so you show up consistently as your best self, whether in boardrooms, Zooms, or 1:1s.
Types of Leadership Coaching
Executive Coaching
Executive coaching is designed for high-level leaders. Think: folks who face intense pressure, conflicting priorities, and the need to align people, processes, and performance within short timelines. CEOs, directors, VPs, and senior execs responsible for complex decisions and leading at scale all benefit from the right coaching relationship.
In executive coaching, the focus goes beyond basic leadership skills, into strategic thinking, vision planning, organizational alignment, and legacy-building.
Coaches help leaders refine executive communication skills, increase self-awareness, and develop tools for leading with positive impact. There should also an emphasis on business acumen, helping smart execs bring a profits-and-people approach.
Performance Coaching
Performance coaching focuses on developing emerging leaders and high-potential employees on the rise. These individuals are eager to learn, often actively asking for feedback, and ready to stretch their leadership capabilities. This type of coaching aims to close specific performance gaps or prepare individuals for new roles within an organization.
Team Coaching
Unlike individual coaching, team coaching is about supporting groups as they collaborate.
Whether it’s a leadership team, department, or project-based crew, this style of coaching focuses on aligning the group, agreeing to shared principles, and collaborating responsibly.
In team coaching, a leadership coach works with the whole group to spot friction points, encourage constructive dialogue, and co-create a space where effective team management practices can be implemented by the manager.
The coach may observe meetings, facilitate workshops, or hold group coaching sessions to tackle communication gaps, role clarity, or breakdowns in the team workflow.
Strategic Coaching
Perfect for senior leaders and professionals who are in roles demanding transformational change – heads of innovation, founders, senior project managers, or government officials leading systemic reform – strategic coaching focuses on vision, long-term planning, and consistency in the face of uncertainty.
By elevating a leader’s ability to think and lead, strategic coaches support leaders while they refine their vision, clarify long-term goals, and align teams around changing or mission-driven priorities.
Transition Coaching
Transition coaching supports professionals who are stepping into new roles. Maybe they’ve just been promoted, joined a new organization, or shifted industries entirely.
What should be an exciting moment can also feel extremely overwhelming, especially if there’s pressure to perform right away. (Recipe for burnout??)
A coach, in this context, acts as a trusted support during the transition period, helping the leader adapt quickly, build confidence, and establish credibility with team members and peers. They may also focus on a specific issue or challenge perceived to be holding back the employee from success in their new role, if that’s what the client identifies.
Developmental Coaching
Developmental coaching emphasizes building foundational leadership capabilities over time.
It’s often tied to a leadership program, one great example being the Small Giants Leadership Academy offered by the Small Giants Community, or integrated within larger coaching programs offered by corporations, non-profits, or even federal governments.
This type of coaching helps leaders grow in alignment with their personal values, vision, and long-term aspirations.
It’s ideal for two types of leaders:
Founders, CEOs, and execs currently building and leading purpose-driven businesses.
Ambitious emerging leaders who’ve got the drive and commitment to get to great places and are ready for growth.
It’s also common for leaders undergoing professional coaching for certification, such as becoming a professional certified coach themselves, to go through developmental coaching. These may be cohort based programs, lasting six to 12 months or longer.
These experiences include goal setting, regular feedback, peer collaboration, and a focus on lifelong learning in a shared environment.
How to Choose an Effective Leadership Coach
With so many focus areas and a-million-and-one coaches on social media, how do you pick the right leadership coach?
It’s an art, not a science. A few criteria to help you decide:
Credentials: What level of certification matters to you? You might consider looking for International Coaching Federation (ICF) certified coaches, a coach with a track record of results and verifiable testimonials, or coaches with affiliations with trusted schools, businesses, and community organizations.
Alignment: Coaching is a personal experience. You should feel both comfortable and challenged by your coach. The right coach should understand your career goals, values, and vision for the future.
Approach: Find someone who works with your pace, preferred learning style, and day-to-day challenges. For example, ADHD certified coaches may be able to help more effectively with ADHD-related work challenges like time management and focus, and will have a better understanding of what approaches may or may not work best for a client with ADHD.
While specific credentials aren’t always required, coaches working in corporate settings typically must be ICF-certified. Beyond that, it’s as much about approach, style, and overall fit. You can even find useful career coaching resources provided for free by Goodwill.
If you’re not sure what type of coach might be right for you, try a few discovery chats.
Most coaches are more than happy to a no-pressure chat, as it helps them make sure it’s a good fit just like you.
🔑 Keys For You
Leadership isn’t a title, it’s how you act.
Great leadership is built through acts of intention, reflection, and trial-and-error. You have to be willing to make mistakes, fail, and try again, all while owning responsibility for the outcome.
It can be a lot for anyone to carry, especially the first time.
With a coach by your side, you’ll know you’ve got someone in your corner who keeps showing up for you, as you keep your commitment to growing thoughtfully.
When leaders grow, so do the people around them, their companies, and their communities. We ride with those folks.
