There are plenty of mentors available today that you can have help guide you in your professional journey.
However, selecting a true leadership coach from my perspective is the route I have personally taken. I am honored to have a great leadership coach and mentor to help guide me as I develop my leadership.
Top 6 Qualities of Great Leadership Coaches
If you don’t currently have a leadership coach then this post is perfect for you. I am going to cover six key qualities a leadership coach must have so keep on reading.
1. Teacher
A leadership coach should be a strong teacher that can identify your learning style and apply that to how they teach you about leadership.
If a leadership coach can’t identify how to properly teach your development towards stronger leadership will be in jeopardy. A good way to find out is by having your potential leadership coach teach you something you do not know.
If they can adapt to learn how you learn and apply that in their teaching that will be extremely fruitful.
2. Advocate
You can have a great teacher but if they do not advocate for your development your leadership effectiveness will not reach its full potential.
The reason why is if your leadership coach does not advocate for you to stretch yourself and apply what you learn it stays as in-actionable knowledge.
3. Counselor
I am not suggesting a leadership coach needs to be a traditional counselor.
What I am suggesting here instead is to counsel you through your growing pains as a leader.
They will over keen insight and help you work through when your leadership is effective and ineffective.
4. Motivator
If your leadership coach teaches you right, advocates for you and helps counsel you through your growth but does not motivate you the likelihood of you sticking with growing as a leader diminishes.
A great leadership coach would create an environment that would ring with motivation.
We all need to be motivated from others, it is vital to sticking with it when times get hard.
5. Communicates Expectations
You will have your own expectations for your leadership coach.
They should also have expectations for you.
Both sides need to understand each expectations and work together to ensure that they are being met on a regular basis.
6. Provides Perspective
A leadership coach should have perspective that they can give you in the thick of your development. They should have their own experiences to fall back on to help you see the perspective of what you are trying to achieve.
They should help you see the big picture and your goals.
This will help you see if what you are doing are help or hurt you to achieve the goals that have been set by both you and your leadership coach.
If you have a leadership coach already look through this list and see if they hit one or more of the attributes. If they do that is great you have a great leadership coach.
If they don’t then the ones that are missing you need to create an expectation for them to adopt them. I have had the great opportunity in my life to have several mentors that have helped my leadership growth and I am thankful for them each day.
But when I really took off as successful leader is when I found a leadership coach that was also a mentor.
Infused with both and having these six key attributes my coach is someone who I truly get motivated by simply from the relationship.
Dr. Deming is quoted as saying “a leader is a coach not a judge”
and my coach ensure this to be true each time we meet.
Conclusion
Don’t miss the opportunity of having a leadership coach.
There are plenty of coaches you can hire to help you become a better leader. But the leadership coach that you want is one that has passion in coaching, who treats it as a true profession.
Passion could be a seventh attribute a leadership coach must have. If a coach is not passionate about being a coach then that will have a direct impact on your development.
Find a leadership coach to help you reach your full potential as a leader.
Have in mind any attribute coaches mush have, share with us!
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