The Four Different Types of Coaching Styles
Bradford R. GlaserThe act of coaching is essential in the workplace. Leading managers need to coach lower-level staff to bring them up to speed and help them grow as team members. The coach can utilize their experiences and personality to guide employees in achieving specific goals. The goals of the coaching process include maximizing management abilities, developing leadership potential, and implementing creative behavioral change. If employees have a good coach, they are more likely to go far.
Many professions have a specific set of skills that an employee uses throughout their career. However, coaching doesn't have a particular skill set that is repeated in every coaching situation. Each coaching relationship presents new challenges and offers different opportunities to learn new skills, as no two coachees are alike. Each coachee approaches their coach with different needs and aspirations, so no two coaching relationships are the same.
Consequently, coaches need to be skilled in various areas such as goal setting, action planning, questioning skills, listening, and behavioral change techniques.
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Table of Contents
What are the Definitions of 'Coaching' and 'Style?'
"Coaching" is the process of one individual working with another to help them improve their performance and reach their potential. The role of performance coaching has evolved to become a critical tool for enhancing performance and increasing the retention of top employees. For these reasons, many Fortune 500 companies send their managers to training to become coaches. As the coaching process aims to maximize management, leadership potential, and behavioral change, companies are using coaching to individualize training.
Using their experience, expertise, and encouragement, a coach can help their coachee achieve specific goals. To develop the skills necessary to enhance the professional career of the coachee, the coach employs goal setting, action planning, questioning skills, active listening, and behavioral change techniques. The coach aims to build trust and rapport, acting as a personal advisor and collaborative partner.
"Style" is defined as how a person behaves when they can do things their own way. When you know a person well, it is often easy to predict how they will act in a given situation. When you think of significant people in your life, you can probably distinguish the different ways each individual interacted with you. In other words, you can recognize their coaching style.
Coaching + Style = Coaching Style
If you put coaching and style together, you get a definition of coaching style: a person's unique way of working with another individual to help them improve performance and reach their potential. There are four primary types of problem-solving leaders. The different types of coaching styles are:
- Direct. The direct style has high assertiveness and low expressiveness. Direct coaches take charge of projects and are committed to meeting deadlines.
- Spirited. This style of coaching inspires and visualizes the big picture, utilizing the employee's creativity to achieve it. The spirited style is characterized by high assertiveness and expressiveness.
- Considerate. Considerate style coaches have low assertiveness and high expressiveness. They coach by facilitating a comfortable environment and being empathetic and encouraging.
- Systematic. Coaches coach by planning carefully and using logic in all their decision-making processes. This style has low assertiveness and low expressiveness.
Other Coaching Methods
- Autocratic coaching style. Autocratic coaches possess quick decision-making skills, remain calm under pressure, help vulnerable groups get back on track, and have a clear chain of command. They are highly assertive, which can build mistrust and decrease morale in some teams.
- Democratic coaching style. These leaders are excellent communicators and listeners, and they are adept at receiving and incorporating criticism and feedback. They are generally able to facilitate conflict in a constructive manner.
- Holistic coaching style. The holistic approach, also known as laissez-faire coaching, focuses on keeping a team happy, ultimately leading to greater team success.
- Mindful coaching. These leaders use kindness and openness, allowing their experience to be what it is, and inquire about it, explore the situation, and respond creatively and with compassion and self-awareness.
A great coach adapts their coaching style to meet the requirements of individuals and situations. It's essential to know your style and the styles of the people you're coaching. For example, if you have a systematic team and you come in as a spirited new manager, it may be challenging to coach this team. While you are expressing spontaneous ideas, they want to focus on systems and plans. There needs to be a compromise on both sides – a good manager can appeal to their systematic side while still using their spirited personality to reach goals together.
Assess Your Coaching Style
To learn more about your style and how it can benefit others, HRDQ's What's My Coaching Style is a practical coaching assessment for management development that measures personality style and explores its relationship to coaching and interpersonal relationships.
The assessment measures an individual's preference for the direct, spirited, considerate, and systematic coaching styles. With this knowledge, people can better understand why they behave the way they do, learn how to adapt their behavior to improve interpersonal relationships, develop rapport, and ultimately become more effective coaches.
