Have you ever worked for a bad boss? If so, you know how defeating and discouraging it can be to have an ineffective leader. Bad bosses always lead to high quit rates. According to Gallup, one in two employees has quit their job because of their boss’s poor leadership skills at some point in their career. Research also suggests that 70% of employees are actively looking for and/or thinking about getting a new job because their current workplaces don’t offer support or recognition. These individual outcomes aren’t the only pitfalls, though.
Organizations with bad leaders can experience employee absenteeism, decreased productivity, safety issues, and increased healthcare costs. One report that analyzed the relationship between mortality claims and workplace stressors found that “more than 120,000 deaths per year and approximately 5%–8% of annual healthcare costs are associated with and may be attributable to how U.S. companies manage their workforces.”
Of course, the last thing you should want is for your workplace to be so toxic that it leads to an employee’s untimely passing. You also shouldn’t want the less extreme consequences of bad leadership to arise, like high turnover and low productivity. But how can you create a workplace where employees enjoy and thrive in their relationship with their bosses? Simple—implement leadership coaching for all levels of management.
What is Leadership Coaching?
Leadership coaching is exactly what it sounds like—it centers on consciously developing the competencies and talents in individuals to enhance their leadership skills and ability to work effectively with others. Typically, leadership coaches will dive into effective communication practices, the impact of different leadership styles, and business coaching. However, depending on who you hire to coach the leaders at your company, you may open the door to many more lessons.
As long as the leadership coach you’re bringing on board is credible, you’ll notice a significant and positive difference in your managers. In fact, PwC and the Association Resource Center found that the average ROI for brands who invested in executive coaching was seven times their initial investment.
The Benefits of Leadership Coaching
There’s a reason the ROI of leadership coaching is so significant: the benefits abound. Coaching has a direct and immediate effect on your leaders’ professional and personal development, and that benefits every team member in your organization. Don’t believe it? Here are five benefits of implementing leadership coaching.
1. Leaders and teams feel empowered
A leadership coach will teach the executives and managers at your company how to empower themselves and those on their teams. When this feeling is the dominant one at your company, it can increase employee engagement, collaboration, and productivity.
2. Increased employee retention
There’s no denying it. Employee turnover is expensive. Studies suggest that the average cost to a business for losing a highly skilled employee is 213% of that worker’s annual compensation. Fortunately, leadership coaching leads to better managers, which gives employees a reason to stay on board. Coaching can help managers learn how to develop better working relationships, effectively prioritize their team’s tasks, build trust with workers, and bring out the best in others.
3. Better performance
Your company’s success depends on the various teams in your organization. By providing leadership coaching, your executives and managers will know how to lead their teams better to increase performance. For example, coaches will teach your leadership team how to set clear, measurable goals and help sharpen their project management and communication skills to ensure their team’s projects are done well and completed on time.
4. Environment for feedback
One of the best things about leadership coaching is that it helps build an environment for positive feedback. Coaches will observe your leadership team and provide ways on how to improve and also explain how to garner honest feedback from teams.
For example, coaches will provide strategies that help your leadership team practice active listening without judgment and ask employees questions that lead to constructive feedback. That way, your managers and executives build an environment where feedback is desired and welcomed.
Additionally, a good coach will help your leadership team develop greater empathy, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence so that they can act on the feedback they receive positively and strategically. And when your leadership team starts putting the feedback they receive into practice, they can improve their performance to help your company overall.
5. An unbiased opinion
Sometimes, when your leadership team is significantly invested in a project, it’s hard for them to recognize areas of improvement. They may believe they’re doing a great job even though they have a few blind spots.
Thankfully, a leadership coach will highlight blind spots and provide an unbiased opinion on how your executives and managers can improve. That fresh perspective can be exactly what your leadership team needs to enhance productivity, project completion, employee engagement, and more.
Better Leaders, Better Business
With better leaders, your employees will be more successful in their roles, increasing the chances of your business experiencing long-term success. However, leadership skills don’t arise suddenly. If you want your executives and managers to be the best possible, invest in leadership coaching. The ROI will be worth it.