What is Leadership Coaching?
Why is it Beneficial?
Leadership coaching empowers sales leaders to do exceptional work in times of struggle and change. Leadership coaches can establish a solid relationship that uncovers the strengths and weaknesses of sales executives like yourself. This unbiased relationship allows for maximum results because leadership coaches have experience and are empathetic to leading a sales team’s ever-changing and challenging lifestyle.
It can be easy to get tunnel vision, become burned out over time, and stay updated with industry changes when managing a team. Unfortunately, many companies don’t have leadership coaching programs in-house—but executives can outsource insights from experienced coaches when needed, as it can benefit them in many ways.
1. Discover Your Leadership Style
There is more than one successful strategy to lead a workforce. Every leader can and should adapt their leadership style to their personality and abilities, which would enable leaders to feel comfortable and leverage their strengths.
What is your leadership style? According to LinkedIn, 7 primary leadership styles can benefit leaders today. They include but are not limited to Autocratic, Authoritative, Pace-Setting, Democratic, Coaching, Affiliative, and Laissez-Faire. Each style has its unique approach to managing teams, whether more assertive or relaxed. Wise leaders can flex from one style to the next to fit the situation.
Leadership coaches can help you determine which leadership style works best for you and your team, which is essential for being a successful leader. Selecting your signature style and learning how to adapt as the situation warrants it can help you enhance your leadership success and keep your team on track in any situation.
2. Acquire New Strategies for Optimal Productivity
In many cases, executives who pursue leadership coaching do so to improve their team’s productivity. A leadership coach can play a crucial role in helping you reach better productivity by introducing you to new strategies that can benefit you and your team.
Leaders are often concerned about time management and the efficiency of their sales team. Recently, productivity rates have dropped due to the changing climate that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought on. Changes such as remote work, Zoom meetings, less face-to-face communication, and an altogether different sales approach have driven many employees to feel burned out and unmotivated.
It’s the responsibility of the sales leader to keep employees healthy and engaged with their work, but how? Meeting with an experienced coach can help you determine which tools and strategies can positively impact your team.
Burnout among leaders and employees can be detrimental to a sales team. It’s most often caused by overworking and the overuse of digital devices. Overworking can cause a team to feel stressed, tired, and anxious. Teams can become unproductive when combined with the effects of technology overload, like eye strain, headaches, and irritability.
This is a newer issue among sales teams, as tech use has increased, and many leaders are losing how to turn it around. The solution could be as simple as requesting all employees work a maximum of 40 hours per week and take breaks from digital screens, so they don’t feel overworked or fatigued by technology.
Top sales leaders prioritize the quality of work over quantity. However, sales hours can vary depending on demand. Long and extenuating hours in front of screens and tablets have proven to put an unavoidable strain on the eyes. This vision discomfort falls under computer vision syndrome (CVS). In these cases, management might suggest employees take proactive measures such as purchasing blue light glasses online for heavy screen-use days.
However, it might require a deeper analysis to motivate workers again.
A leadership coach can help executives address these issues by using effective tools and time management strategies and diving deeper into more detailed initiatives.
3. Improve Social Skills and Communication Techniques
When in a leadership position, you likely interact with multiple teams and departments daily, including clients, sales representatives, and senior executives, making communication skills essential to all leaders. How you communicate with representatives will differ from how you communicate with clients or management. Therefore, you need to have a versatile set of communication skills. Without this, you are at risk of enabling an unhealthy work environment.
Effective communication skills can help you resolve conflicts among team members, provide effective employee feedback, boost morale, report findings more compellingly, and improve your sales strategy. All of which could lead to better productivity among your team.
Leadership coaching can help sales executives reach their true potential when communicating with teams and clients. Sales leaders tend to be over-extended in dealing with everyday demands leaving little time to improve their leadership communication skills. The guidance from an experienced sales coach could help leaders advance to the next level of leadership.
The possibilities of leadership coaching are endless. With the right strategies, sales executives can help their teams thrive. Leveraging leadership coaching can help them get there faster.
