Leadership coaching consulting is an essential tool to creating effective leaders. But the field is crowded full of different instructors, coaches and educators.
How do you know which consultants are worth your time, and which are basically selling snake oil?
Here are three key questions to consider before you invest in a leadership coaching consultant.
What Experience Does the Leadership Coaching Consultant Have?
This is the big one! I can’t tell you how many leadership “gurus” I’ve encountered with ZERO or limited experience leading teams or businesses.
Other leadership coaching consultants will tout their experience as a leader, but in reality they’ve only led teams of fewer than four people!
Look for someone with not only years, but decades of business leadership experience. Ideally, you should find someone who’s not only led teams, but a business with a significant headcount.
This is important because leadership isn’t something you can learn from a book. The best leaders learn from experience – not only their successes, but their failures too. You want someone that can pass on hard-won lessons from this trial-by-fire.
How Practical Are the Lessons Delivered by the Leadership Coaching Consultant?
Anyone can share philosophical leadership insights about integrity, vision or empowering others. These speeches and courses are great for a feel-good, inspiring atmosphere, but do they really translate into results in the workplace?
Do they help the leaders who are struggling with REAL problems in the workplace, like engaging teams, resolving team conflict, and so forth?
Look for a leadership coaching consultant focused on practical, actionable lessons. Each session should focus on advice that someone can put into practice the very same day at work to drive greater business results and get the most from (and for!) their teams.
Are the Leadership Coaching Consultant’s Sessions Interactive?
We’ve all been at an educational session where the trainer just drones on and on and on…it’s not only boring, but also ineffective.
If the sessions aren’t interactive, or only interactive so far as including basic question and answers, participants may struggle to understand how key concepts may apply to their situation.
I recommend looking for a leadership coaching consultant that makes each session truly interactive. Participants should be given tasks or suggestions to try out in their work after each session, and discuss the success or failure of these actions in the following session. This means that no one can “passively” attend a leadership session, it means everyone is actively learning!
Great Leaders Aren’t Born – They’re Made
The best leaders get to where they are through a combination of hard work, introspection, experience, and guidance from others.
By providing quality education from an experienced leadership coaching consultant, you can give your leaders a head start and help them avoid learning lessons that others learn the hard way (or never learn at all).
Will you help make your leaders more effective with an investment in leadership development? Or wait for them to learn on their own?
Schedule a no-obligation call with us today to learn more about our leadership development solutions.
