How To Find the Best Leadership Coach for You

Everyone in a management or leadership role can benefit from leadership coaching. The question is: How do you find the best leadership coach for you? What distinguishes the best leadership coaches?

Here are five things to look for in finding the best leadership coach for you.

1. Emotional intelligence. The coaching relationship is a delicate balance between listening, probing, playing back, and gently steering. The best coaches have an extraordinary ability to ask good questions, listen well, and hear what’s not being said. They show genuine interest in you and your success. They’re also open and humble, curious to continually learn from you.
2. Experience. The best coaches have a depth of experience, both as leaders themselves and in coaching other leaders. The best coaches can cite examples of their coaching work (without naming names, of course!) and offer examples of situations that they have helped other leaders navigate.
3. Effective process. The best coaches can clearly describe their coaching process. They can explain how they will help you get feedback – through 360 surveys, for example, or independent assessments, or interviews they conduct on your behalf. They’ll explain when and how often feedback will be needed and in what forms. They will help you develop a written development plan with specific outcomes. And they explain how the success of the coaching experience will be measured.
4. Ease of communication. Reaching your coach should be easy. You should get a quick response. The best coaches explain complex concepts in plain English, providing you with written tools or articles to enhance your understanding. The best coaches help you set a coaching schedule that works for you – and shows flexibility when your schedule changes.
5. Adaptability. The best coaches help you discover things about yourself. They help you identify small shifts in your behavior and habits that will have significant impacts. But they don’t tell you what to do. They help you figure it out for yourself, provide support for you to try new things, and then help you learn from the experience.

So how do you choose? First and foremost, listen to your gut reaction: How do you feel about the person as your potential coach? Is this someone with whom you will be comfortable discussing your desires, your ambitions, your challenges, and concerns?

Second, probe their background. Why did they choose to become a coach? What has been their experience in leading and managing people? What were some of their most profound professional development experiences? You may also want to ask whether they have any relevant certifications or training as a coach – a further sign of expertise in the field.

Third, ask for specific examples of skills they can help you build – and see whether there’s a good match with what you’re looking for. Here, for example, are some of the skills our coaches help leaders build:

• Developing emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, and empathy.
• Strengthening leadership presence: confidence, influence, adapting to different leadership styles.
• Navigating change: leading and managing yourself and others through change.
• Managing stress: building resilience, managing personal well-being.
• Motivating performance: influencing and motivating others and holding people accountable.
• Developing others: the leader as coach; systems of performance management.
• Decision-making: effective delegation, clarifying decision-making roles, managing decision-making processes.
• Communications: working with different communications styles and developing a flexible communications style.
• Developing teams: Creating team norms and operating principles.
• Giving and receiving feedback: Gaining confidence in both appreciative and constructive feedback.

What are some warning signs that it may not be a good fit? Here are a few:

• In your initial meeting, they seem more interested in talking about themselves than in learning about you.
• They assert that they are a good fit for you – without asking first what you’re looking for.
• They don’t show sophisticated listening skills i.e. they don’t “play back” what you say; they don’t follow up with insightful questions.
• When they describe the coaching process, it feels either overly rigid or too “off the cuff.”
• The coach shares examples of experience that don’t feel grounded in the complexities of organizational leadership.

Eric Douglas

For more than 20 years, LRI has successfully helped a wide array of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and corporations achieve breakthroughs in performance. Eric's latest book “The Leadership Equation” shows how leaders can achieve strategic clarity, manage change effectively, and build a leadership culture.