Leadership coaching: your leadership style, your situation, your next step

Coaching is a time-limited, confidential process in which a person works on a professional question with the support of a coach and develops their own solutions. The coach does not give ready-made answers but asks questions, reflects patterns, offers changes of perspective and brings in tools where they help. Business coaching concentrates on professional topics such as leadership, role, decisions, collaboration and self-management. It is neither therapy nor consulting; it assumes that the person is able to act and wants to change their situation themselves.

Consulting delivers solutions from outside: the consultant analyses, recommends and often helps implement. Coaching develops solutions from inside: the coach helps the person find their own answer, because they are the one who has to implement it. Consulting fits when expertise is missing, for example when introducing shop floor management. Coaching fits when the knowledge is there but implementation depends on your own attitude, role or situation. I offer both and tell you in the initial consultation which format fits your question. Often it is a combination: consulting for the system, coaching for the manager.

A mentor shares their own experience: this is how I did it, this is what I would advise you. That is valuable, but it assumes that the mentor's situation matches the mentee's. A coach holds back their own solution and works with questions so that the person finds their own, one that fits them and their situation. My leadership practice flows into the coaching by helping me understand your situation and ask the right questions, not by giving you my answers. If you explicitly want an exchange of experience, I clearly flag that as a mentoring element.

Because leadership is the one skill nobody learns systematically and everyone needs daily. Most managers in plants were promoted because they were technically good, and have led by instinct ever since. That works until it no longer works: during a role change, in a change process, in a conflict, under pressure. Coaching offers the space in which a manager can reflect on their leadership without exposing themselves to superiors or the team. It is the most efficient form of leadership development, because it works on the real situation rather than on textbook cases.

Clarity, reliability and genuine interest in the people they lead. Clarity means: the team knows what is expected, what has priority and how decisions are made. Reliability means: commitments hold, rules apply to everyone, and the manager is there when things get difficult. Interest means: they know their people, ask questions, listen and develop them. Added to that is the ability to lead yourself: setting priorities, delegating, staying calm under pressure. It is not a particular leadership style; good managers adapt their style to the situation and the person without losing themselves.

With structure and relationship. Structure means: clear goals, clear roles, fixed regular communication routines such as a daily stand-up meeting, visible key figures and agreed rules for decisions and feedback. Relationship means: you know every person in the team, know what they can do and what they need, give regular feedback and take time for conversations even when no problem is pending. The most common mistakes are doing everything yourself instead of delegating, avoiding conflicts, and talking only when something has gone wrong. Anyone new to the role should above all listen in the first weeks and only then change things.

A leadership style that wants to make problems visible instead of punishing them. Lean depends on deviations being discussed openly at the board; that only works if the manager treats mistakes as information and not as blame. They are regularly on the shop floor, ask about the standard and about obstacles, and they develop their people instead of solving things for them. This is often described as servant leadership or Lean Leadership: the manager serves the process and the team by removing obstacles. Command and control does not fit Lean, but neither does laissez-faire; Lean needs clear standards and leadership that demands them every day.

I bill coaching per session or as a fixed-scope package, for example six or ten sessions including contracting and closing, transparently and without hidden costs. What a coaching engagement costs in total depends on the number of sessions, the format (on site or online) and whether a baseline assessment such as 360-degree feedback is included. We clarify the scope in a no-obligation initial consultation, in which we also check whether the chemistry is right. I quote amounts there, not on the website. Many companies finance coaching for their managers as part of leadership development.

Yes. For coaching financed by the employer, there is a three-way contracting conversation in which the goal of the coaching is agreed with you and the client, usually your line manager or HR. The content of the sessions, however, stays exclusively between you and me. At the end there is a closing conversation in which you yourself report what has changed, as much or as little as you want. I set these rules down in writing before we start. Without this confidentiality, coaching does not work, because nobody talks openly about their leadership if it is reported upwards.