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When most people think about coaching, it’s no surprise that they immediately go to the great sports coaches. As someone interested in Leadership Coaching, you know that coaching also applies to business teams and the leaders who lead them. And if you’re familiar with CoachQuest Leadership Coaching, you look beyond coaching down—to the team that reports to you. 4-Way_signYou are familiar with all 4 dimensions of Leadership Coaching—inside, up, sideways, and down.

You can go deeper and in greater detail into each of these coaching dimensions by reading my paper 4-Way Leadership Coaching. In the meantime, I’m going to review them here.

Inside: Coaching Yourself

Naturally, this is where it all begins. Only after you know yourself, what you stand for, and where you’re going, can you hope to get other highly motivated professionals to follow you. For that reason, self-coaching forms the foundation of 4-Way Leadership Coaching. A solid self-coaching foundation gives you 4 essential benefits: Confidence, Progress, Conviction, and Habit.

Down: Coaching Your Team

Your primary Coach-as-Leader job is to guide and raise the commitment, performance and productivity of each member of your team. This requires that you actively pursue the continuous development and growth of the team members who report to you. It begins with helping them know themselves, bolstering their confidence, building their sense of responsibility, and removing obstacles to their success. In the end, if you do your job well, you help create an organization that thrives on the high commitment and high performance of your teams.

Sideways: Coaching Your Peers

Your peers also need and will appreciate coaching, if you do it well and with their best interests in mind. In peer coaching, it’s important to focus first on the positive and to look toward the future. You and your peers provide each other with feedback, encouragement, advice, and ideas. Each of you will learn things about yourselves and each other, including insights and advice you would not come up with on your own.

Up: Coaching Your Manager

Your boss needs to be coached as well. Coaching her or him takes special handling. It’s important to position yourself and your coaching presentations in a respectful manner and to carefully choose the time and place. Coaching up takes more courage than coaching in the other directions, but done well, it can amplify the results of all your other coaching efforts.

Practice all 4 dimensions

You can explore the the 4 dimensions of Coaching in greater depth in my paper 4-Way Leadership Coaching. Better yet, we practice coaching in all 4 directions at every CoachQuest Leader-as-Coach Workshop. If you want to work on 4-dimensional coaching with other leaders, why not register today?

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Helanie Scott
Helanie Scott
Helanie (pronounced yeh-LAH-nee) Scott, CEO and founder of Align4Profit in Dallas, Texas, has driven stunning leadership and cultural transformations for an impressive list of organizations. She has mastered the ability to connect with her audiences in the boardroom, classroom, on stage, or in one-on-one coaching sessions. Helanie’s Align4Profit clients rave at the way her engaging programs freshen outdated mindsets and deliver results-oriented, aligned action.