Improve Your Leadership Skills With These Coaching Styles: The Powerhouse and The Visionary

Knowing how to be a good leader is powerful, no matter where you are on your career path. Learning strategies to improve your leadership skills can drive your career forward. Understanding how to best communicate and motivate others can help in sales, team-building, and customer service.  

Working with a professional to strengthen your leadership skills will enable you to step into new opportunities when they present themselves—and if you’re a seasoned professional, TaskHuman specialists can help you elevate your skills even more. 

You, your goals, and your colleagues can benefit from your leadership abilities. How? Encouraging your teammates to reach their goals will help you establish yourself as a strong leader, make you a more valuable asset, and open career pathways in the future. 

Let’s introduce you to two amazing coaching styles (and TaskHuman specialists): The Powerhouse and The Visionary! 

• The Powerhouse sees where your energy is and how to use it to support your team. By understanding how you are a part of your organization’s system, you will be better able to influence your colleagues.

• The Visionary can help you see what your team could grow into and will help you gain the skills to lead them there. When you know what is possible for your team as a whole and for you as an individual, you are able to take the steps you need to help everyone advance their careers.

The Powerhouse

Coach Marnette Falley wants to help you develop leadership skills to show you how to use your influence. For Marnette, an effective leader is an influencer who can see where colleagues are now, and where they can go. You can also use this insight to help your own performance and growth.

Effective leadership “is energizing others to do difficult work,” she says. “This powerful type of leadership relies more on influence and less on authority, and I think this is the power that moves an organization from where you are now… toward your aspirations.”

To help people do the work, Marnette sees the workplace as a system. Employees and leaders need to develop the system to be beneficial to everyone. And, as a new leader, you may need to shift your personality in order to fit into the system. Understanding the system will give you the ability to meet the organization’s needs and to exceed your performance expectations.

“It’s automatically going to affect the way you work as a leader,” she says.

Related reading: Transform Your Leadership Through Self-Awareness

Negotiating an organization’s culture is not the only challenge leaders face in the workplace. Marnette believes the increasing complexity and interconnectedness of our world adds layers of challenge.

“What worked yesterday may not work today,” she says. “To do well we need to increasingly be good at diagnosing the situation accurately.”

Helping you develop your leadership skills and sense of influence will give you the insight you need to better lead and support your team members. Knowing you’re giving them the best will also propel your own career forward.

The Visionary

Coach Shari Jo Watkins wants you [as a leader] to see the best in others. For her, good leaders learn the strengths of their team members. Then, you can help develop those strengths for the good of the individual and the company.

“Oftentimes, we get stuck in our own minds as to what something should look like,” she says. “But in reality what we’re doing is helping people bring out the best pieces of themselves and be able to grow to the next level.”

Organizational culture impacts your authority style in Shari Jo’s opinion too. Depending on how the organization functions, if it indulges in toxic practices or if it works toward equality and boundary-setting, as a guide, you may struggle to help people develop their skills.

And it may be particularly true for new leaders.

“So often we see people from different lines of work or different industries that have a challenge in crossing over because they only know one, specific thing,” she says.

Other challenges you may face as an organizational leader stem from common onboarding practices and structural deficiencies, Shari Jo believes.

People in the middle often don’t feel seen or supported, which can lead to larger interpersonal and organizational problems. Making sure you “see” all of the people you work with will help you provide support within all levels of your team and organization. When you take the time to give others access to you, and provide constructive, useful feedback, then you are able to learn what is important to them, what issues or concerns they have, and what else they need to perform their best.

“Oftentimes we get so busy, we forget to help individuals in the mid-level space be able to grow,” she says.

Learning to be a leader will serve your professional (and personal) goals and can help you become more self-aware so you develop a stronger bond with your team, and ultimately find alignment and provide greater value for your overarching organization’s growth and goals!

Moreover, every leader, new and old, can benefit from having a professional—an outsider with a clear view—give their analysis and insight on where teams can improve.

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