How effective are the leaders in your organization at coaching their team members?

Our reader poll today asks: How effective are the leaders in your organization at coaching their team members?

• Extremely — They’re great coaches. 1.6%
• Very — They do a solid job of coaching. 11.9%
• Somewhat — Their coaching skills could use some improvement. 36%
• Not very — They rarely coach and when they do, they’re not effective. 30%
• Not at all — They have no idea what coaching is. 20.4%

Development requires coaching. It’s pretty scary to see 86% of you responding that your leaders need better coaching skills and that 50% are pretty bad at it. A leaders’ job is to build the next generation of leaders. If you can’t coach your people, it’s pretty hard to help them develop their skills. Take a hard look at your own coaching skills and those of the leaders working for you. Do you need to improve those skills? What are you doing about it? When are you going to do it? Hold yourself accountable to improving in this arena. Read a book. Take a course. Find a mentor who is a great coach and ask them to help you build your coaching skills. The sooner you start building your coaching skills, the sooner your people will get the leadership and development they need from you. You owe it to them to improve your abilities in this arena.

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.