The Ultimate Guide To Coaching Styles

What Are The Different Coaching Styles?

Much like what the name indicates, this coaching style follows the same definition and practice of "democracy."

It gives the client leeway to participate actively in the methods and procedure being devised to take them to success. It considers the choices, interests, and responses of the client equally.

As compared to other coaching styles, democratic coaching puts the control more in the hands of the clients while the coach provides the push and support required to deliver the tangible goals. 

Often considered the most empowering coaching style, democratic coaching is the best fit for clients who are ready for the responsibility and require lesser hand holding. It's a great fit for financial coaching, career coaching, and personal growth coaching.

Unlike the democratic style, the autocratic coaching style places the authority in the hands of the coach. You firmly lead your client toward the desired results and success.

Autocratic coaching places control with the coach. And it's important that you use this style when you have the necessary experience and expertise to dictate terms.

Often, the autocratic style comes associated with a negative perception. However, it does have its uses. It could be deployed when you have a client who responds best to structure and discipline, and looks to you for guidance.

An autocratic style can commonly be seen in military training, sports/fitness training, or business coaching where structure and specifics are more desirable than flexibility.

Close on the heels of the autocratic coaching style is bureaucratic coaching. It follows more of an "old-school" approach and is more driven by process and systems.

This strict, protocol-following, rule-oriented, and often rigid coaching style is ideal for discipline-loving clients. However, before applying this style, you need to be sure of the client-style fit and your experience in the area that you are coaching them on.

It's the best fit for highly regulated environments where there's a protocol already established and no scope for self-destruction.

For instance, in a legal firm or a hospital where deviation from a process could cost a lot of money or even lives. More often than not, bureaucratic coaching is adopted for organizational training in disciplined, regulated set-ups that require a non-negotiable focus on compliance and processes, like government and public-sector kinds of bodies.

The Holistic coaching style basically focuses on the overall growth of the person - giving all aspects of the client's life equal importance.

Here, you have to take into consideration the entire client perspective – their place in society, world, their individual goals, and infuse them with confidence, balance, and purpose. It requires you to establish the full coach-client trust to uncover unrevealed desires and goals.

The role of the coach is to ask the right questions and provide support and encouragement. Holistic coaching is best fit in situations where the client is looking to create lasting results in their life as a whole – mind, body, spirit, and community.

This style does not focus on one specific outcome even if the client has one main challenge they want to address. The idea is to take a deep dive into their lives and identify what are the interconnected issues that are creating an imbalance.

Watch this video to see holistic coaching in action: 

This is often regarded as the most "ineffective" approach of coaching, but does have its uses in situations where the client knows more about the subject than the coach does. Again, this is often used in organizational settings where the coach comes on board as an external consultant and isn't the "primary process owner." 

This style does have its positives. It definitely allows the client to be self-empowered, confident, and realize self-efficacy.

This style does have its positives. It definitely allows the client to be self-empowered, confident, and realize self-efficacy.

Coaches who practice mindful coaching help their clients focus their mental and emotional energies to one line of thought without distractions. They help the client move from doing to being. It helps the client achieve new perceptions and breakthroughs and is a great approach to use in executive or leadership coaching.

To use this style, coaches must be mindful themselves. They need to leave judgement at the door when they come to the coaching session and interact with the client with openness, curiosity, and attention.

A great way to get comfortable with this style is by using guided meditations and positive affirmations during the session. Meditation instantly puts the client at peace, develops a sense of trust and reliability, and you can easily steer their mind and intentions to positive outcomes.

Developmental coaching involves understanding the 'what', 'why', and 'how' of your client. The coach uses 360 degree feedback and questions to understand the client's past experiences and assess where they are in their development journey. This style takes into account the client's age, mental age, and thought processes.

As a coach using a developmental coaching style, you don't aim to change behavior. Rather, the focus is on identifying the root cause of the problem and bringing about a mindset change. It addresses their long-standing issues into providing the much-needed validation.

Intuitive coaching adopts a more spiritual route where you help your client listen to their innermost thoughts, conscience, and intuitions.

This style helps the clients develop and trust their inner perspectives. This is where you have to help the client identify what they need to find fulfillment and personal satisfaction through introspection.

The role of the coach is to help the client realize their hidden desires, build trust in themselves, and attain clarity of thought.

Probably the most liberal coaching style, here there's only one goal: transformation. No hierarchy, no coach authority, no linearity in power.

This is where you have to work and establish a client-coach alliance where both the parties involved know exactly what they are getting into. 

Also called life coaching or perspective-change coaching, transformational coaching aids the client in bringing necessary changes to drive positive change. As a coach, you can use this style to build your client's perspective on how they view their life, themselves, their goals, and their methods.

Watch this video to learn how to become a transformational coach:

Typically, visualizations help you imagine or live a future you envision for yourself. It's like harnessing your power of imagination to decide where you want to be in life.

A coach can use these visualizations - imagery, visuals, imagination - to create a positive influence for their clients. Vision coaching requires a healthy dialogue and the role of the coach is to encourage the client to adopt visualization techniques. 

This style is best used in the short-term, but can be highly effective for stressful workplaces, jobs, and people weighed down with responsibilities. It's like a mini-imaginary getaway – offering a peek into a fruitful future!

Now that you know all these different coaching styles…
Do you see yourself leaning towards one or two of them?
Does something ring familiar?
Let's move to the next chapter and figure out what your coaching style needs to be!