Our evaluation of coaching consistently shows when Leaders coach their people, they are more engaged and more likely to be open to learning (a growth mindset). Other research shows a whole range of positive impacts on performance and capability building to the extent that coaching is probably one of the key tools of a leader.
Coaching is good – does focusing on strengths actually make coaching better? Our research says yes.
There’s a lot of research showing the positive impact of strengths. Gallup research also showed significantly lower levels of disengagement for strength based coaching (1.7% disengaged compared with 50% for weakness based coaching).
Our research, was based on the evaluation of an executive coaching programme delivered within an MBA leadership course, tracked 90 participants across three years and asked a simple question: once you account for all the other things we know make coaching effective — trust, listening, good questions, accountability, sharing useful tools — does a focus on strengths still add anything extra?
The answer was a clear yes.
Participants rated their coaches across seven quality dimensions and three outcome measures (would they recommend their coach, did they achieve more, did they progress their goals). Helping people leverage their signature strengths correlated significantly with every other marker of good coaching, and — importantly — remained a unique, statistically significant predictor of outcomes even after everything else was accounted for. Interestingly, trust and listening, while clearly important, didn’t hold up as independent predictors on their own once other factors were controlled for. The researchers suggest they may work more as the foundation that allows other coaching skills, like questioning and a strengths focus, to actually land.
A few other findings stood out:
- Good questioning, strengths focus, resource-sharing, and accountability were the four factors that independently predicted better outcomes.
- Face-to-face coaching had a measurable edge, particularly in how well coaches were seen to share useful tools and resources — though a strengths-based approach worked well regardless of format.
- The overall model explained a striking 76% of the variation in coaching outcomes, a strong result for research in this space.
For us, this lines up closely with what we see in practice: the leaders who get the most out of coaching conversations are usually the ones who’ve been helped to see clearly what they’re already good at, and to build from there, leveraging strengths to achieve what they want or need to — not just to fix what isn’t working.
It’s also a big part of why strengths, trust, and good questions sit at the heart of the coaching approach we teach leaders through our Leaders Coach programme. If you’re curious about how these ideas translate into practical, everyday coaching skills for your leadership team, — we’re always happy to talk it through.
