It’s fun to check out great leadership coaches. Whether you’re looking to engage one or just curious, there’s a lot to learn from them.

Great leadership coaches have a lot in common. Most of them have have turned their formula for success into a coaching program where they train coaches to help others replicate their success. Moreover, most of them are amazing speakers as well as coaches.

Almost all of them are also best-selling authors. You can learn a lot about their coaching, the programs they offer, and their style from their books. For less than $30, this is a great way to see if their skills match what you are looking for.

At the highest level, the coach is a brand, complete with teams who manage brand experiences. Some of them even still take individual coaching clients.

How This List is Organized

I’ve divided this list into different categories based on the coach’s background. A coach’s career path can tell you a lot about the skillsets they specialize in. Generally, skillsets are transferable from one industry or setting to another. For example, a coach with former military experience may have proven abilities to manage highly interdependent teams. Furthermore, they have proven ability to strategize and achieve complex goals under difficult circumstances. As military professionals, they also understand the importance of loyalty and alignment throughout the organization.

A corporate leader or former CEO is likely to have a number of business skills. Specifically, these may include business modeling, negotiation, managing teams, and creating alignment. As great leaders, they also know how to inspire loyalty and dedication throughout the organization.

A few of these great leadership coaches have developed online courses. These are sometimes very affordable, starting at a few hundred dollars, though some are quite pricey. A few of these programs are self-paced so you can work when you can. Each program is unique, with some focusing tightly on a few methods or ideas and others that offer a choice of modules or topics, so you can choose what interests you. This is a great way to go if you like to learn from pre-recorded or written content.

At the end is a list of top coaching programs from well known organizations. Naturally, these organizations have their own priorities and interests when it comes to coaching.

So, for your reference and for fun, here are 21 great leadership coaches and coaching programs.

Leadership Development Consulting and Training by Former Military Leaders

  1. Jocko Willink and Lief Babin together wrote Extreme Ownership. It’s an excellent book about lessons learned in combat. Throughout, they show how these skills transfer to corporate settings. They co-foundeded Eshelon Front, a corporate consulting firm.
  2. The McCrystal Group offers consulting and training to help complex teams use advanced technology. Additionally, they offer programs for excellent communications and strategy. General Stanley McCrystal, a 4-Star General and Senior Commander in Afghanistan, heads the organization.

Coaches, Speakers, and Trainers from Entrepreneurial Backgrounds

Coaches from entrepreneurial backgrounds developed great skills starting up their businesses. Now, they are great leadership coaches helping others do the same.

  1. Tony Robbins’ Business Accelerator is a masterclass with time for interaction with motivational speaker Tony Robbins. It helps attendees develop an entrepreneurial mindset, including risk taking, resourcefulness, grit, and innovation.
  2.  Ali Brown specializes in empowering female entrepreneurs. She founded The Trust, a membership organization for female entrepreneurs who have at least $1 Million in revenue. Members have access to leadership retreats and events with Ali Brown and other speakers. She coaches a select few clients.
  3. Marshall Goldsmith is a former Dartmouth Professor of Management and top management consultant. His academy trains coaches in his Stakeholder Centered Coaching program. For about $200,000 a year, Marshall Goldsmith will coach you. If you can’t afford that, his trained coaches work for $10,000 to $20,000 for three to six months. Alternatively, you can simply read his books. Goldsmith’s many bestselling books include What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and Triggers.
  4. Marcel Schwantes is a leadership coach, speaker, and author who promotes human values in leadership. Schwantes offers leadership courses, workshops, a newsletter, a book, and one-on-one coaching. In all his work, he highlights the business case for bringing out the best in everyone. To that end, he promotes behaviors like respect, enjoying your work, and honoring people for who they are. He offers 45-minute one-on-one sessions for $600.
  5. Bob Chapman is an entrepreneur and author who believes business should be a force for good. His book, Everybody Matters, Chapman describes how he turned respect into a business strategy that drove extraordinary growth. Now his leadership institute helps others do the same.
  6. SCORE is a free service offered by the Small Business Administration. It matches small business owners with retired business leaders for mentoring. This is an excellent resource for those who need a little advice along the way. They aren’t all trained coaches, but they are successful in their own right and dedicated to mentoring others in meaningful ways.

Coaches with Former Corporate Backgrounds

In addition to entrepreneurs, corporate leaders make great leadership coaches. They often specialize in the industries where they achieved their own successs.

  1. Andrew Laurie grew a travel company from $50 million to $2 billion in two years. He now coaches and consults from Brisbane, Australia. In addition to coaching, he runs Dynamic Business, a PR and publishing firm for small to medium businesses. He believes in the power of publishing to promote business.
  2. Matt Mochary specializes in coaching tech leaders in Silicon Valley. Furthermore, he runs the Mochary Method, a coaching and leadership development firm where you can find 1-on-1 coaching, 360 assessments, and other tools to build your skills.
  3. Bob Cramer is a 5-time tech CEO. Through his organization, Cramer Advisory, he offers individualized coaching, corporate training, and consulting. Specifically, he specializes in best practices for high growth companies.
  4. Alisa Cohn is a top executive coach in the tech industry. For example, her clients include people from Venmo, Etsy, Dell, Microsoft, IBM, the New York Times, and others.  In addition to personalized coaching, she offers workshops for skills such as Personal Mastery, Managing Your Leadership Brand, and High Performance.
  5. John Mattone is a well-known coach whose former clients include Steve Jobs and Roger Enrico, the former CEO of PepsiCo. Besides coaching, he heads up John Mattone Global, which trains other coaches in Mattone’s Intelligent Leadership method. If you can’t afford him, consider finding a John Mattone trained coach.
  6. Cherie Silas specializes in coaching for Agile Project Management. Agile an iterative and collaborative method for managing complex organizations and projects. Tech companies often use this method to manage fast growth. In addition to coaching, she is also CEO of Tandem Coaching, with coaching options including Executive coaching, Leadership Coaching, Organizational Coaching, and ADHD Coaching.
  7. Liz Bentley has coached hundreds of clients. Her company, Liz Bentley Associates, trains individuals, teams, and organizations. Liz Bentley herself does motivational speaking and leads corporate training sessions.
  8. Michael Bungay Stanier is a bestselling author and speaker. He focuses expecially on the power of curiosity for enabling change in individuals and organizations. He wrote The Coaching Habit and also heads Box of Crayons, an online leadership development platform. There you will find self-paced learning modules, many of which cost less than $1000.

Top Coaching Programs by Organizations

In addition to these great leadership coaches, here are five great organizations with leadership courses. As with all courses, these will tend to be directive and teacher-centered. That is, the teacher sets the curriculum and the pace of learning. That’s as opposed to one-on-one coaching, which relies more on self-directed learning, self-reflection, and personal exploration.

  1. The Center for Creative Leadership. The CCL has been a premier leadership research firm for over 50 years. They offer online courses and modules to help leaders get the skills they need when they need them.
  2. Harvard offers a virtual 3-month leadership program based on case studies. It mixes live interaction, self-paced learning modules, and pre-recorded sessions.
  3. MIT offers tailor-made coaching and training for organizations. They customize programs to fit with your company’s context, culture, and goals.
  4. McKinsey, a top corporate consulting firm, offers leadership training for those rising into corporate ranks. Their program includes small group discussions, virtual programs, and large conferences.
  5. Deloitte, a top financial consulting firm, offers Risk & Financial Advisory Accelerators. These programs provide leadership experiences. Additionally, they also have focused labs to help develop financial skillsets.  

As you can see, there are a lot of great leadership coaches out there. Of course, you don’t have to be famous to be a great coach. But it’s always fun to take a look at the top of the heap and learn from the best.

Further Reading

Now you are familiar with some great leadership coaches. Next, you might want to look at the following blogs:

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