Written by: Alana Hayes on March 31, 2023

Although geological knowledge and technical expertise are needed for gold mining, a different sort of prospecting is required for the mining of leaders. Coaching is essential for turning an individual into a strong leader. However there are some other keys such as time, patience, and a willingness to experiment with new methods.

“We sometimes judge the body of Christ as a whole when we see people’s immaturity, their apathy and their fears. We are in danger of dismissing Christ’s body as hopeless, powerless and unimportant, when God sees her as the hope of the world.” (1)

― Tom Camacho, Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching

The Benefits of Coaching

Coaching is an excellent method for developing leaders since it allows people to acquire insight into their present skill set as well as discover areas for growth. Coaching also allows individuals to receive support from someone who can provide personalized feedback and guidance during their development journey. Coaching fosters accountability, allowing progress to be tracked on a regular basis and goal achievement to become more likely.

One significant advantage of using coaching to build leaders is the possibility for increased creativity within a business. Coaches in Camachos’s method extends leaders beyond their comfort zone in order to explore what could be achievable within their own leadership capability by offering space for people to generate ideas and evaluate other perspectives.

Coaching within kingdom leadership development creates a safe environment in which errors are not only allowed but desired, allowing for progress to occur without fear or hesitation. This kind of open communication encourages participants to develop confidence in the process, which leads to higher levels of overall participation among those being coached.

Challenges To Overcome When Developing Leaders Through Coaching

Many hurdles must be solved while using coaching approaches for kingdom leadership development in order to succeed. To start, it might be difficult to identify qualified coaches with experience working with religious groups since many do not specialize in faith-based work or understand how it works in a commercial environment. Moreover, many leaders are concerned about losing control while participating in a process like this one since they are unsure how a person should measure progress achieved through time from point A (status quo) all the way to point B. (professionally developed). Finally, the cost of such services is too expensive for some individuals.

Coaching has been an increasingly popular type of development among businesses today because of its success in developing more effective teams, enhancing organizational efficiency, and generating accountable positive workplace cultures! There are still some hurdles to using such tactics, but when done correctly, the results speak for themselves, resulting in a great investment return! Ultimately, the decision to pursue an activity is solely up to the individual, so don’t be afraid to take a leap of faith if you’re truly passionate about trying something new, just remember to exercise caution and due diligence every step of the way because there’s no guarantee success will come easy…

Not only is my NPO working towards building a framework to work along with Camacho’s guidelines for internships – We are currently as a family developing a business within our small town to adopt this style of coaching Camacho explains within our employees. In Nepal this type of entity was introduced to me as a BAM or “business with a mission”. “Business is a God-given vocation and institution in society, with the potential to bring multiple benefits to people, communities and nations. Business as mission intentionally leverages this intrinsic power of business to address spiritual needs, hand in hand with social, economic and environmental needs.” (2) If you have not heard of it I encourage you to see how you can implement some of these techniques into your workplace. 

(1) Camacho, Tom. Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching. Nottingham: IVP, 2019.

(2)Plummer, Jo. “Jo Plummer.” Business as Mission. Jo Plummer https://businessasmission.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/BAM-logo-for-website-2-1.png, January 20, 2015. https://businessasmission.com/what-is-bam/.

About the Author

Alana Hayes

Alana is a mother to four beautiful children and wife to a farmer in Texas. She is an avid world traveler with a heart for both the world and education. She is the president of the nonprofit Against the Grain Texas where they focus on providing education to children overseas and at risk adults in the states. To date the nonprofit has given almost $100,000 to individuals around the world. In her free time she loves spending meaningful time with people and reading to further her personal education.

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