As a response to clients’ tightened budgetry belts, and as a cost effective alternative to 1:1 leadership coaching, I have found that offering leaders in organisations action learning leadership has been very well received.
A small group of leaders with some common learning aims form an “action learning set”, and we coach on some agreed common leadership themes, which tie closely into the organisations’ leadership competency framework.
Organisations need leaders who are adept at working with people who seem different from themselves - often due to increased work with partners and businesses outside the UK, sometimes in a bid to truly live out their brand as an employer who values diversity.
What is it like to be an inclusive leader - ie someone who really enjoys - and has great skill at - leading a diverse team? What are the skills involved? Is it something you could aspire to being?
One of the themes that comes up again and again with coaching leaders and their teams is feedback. When a client wants to really transform as a leader through coaching, feedback can shift from being something to be faced only when really absolutely necessary to becoming something to be welcomed - a great source of learning.
One senior exec from an oil industry background turned to his colleagues in a leadership session I was running for them and said: “Feedback really is the feedstock - it’s the high quality input that’s needed to make the “oil refinery” of our business function. Without it we could be in danger of stopping learning and churning out substandard product.” Nice metaphor!
At times of uncertainty when most things around us seems less reliable, less predictable, our values hold us at the quiet centre of the storm. This is true both at the organisational and the personal level.
For the organisation, values are the ship’s compass by which it defines itself - or redefines itself - when pushed off course.