For a while now I have been working with a 360 degree feedback tool I designed. It’s for leaders who want to do some deeper review of their leadership approach and style, and explore the impact they have on others.

The first stage is a “Reflection” form - a series of questions and a checklist of detailed leadership competencies in what for me are the 4 core areas for leadership: Vision, Engagement, Resilience and Drive.

The second stage is a Feedback form which leaders send out directly to their chosen contacts. Unlike most 360 feedback methods, which are anonymous, this one relies on  - and encourages - open discussion with contacts, and builds the skill of exchanging feedback.

The third stage is a series of coaching sessions which synthesise the views of the coachee and their feedback contacts, and then go on to build confidence in strengths and set development goals for areas to work on.

With lots of practice on real business challenges in between sessions, to hone up these skills, powerful conversations with feedback contacts, and  insights from the coaching sessions, this process can be a powerful engine for personal leadership change.

I have also designed a customised version which specifically targets skills around inclusive leadership and empathy, which is available from Schneider-Ross

If you would like to find out more about the Leadership Feedback Tool or the associated leadership workshops I run on Vision, Engagement, Resilience and Drive, do get in touch.

One of the big influences on my leadership coaching and development is “Systems Thinking.” The origins of this powerful approach are from the 1970’s and from the world of therapy, but there has been  some wonderful development of this work more recently to apply it to the complex systems that are the organisations we work in.

Here are some of the ways that I have woven systems thinking into the designing of my leadership development and coaching  work :

• Information is power?     The parts which make up  a system are interconnected and affect  eachother in a dynamic way, eg members of a team affect eachothers’ performance in the way that they for example,share information. Do they hoard information, thinking it giving them personal power? Or share it across the contacts in their system because that leads to everyone being more in touch and creative?
• Stronger than the sum of the parts     The whole system somehow has a presence and power beyond the individual parts, eg when a team is functioning really well, somehow it takes on its own “identity.” People might say: What is it about Leo’s team? They all seem to be very switched on, and they are getting great sales results.”
• Who is in your system?    Be aware of who is in your system and commit energy to building strong  relationships with those in your wider system across the organisation. For example in  R&D, build links with your internal and external customers, and make sure that key stakeholders inside and outside your organisation  are involved in the early stages of innovation, not just your smaller technical circle of contacts.
• Problems at work are complex!     Leading cultural change in organisations, execs  will want to take a “whole system” overview approach before making a key decision, rather than shining a narrow spotlight of awareness on a problem.

So as a leader, for example, you find that your valuable line manager Steve has had feedback from a junior member of staff, Laura, to say that she finds his leadership style rather bullying. A quick answer  - and this still happens far too often - might be to move Laura elsewhere.

Problem solved? Well not really. A more systemic approach might be to realise that Steve needs to face up to some learning he must take on board re his own leadership style. Otherwise the problem will reoccur.  

Laura will need some kind of support to recover and get back on track. Ane thinking more widely, this incident also impacts on the leadership team’s commitment to developing a culture where we communicate respectfully with eachother, and move towards a coaching style of leadership….

I have applied this “Systems” thinking in lots of ways in both 1:1 and in leadership team sessions. On a recent leadership development day I asked a group to try out stepping into different parts of their system which led to some fabulous insights.
One delegate said, “I stepped into my client’s shoes and really started to feel the pressure that she is under. That has helped me develop a different and more assertive way of responding to her sometimes challenging demands, without being “infected” by her stress myself.”

If you would like to find out more about systems thinking, I have some great resources and contacts I can send you, and if would like to explore how this approach could help you and your organisation, do get in touch.

One of the powerful themes that can help clients really focus on what they want in work and life, and can help clear away layers of “shoulds” and “if only”s is to explore the legacy we leave behind us - when we move on from a job, from an organization, or even when we leave a room!

What do people sense about us  - do we lift or diminish people? change a mood for better or worse…?

Asking ourselves: “when we reach the end of our life, what do we want to look back on as our legacy to others?” is a slightly awesome but very positive way of taking a perspective on what is really important to us.

I came across an article in the Guardian recently when ex nurse (and now singer) Bronnie Ware wrote about the five regrets she heard from people on their deathbed. Got me pondering….

Top Five Regrets:

• I wish I’d had the courage to live a life truer to myself, not the life others’ expected of me
• I wish I didn’t work so hard
• I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
• I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends
• I wish that I had let myself be happier

Living your life backwards for a moment, what do you want your legacy to be - in this meeting? When you move on from this job? At your last breath?

Here’s Bronnie’s full piece Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Recently I ran a 3 day workshop for leaders who wanted to power up their coaching skills.

One of them said that he wished he had developed ”coaching” as a leadership style he could draw on, years before, when he was leading his organisation through rapid change. Although in many ways a successful leader, he recognised that if he had been able to “let go” and see that his micromanaging was not improving the quality of what was being delivered, but actually slowing it down, he would have had a much more relaxed time of it.

Daniel Goleman (the emotional intelligence guru) has researched which leadership styles are the most effective. Along with Visionary skills, coaching skills are seen to be the most important skill set for a leader, and yet the least used. Why is that?

Well, they are important skills because coaching skills give you a hot line into really understanding what other people (clients, partners, managers, employees) really want and value. These skills prevent you from becoming isolated from the real news that’s circulating.

But why the “least used” I wonder? Is it because some leaders believe that leadership requires that they should always lead from the front, either with a charismatic command and control mix, or by setting a pace which others then may struggle to keep up with?

Being able to draw on a coaching leadership style is essential if you want to encourage others to grow. And if you can’t do that, the growth of your own organisation will be limited.

The great news is that just like any skills, coaching skills can  be learned and honed up with practice.

For more information on  how to broarden your leadership styles portfolio, so that you can surf the waves of change with a bit more ease do email me  Rachael@rachaelrosscoaching.co.uk

Sometimes people ask me what kind of coach are you? One of the words I use to describe my kind of coaching is transformational.

“And what does that really mean Rachael?”, a colleague of mine asked recently.

Firstly, I love working with people who want to commit to a journey of self discovery, beyond performance improvement, to make a quantum leap in the way that they lead.

Maybe it sounds a bit arrogant - who am I to think that I can transform anyone?

Well first of all, I don’t transform them. The transformation comes from the client’s learning through the coaching - the insights and connections that they make during our work together.

In many ways the coach’s job is to stay out of the way of the client’s own natural development, and occasionally challenge by causing the coachee to notice something new.

A great question I have learned from my work on Clean Language is “And what is happening now?” This elegant question lasers straight to the pattern of behaviour, in the moment, as it happens. A pattern that I have spotted may need some light shining on it.

Carl Rogers, the American humanistic psychologist held that as human beings we naturally want to grow and develop (self actualise), so this process of transforming over time is natural to us.

What are some of the things that are important in encouraging this kind of transformative change in the leaders I work with?

1. Say that’s what I do - so that people who are looking for that kind of coaching, can find it more easily
2. Explore the client’s connection to others in the business (their boss, their team, business partners, suppliers, so they start to see the change they are making has an effect on the wider “system” they are working in
3. explore with the commissioning client and the coachee, the connections between our coaching partnership and the organisation’s overall business aims
4. Hold the firm intention in the coaching that this person has the most amazing resources to achieve whatever they want.
5. Hold in mind that the initial goal is often a catalyst for broarder change
6. Encourage reflective learning by suggesting keeping a journal of changes that they notice in themselves over the course of the coaching - reflective learning is a cornerstone of the self aware leader.

Here are a couple of comments from a recent coachee and (the second comment) from their boss, which they have kindly given permission for me to share.

“I have found the sessions to be extremely enlightening, thought provoking and the learnings from them will stand me in good stead for years to come.”

“I genuinely think that (the coachee) has been on a voyage of self discovery and the coaching has given him some sustainable tools to enable him to continue the journey of self awareness”