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.
Recently I published an article on empathy and emerging leadership with Schneider~Ross, the diversity and change practice I co-founded 20 years ago:
“I believe that we will see a new kind of leadership emerging, “phoenix like”, from the ashes of the current global financial crisis. It is one where a highly prized capability will be empathy. It may not feature in more than a handful of leadership competency frameworks just now - but I believe, increasingly, it will do…”
…Continue reading - Empathy - a vital skill for corporate leaders?
My core passion is working with leaders and their teams - whether global business leaders or entrepreneurs, supporting them as they move up onto a wider stage where some very new skills are required of them.
As they step onto that stage, their abilty to relate to people both emotionally and socially moves up their performance agenda, while actually the technical skills that got them there in the first place may well not be needed in the same way again.
So it’s not just about tacking on a few additional skills - it’s a real shift in identity.
…Continue reading - Moving on up? - a shift in identity for leaders
At the end of a project, a client recently asked me whether it would be OK to book a top up coaching session at some point in the future. This got me thinking.
Towards the end of the coaching assignment, the skilful coach will be pacing their way with the client to make sure that the client is in the best possible place to take her learning onwards and upwards - and taking responsibility for that learning. Any tendency towards dependancy on the coach is not healthy - and this is explored further in the ICF Code of Ethics, of which I am a signatory. http://www.coachfederation.org/Ethics/
Coaching is more and more being acknowledged as a core ability for outstanding leadership. Here is Alan Lafley, outgoing CEO of P&G, on his coaching leadership style, which he believes has helped him achieve transformative change at P&G :
“….Coaching at P&G doesn’t mean coddling. On the contrary, Lafley demands that his managers take on the responsibility of making tough strategic choices. “Most human beings and most companies don’t like to make choices. And they particularly don’t like to make a few choices that they really have to live with. They argue, ‘It’s much better to have lots of options, right?’”
Those extraneous options have a way of reappearing on the table after they have been dismissed. Lafley therefore insists on a “not-do list” as an end product of the strategy process……”
In a way, this is a bit like how a coach works with an executive…. firstly by supporting the client as they paint a picture of their purpose and direction, and open up all the possible options of getting there, discovering some new options they perhaps wouldn’t otherwise have considered.
Sometimes though, the desire to keep several options open may seem attractive (and sometimes it is necessary for a while), but often keeping options open can be a way of avoiding real commitment.
So part of being a great coach is to be able to challenge the client to focus and commit. And the timing is crucial…if the client is not ready to commit, there will be some more “stuff” getting in the way which will need working through first. Helping the client focus is rather like sharpening the camera lens on the image, bit by bit, and then supporting them in being quite determined about cutting out any “extraneous options”, as Alan Lafley says.
The full article was published in the McKinzie Quarterly by Rajat Gupta and Jim Wendler