As a coach who often coaches leaders, I benefit from reading the best and most current and enlightened books and articles on leadership from people who have the real-life experience to back up what they are recommending. I have benefitted from my regular brainstorming sessions with Will Keiper (the Leader in our book The Leader and The Coach), and the privilege of learning from him as a highly experienced leader and mentor.
Meditating upon the “shift” he insists leaders must make to be the most effective (and personally fulfilled) leaders they can be, I feel prompted to ask myself the question, “How does a coach best help a leader get there?”
This is Part One of my answer:
1. Don’t surrender your professional self-esteem as a coach. You’re not “just” a coach in your session with a leader. A leader is not superior to you; you know more about how and why humans can CHANGE and SHIFT than your client-leader does. You do that all day every day. Their narrow focus is on their organization’s challenges. Stay strong in what you know about how the mind works and the tremendous value that brings to the mind of the leader.
2. Remind your leader that you are there to coach the person they are being internal, not just to give special external business consulting. You are there to help the leader get clarity and develop confident commitments and new operating principles. Who are they being for everyone they interact within the organization? Do they model the operating principles and values they stand for? And is their communication of those principles consistent and clear?
3. Make sure you continuously create a relaxed sense of safety, confidentiality and trust with your client. Your coaching is compassionate and non-judgmental. Leaders interact with people all day who want something from them. So they have to interpret all incoming communication through a wary and often skeptical lens. Much of your value is that you are not like that. You want nothing from the leader other than their positive transformation. You represent a safe place for your leader to be open and vulnerable. You are an island in their storm. Your ability to listen without judgment, and understand, is even more valuable than any “advice” you attempt to give.
4. Be mindful of the fact that today’s leaders cannot be effective with old-world managerial styles. Study what Will has offered in his chapters. The most effective leaders today coach their people instead of micromanaging them in intimidating ways. Who better than you, as a coach, to help your client learn to coach?
5. Leaders who lead by expectation instead of leading by agreement are constantly frustrated by people not living up to their expectations. Coaches can help leaders create collaborative agreements with their people based on a committed culture-wide operating principle that “we keep our word with each other around here.”
The coach is there to help the leader bring into reality the wisdom of legendary business consultant W. Edwards Deming who said that leaders must “…preserve the power of intrinsic motivation, dignity, cooperation, curiosity, joy in learning, that their people are born with.”
The next five answers (numbers 6 – 10) are in my post, How Coaching Can Inspire Leadership – Part Two here: https://theleaderandthecoach.com/home-%26-blog/f/how-coaching-can-inspire-leadership—part-two
~Steve Chandler, co-author with Will Keiper of The Leader and The Coach–The Art of Humanity in Leadership available on Amazon.
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