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Personal Business Coach
Inspired Development and Coaching |
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Leadership for the 21st century
Above and before anything else, a leader needs to be interested in and committed to the learning, development and growth of others. They need to be curious about how people learn to behave and act more effectively, and what motivates them to do so. Equally, they need an optimistic view of people’s motivation and capabilities.
The role of leader requires a strong set of interpersonal skills, including the ability to connect with other people and rapidly build effective rapport, the ability to fully listen and attend, questioning skills, the ability to give appropriate feedback and to suitably challenge, along with the ability to summarise and focus on key issues.
These capabilities are, in many cases, the antithesis of the skill set developed by traditional command and control managers of the sort that are still all too prevalent in the UK workforce. They are, however, typical of the more connected and engaged style of leadership that is found in our most successful and vibrant organisations. Effective leaders in such organisations draw on all their humanity, their intelligence, their emotions and their intuitions. They know that building effective working relationships comes before running operations or shaping the future. It is for them the necessary foundation for delivering results.
Such a leader has, by definition, strong interpersonal skills, they connect easily with people and can easily establish rapport. They are also very self aware and accepting of their own strengths and weaknesses, whilst being highly motivated to constantly develop and improve the way they relate to and influence others.
An ability to live with ambiguity and a flexibility of approach are also the norm. They are adaptable and tend to approach problems and situations from a variety of directions simultaneously, always being open to novel approaches and solutions. They combine this with a willingness to invest a significant amount of time in engaging people in dialogue, asking appropriate questions and then listening intently.
The leaders who are going to assure your future believe that they achieve most by enabling their staff to perform to their full potential and are quite comfortable in supporting people to do things that they cannot personally do. They prefer a hands-off approach wherever possible, encouraging people to think things through for themselves and take responsibility for their own learning and development within the context of a supportive but challenging relationship.
Leaders help people who work for them to better appreciate their own strengths and weaknesses, encourage them to establish goals for further performance improvement and to monitor and review progress towards achieving their goals. In so doing, they identify tasks for their direct reports that are at the same time real, current and important, and which can act as relevant vehicles for learning. Finally, they focus on the learning needs of the individual and not exclusively on their need to communicate something.
In our view, this means that helping your leaders develop these capabilities is a key strategic prerequisite for sustained competitive advantage and profitable growth, not a just a “nice to do”.
Now read the above paragraphs again substituting the word coach for the word leader. Do you notice anything? An effective leader as coach and the sort of leader that is going to help grow and transform your business are one and the same person.
If we accept this, it starts to raise some interesting and challenging questions about investing in the development a coaching culture and the associated leadership capabilities.
Companies that embrace this challenge succeed in building an organisation that achieves:
o A compelling sense of urgency
o A passion for growth based on business need and hard evidence
o Numerous role models of engaging leadership behaviour
o Strong accountability and results delivery - a shared business mindset and a keen awareness of how and where money can be made
o A greater understanding of and personal engagement with business development
o Enhanced customer focus – building long term mutually beneficial relationships at all levels
o A growing culture of innovation, learning and creativity
o Strategic development of critical capabilities
o Retention of key talent
o Increased revenue
The purpose is to build capabilities that deliver strategic advantage. These capabilities will vary according to the individual and their level in the organisation. However, along with a greater external focus and an engagement with the business and its strategic objectives, we normally to see evidence of substantial growth in the following areas:
o Business acumen
o Commercial and sales awareness
o An engaging leadership style
o Presence and impact
o Mental acuity
o Self awareness
o Strategic awareness
o Creativity and innovation
o Communication, teamworking and networking skills
When looked at with such an accute business and leadership focus, the development of a strong coaching culture and the associated capabilities becomes the difference that makes the difference.
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