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Leading with passion and energy
As we slowly and falteringly emerge from recession, now more than ever organisations need leaders who, whilst living with the paradoxes and complexities of organisational life, can create a compelling sense of urgency and direction.
Those leaders who are capable of building the foundations for future growth understand that whilst they are in charge, they are no longer in control. Instead they must create the conditions which foster innovation and renewal by connecting with people and building relationships. Acting as a catalyst, they enable people to move when they were previously stuck. They promote collaboration by supporting shared goals and creating trust, coaching and developing skills, providing challenging tasks and effective support.
In our experience of working with very many leaders across a variety of sectors, we have identified two key areas of focus which if correctly address can massively leverage effective leadership performance. These are:
o Business acumen
o Personal impact and presence
The fine art of business acumen
Leaders with a high degree of business acumen apply intense mental activity and agility to frame and assess business situations. They know when to apply the handbrake and give themselves thinking time, using both quantitative and quantitative logic to spot patterns of convergence and divergence, linking insightful assessments and identifying tipping points. They are also shrewd in their assessments of what to adopt and what to drop, constantly on the lookout for where and how money can be made.
It is less about tools than it is about experience, instinct and mind set. Such leaders are self aware, confident and authentic and they combine this with a sense of purpose, vision and direction. They understand power, its sources and how to use it, and they intuitively identify and manage risk. Rather than telling people what to do they rely on asking challenging questions, promote strategic conversations, and challenge norms, habits and routines.
Managers and leaders, bring varying degrees of business acumen to the work they do. In our experience, an effective and experience coach can support a motivated individual in substantially increasing their capability and confidence in this area.
Leading in the moment
Even more critical than the capability of business acumen is that of personal presence and impact.
Truly effective leaders have the rare ability to inspire a strong positive reaction from those around them. When they enter a room, they draw everyone’s attention. They have a unique and positive impact on others, something that is best captured by the ambiguous term “presence”. Leaders who have “presence” project solidity, an inner stillness and a sense of personal authority. They appear alive and vital. Their behaviour is congruent. There is no hint of personal discomfort or contradiction in the way they hold themselves, nor in the unconscious messages transmitted by their nonverbal behaviour and posture. They are authentic and real in the way they connect with and relate to other people and are very aware of the environment around them and of the impact they make. There is an energy and a life force about them.
The role of leadership coaching
An important purpose of leadership coaching, along with that of helping engender mature business acumen, is to help individuals build personal presence and impact as part of an empowering and engaging leadership style. The coach helps the individual leader become more consciously aware and so create a style of leadership that is both personally distinctive and organisationally attuned.
To achieve this, the coach assists the leader in:
o Gaining awareness and insight into their current patterns of behaviour
o Learning and embedding the appropriate behavioural competencies
Through the looking glass
With the coach holding up a metaphorical reflecting glass, the individual becomes much more keenly aware of the impact they make on others and of when they get stuck in habitual patterns of feeling, thinking and doing. Through a process of support and challenge, they identify aspirations and goals, examine values beliefs and mindsets and develop self awareness and emotional intelligence.
Performing under pressure
The most important step, however, is that of building and embedding the necessary behavioural competence. An effective coach will make sure that the leader not only has the necessary toolkit of skills available to successfully navigate the day to day challenges they face, but also that they are able to manage critical and stressful incidents with a similar resourceful composure. It is, of course, in these moments of high stress and pressure that such competence is most required and most often found wanting.
Although it will vary from person to person, key capabilities to be addressed here will include:
o Creating a compelling sense of urgency
o Exerting influence and authority
o Demonstrating assertiveness
o Fully accepting accountability for outcomes whilst delegating responsibility to others
o Handling conflict and coping with being disliked
o Asking challenging questions and then listening intently
o Challenging norms, habits and routines
o Linking direction with power and purpose
o Connecting with others – shining the spotlight on them
o Understanding, developing and motivating others – knowing what makes people tick
o Being present in the moment
o Generating excitement by expressing emotion
o Being open to unexpected outcomes
o Articulating clear leadership values
o Building networks - using coalitions and understanding the formal and informal organisation
o Recognising who knows, who cares and who can.
Coaching superior performance
The areas addressed will vary from individual to individual and all work must be intensively tailored. As can be seen from the above list, effective coaches work at the levels of knowledge, beliefs, capabilities and habits, getting people to try out new behaviours in safe situations before transferring these to the world of work.
For many managers and leaders this is an uncomfortable process as it can involve exploring posture, body awareness, body language, gesture, handshake, and eye contact. Other areas frequently addressed also include: expressing emotions, voice work, breathing, visualisation, rehearsal, use of energy and improvisation.
At first sight, these may appear to be strange areas to explore as building blocks of effective leadership. However, it is our belief that an effective leader is above all comfortable in his / her skin and inspires confidence in others by the way they hold and conduct themselves. Once this is paired with strong business acumen, it is
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