The Power of the Leadership Conversation
Who and how we are in all aspects of our work tends to be invisible or ‘transparent’ to us. Like a fish doesn’t know it is in water, we too are often completely unaware of our instinctive, habitual ways of thinking, being and behaving until things don’t seem to be working as well as they once did.
All too often, we may find ourselves bumping up against the periphery of the circle of our lives only to notice how uncomfortable and restrictive it has become. We can find ourselves stuck and unsure how to move forward, perhaps repeating many of the same mistakes over and over or witnessing old habits coming back to haunt us. Or perhaps we have reached a point in our personal or professional development where we are facing challenges we don’t really know how to address. Inevitably, at some point in our existence, we will encounter an interruption to the smooth flow of existence where it can be difficult to find creative solutions to the problems we face. This is particularly true for leaders.
Being a leader in today’s complex business world involves more than the achievement of goals, management of systems, processes and people compliance
Being a leader in today’s complex business world involves more than just focussing on the achievement of goals and the management of systems, processes, and people compliance. The growing unpredictability of organisational life, characterised by relentless change and increasing uncertainty, requires that leaders bring more than just skills and techniques to their roles. Instead of maintaining the status quo and delivering outcomes in the existing organisational structure, the role of leaders today is to position their organisation or team to meet challenges that might not even yet exist.
With the increasing adoption of technology and the growing volatility of organisational life, leaders are required to rely less on predictable models and systems and instead develop their human capabilities. Leadership in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world involves:
- The capacity to influence, inspire and engage others
- The capacity to deal with rapid and successive change
- Mental and emotional agility and the ability to process greater levels of complexity
- Physiological self-care in the management of stress, burnout, health and energy
- An authentic and constructive nonverbal ‘presence’ in engagements with others
- High-quality communication that generates specific results
- The ability to create and sustain inspiring workplace cultures
- A deep understanding of their purpose and motivations and what drives them in the world
So how does a leader develop these competencies without missing a beat? One option is to hire a coach. Executive coaching has emerged as a valuable tool in leadership development, providing leaders with a safe space to muse, reflect and observe their situation from a different perspective. Coaching also provides the opportunity to focus on specific challenges and difficulties in the safety of a ‘coaching space’ with the coach acting as an unbiased sounding board.
Whilst it can take many forms, the core approach to executive coaching is designed to assist each person to increase their professional capacity and performance. Through coaching leaders and their teams are able to remove themselves from the rapid spin of the periphery of life to develop their individual and/or collective capacity which gets to the heart of how individuals and groups function, learn and change.
Through executive coaching, leaders and managers are able to:
- be more creative and innovative
- build personal resilience and capacity to ‘roll with the punches’
- improve their capacity to deal with change
- develop talent and leadership capacity in others
- facilitate the development of inspiring cultures and high-performance teams
- align others around shared meaning, direction and purpose
- act courageously in the face of challenge
- hold powerful conversations that build trust and authenticity
- be more accountable while holding others to account
Coaching is a powerful tool for personal development, team development and change enabling individuals to cultivate fresh insights, greater levels of self-awareness and distinct ways of observing and behaving which allows us to be more effective in dealing with personal and professional challenges. The coaching conversation provides a platform for leaders to explore their purpose, goals, ideals and the deeper questions that keep them awake at night. Coaching creates a confidential and non-judgemental space for leaders to think, muse, speak freely, reflect and be listened to. It gets beneath the surface of the challenges they face to provide them with a ‘collaborative partner’ to challenge their thinking, explore their ideas and help them make sustainable changes to create intentional leadership strategies for the future.
