How do you know if your client can be a leader?
Posted by richard on 14 Mar 2007 at 4:04 pm | Tagged as: "How to" coach tips
If you have been coaching for a while, this will be familiar. The client is under pressure from above to improve their leadership skill. You wonder if there is even a 1/2 of snowball chance of this person becomong a leader <g>.
Instead of coaching “leadership”, far easier to start much, much smaller. Have the client self observe (one week only) their tendency in these five areas:
How often does your client:
- Seek opportunities to advance the goals of his/her department? ( = a results orientation)
- Understand and respond to the concerns of others (= caring about the interpersonal dimension)
- Accept and act on suggestions from others (= flexibility & openness)
- Anticipates problems in their early stages (= pro activity and cognitive skill)
- Clarify the expectations of others in his or her work group (= collaboration)
It is good to start slow and build. I like these five. They are observable, actionable and do not take a ton of time to teach, coach or practice. Once progress is evident, you can go on to bigger, more challenging areas of “leadership”. If no progress…???
Let me know how often you run into people who really don’t want to “lead”. I would like to know.
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Hi Richard,
Good stuff!! I’m thinking of having one of my clients rate himself daily for a week on a scale of 1-10 on all the points you mention. I’m curious if his score will rise as the week goes by based on greater awareness. I am trying out coaching leadership qualities and priniciples with all my clients - I have two self-employeed, one manager, one executive and a teacher. I see a lot of similarities. All are open to it and I see great benefit in self-employed indivicuals seeing themselves as leaders in their own businesses - it seems to be impacting how they relate to others and see themselves. It seems to feed into that self-reliance point quite a bit. I have worked with a few clients who shy away from leadership even if they’re in a leadership role and what’s been common there is an attitude of not quite wanting to be responsible for themselves! I’m getting better at qualifying this point up front! Thanks!!
HI Cate
Here is what I do.
Make sure the client has written down why they want to be a better leader (what is the benefit to them?)– keep that fresh week after week, as it may change.
Coach the principle of: Awareness, Understanding, Acceptance. That is the basic sequence.
If you can get all three, change will occur. This is a really good process to coach. Be prepared to give good examples of how the client might do any of the five….examples help a lot.
Thanks for the comments Cate
richard 310 394 0200
Let’s not forget about the skill of conceptualizing and communicating vision as a leader.
I see a great lack of vision all around me - (I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact I am working on my own vision hmmmm) - and I notice that this lack of vision appears to be the major reason for many of the challenges businesses face. Challenges like staff motivation, good decision making principles, clearly defined processes and metrics for growth.
Thanks Richard…
Miami
Hi Miami,
No doubt - vision is the key — if the leader has no where to go, no view of what is possible, it will be impossible to lead/enlist others. I think you have to build up to working on vision. Difficult for most to start there.
AND…….
Re self crafted / energizing vision is even more important (as a self employed person) Yes?
Till later,
RR
If I had to point to the challenge I see most in self employed businesses it would be vision. People (even I who should know better) do not spend enough time crafting a vision that fits values and success definitions - and is strong enough to pull one forward to do the tasks needing to be done…
I found it useful to have the client go through the Myers-Briggs to understand his behaviors, and to be more aware why other people act the way they do. This gives him a point of reference, and from there it’s possible to build on strenghts and see why sometimes their action do not create the environment for the motivation of others.
I sometimes have them script a 30 second elevator speech based on vision, mission, and values as well as WIIFT (what’s in it for them - the stakeholders: boss, colleagues, direct reports, internal, and external clients - and even family). This helps determine what the “talk” and the “walk” should be in the “walk the talk”.
A good clip I use is from the Gettysburg film where Col. Chamberlain must convince a bunch or soldiers that were transferred to him with the option of executing them, if need be, because they refuse to fight. He wants them to join ranks with him. It’s a very inspiring sequence and contains all the elements of vision, mission, and values, how to establish trust and rapport, while showing the very human side of the Col.
After years of doing this, I know that only changing behaviors will not cut it, unless the values, beliefs, and convictions are well set and drive the behavior. They are indeed the driving force. The challenge is to have those values, and beliefs, when you’re surrounded by people who don’t value or believe in the sames things, or who don’t walk the talk, although they would like you to do it, yourself.
Richard J (Montreal)
Hi RJ
You are so right, behavior is nothing more than the gateway to possible change. As a great mentor (one of mine) use to say
“man does not live by disc alone” (Myers B, etc).
Key is to introduce these tools in a much larger client context –as in significant change for the coming year. Ultimately people can “change” when what they believe changes.
Nice points, thanks.
Richard R