Leadership Coaching is about enabling good leaders to become really goo
leaders, to genuinely lead themselves and others, to create a culture within
which everyone – including themselves – thrives and fulfils their potential. It’s
very important to be really clear that leading others effectively starts and ends
with leaders leading themselves effectively.
So, what brings leaders to coaching? Well, let’s start with you. What’s brought
you here? What would make leadership coaching a really good use of your time,
courage and money? What would need to be different for you to be able to say
to yourself afterwards, ‘wow, I’m glad I undertook that coaching. It’s made such a
difference’? Because that’s the level of response that we look for when clients
finish their coaching with us!
What is keeping you awake at night that – if you could address it – would make a
substantial difference to you and those around you? What opportunities or
threats are in your peripheral vision that need to be brought into the light?
Most people come to coaching for one of two reasons:
- They’re looking to develop themselves as they recognise that they’re good…and they could be even better. They want to fully deliver against their potential. And they might be looking for promotion or maybe they have just been promoted and are realistic enough to recognise that they’re likely to be even better at this new role and to be effective more quickly with some objective and expert support and challenge. After all,how many people are promoted into a role for which they’re already fully ready? Virtually nobody. Coaching enables people to deliver against the potential for which they’ve been – or could be – promoted.
- The second reason people come to coaching is because they’re ready to acknowledge and address their own performance or development issues, often as a result of feedback but sometimes because they’ve realised for themselves that their relationships, their results or their own emotional / mental state are suffering and they want to acknowledge the reality of the situation and find ways to address whatever is happening. It’s usually vitally important to ensure that – as part of the reality – we explore their strengths, their successes and their resourcefulness as people in this category have often lost sight of the breadth and width of who they are and what they already bring. Or maybe they are out of touch with why they came into leadership in the first place, they’ve lost their motivation, their enjoyment, any joy in their job.
These are all excellent reasons for appointing a coach. And maybe your reason is different. We are all, after all, unique.
