I have dedicated almost 17 years of my professional life working, learning and studying effective leaders in my organisation. My organisation is a world class organisation filled with effective and caring leaders that I am very fortunate to work alongside with. After working with all sorts of leaders over my past 17 years (both good and bad), I have learnt that the fundamental distinction that separate the best leaders from the average ones was not necessarily IQ, technical expertise, charisma or even vision (but these traits are important). The fundamental difference the best leaders I have ever worked with are leaders who did not act like they are bosses or managers, they acted and behaved like 'coaches'.
For the past 2 months, my organisation has been sending broadcasts (on weekly or regular basis) to all staff sharing the various definitions and insights of various leaders in my organisation on what coaching means to them and how their coaches made a difference to their leadership development. I was one of those leaders who shared my take on coaching as well (please see Leadership Moments 2/2012). As I read these sharings, I reflected deeply and asked myself, "Why great coaches in organisations behave the way they do and what are some of their mental models when it comes to coaching?" "If I were to share with my leaders the essence of coaching and leadership, how can I share it in a very simple way (I love things to be simple)?"
In a series of 3 blog posts, I will attempt to distill coaching and leadership into 3 key stepsdedicated to all aspiring coaches and leaders. I hope my sharing will inspire you to become better coaches and leaders of the future.
Step 1: Change the way you think and your behavior will change. When you behavior change, the results you get will change too!
I am a firm believer that if you master your thoughts, you can master your behavior and attitude. I have been in very difficult situations in my life. I have fallen or failed in many occasions and what helped me to pick myself up and finish strong after every failure is the ability to control and influence my self talk. Your beliefs and thoughts can influence how you behave. For example, as a leader, if you believe that your key role is to command and control, you are likely to manage your team in an autocratic manner giving orders and instructions. Conversely, if you have a mindset that your main job as a leader is to develop your team in order to help them consistently perform to maximise their capabilities and potential, you are most likely to behave like a "coach". If you think like the latter, coaching and developing others will no longer be a task or an event. It will be an on-going process that should be linked to everything you do. As such, your mental model needs to be examined if you want to be a good coach.
When I took over the command of an institution in 2007 leading about 160 officers, I took time to reflect deeply and drafted a personal contribution and purpose statement on how I wanted to lead and value add my officers. This personal contribution and purpose statement was a very useful guide to align all my mental models and behaviours as a leader. Since then, I have been using this personal contribution and purpose statement for all my subsequent postings.
You need to change the way you think before you can change your behaviour as a coach. Coaching is not something you must do as a leader. Coaching is something you must become!If coaching becomes your idenitity and part of who you are, your behaviours will change automatically. This is the most important first step if you want to become a good coach (IMHO) and build an effective team.
Do share with me your thoughts and comments.
Step 2: To be continued next week. Stay tuned.
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