Discover how coaching fits in a leadership model.

– 3 mins read –

Douglas Conant, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, has defined his seven essential practices of leadership in the ConantLeadership Flywheel. These seven practices make up a flywheel, shown in the diagram below, and he summarizes them as “tough-minded on standards and tender-hearted with people”.

We love how Inspire Trust is the foundation practice, at the centre of the flywheel, and that the number 1 pillar is Clarify Higher Purpose – a meaningful journey is key to a fulfilling life.

The ConantLeadership Flywheel

So where would you assign a coaching approach in this wheel? Our answer is that it fits across ALL areas of the wheel, and supports every aspect.

Looking at Build Vitality as an example, the coaching approach acknowledges that vitality is within each human being in the form of power sources and strengths and these are unique to each individual. With the right tools and environment, people can tap into these to build vitality.

The coaching approach explores these power sources and strengths to raise awareness and to collate a pool of resources the individual can draw upon as and when they need. In this way, we are tapping into potential that allows for the person to come from a place of strength and energy.

Creating an optimal environment, for example with the right amount of support and challenge, celebration of achievements, constructive feedback and focus on strengths and power sources will enable people to thrive and create a high energy culture.

Discover why a coaching style of leadership is important to a millennial workforce

– 3 mins read –

The latest research into the millennial workforce* shows business has some way to go to achieve its potential for positive social impact. More than three quarters of millennials believe business should be a force for good on issues such as economic and social progress, conflict, inequality and corruption but, according to the research, big business is only meeting these expectations for 59 per cent of under-35 year olds.

The survey also shows that, after a year of global instability, millennials are less likely to want to leave the security of their jobs than previously, providing a huge opportunity for employers to engage. With many millennials now emerging leaders, holding senior management positions and managing people and teams, they have the opportunity to effect change in the workplace with huge potential gains for business if this potential can be successfully realized.

A coaching style of leadership strengthens purpose and performance

The search for meaning and purpose at work is not restricted to the millennial generation. With older workers also motivated by a sense of higher purpose, organizations are discovering how a coaching style of leadership nurtures high-performing, collaborative teams focused on a shared vision that will enable the organization to achieve its purpose.

In Coaching for Performance, Sir John Whitmore and his team at Performance Consultants explain how a coaching style of leadership creates the conditions for high performance. The 25th Anniversary Edition of Sir John’s bestselling book presents The Performance Curve (see figure below), a model that maps the culture of an organization and relates this to the conditions for low, medium or high performance. The Performance Curve enhances understanding of how a coaching culture is a high-performance culture, enabling a collaborative workforce with shared values to flourish.

The latest findings from the International Coach Federation (ICF) and Human Capital Institute (HCI), Building a Coaching Culture with Millennial Leaders, shows how emerging leaders benefit from partnering with a coach and receiving training on how to use coaching skills with their peers and teams, while leaders at all ages want to develop a coaching style of leadership.

COACHING MINDSET The leader believes that the coachee is capable, resourceful, and full of potential. Believing in the dormant capability of a person will build their self-belief and self-motivation and enable them to flourish. And with that mindset, you can coach them to make their own powerful choices and find enjoyment in their performance and their success.

Extract from the Glossary of Coaching Terms, Coaching for Performance, Fifth Edition

According to the ICF and HCI’s report, the most effective leaders are those with the quality of emotional intelligence who use a collaborative coaching style of management. The research finds that organizations are looking to expand the scope of leaders using coaching skills, and highlights the business case for building a strong coaching culture:

• Respondents whose organizations had strong coaching cultures reported that 61 per cent of their employees are highly engaged, compared to 53 per cent from organizations without strong coaching cultures.
• Forty-six per cent of respondents in organizations with strong coaching cultures reported above-average 2016 revenue growth in relation to industry peers, versus 39 per cent of respondents from all other organizations.

A coaching style of leadership is about partnership, collaboration and believing in potential. It is leading for others rather than for oneself. With more organizations providing individual coaching (1:1 coaching) for the millennial generation and training them to develop their own coaching style, business really does have the potential to be a force for positive change and the opportunity to build a high-performing workforce motivated by a strong sense of higher purpose and the knowledge that the work they do matters.

*Deloitte Millennial Survey 2017, based on the views of almost 8,000 millennials (college or university graduates in full-time employment and born after 1982) in 30 countries in September 2016.

David Brown explains how transformational leaders create high-performance cultures.

– 5 mins read –

David Brown is CEO of Performance Consultants International, the company he co-founded with Sir John Whitmore, the father of coaching in the workplace. David has been instrumental in shaping the global performance, leadership and coaching industry for over 20 years. He was awarded the rarely bestowed Igniting Social Progress Award by the ICF Foundation in recognition of the global impact of his vision for raising performance in the workplace, and his belief in the power of individuals and organizations to create a better future.

What your grandmother could teach your organization

I invite you to think of a person you loved being with when you were young. Not a parent but perhaps a teacher, grandparent, friend of the family or other adult who positively influenced you. If I ask you to remember how you felt when you were with that person, the chances are that you’ll recall feeling listened to, that you had their full attention. You would say that although you were young this older person believed in you and treated you as an equal, and if they challenged you it was with trust and respect. To quote Maya Angelou:

We’ve run this exercise all over the world and we’ve found people everywhere have broadly the same response. And the result is they felt their potential to be limitless.

This is what high emotional intelligence feels like. It’s the ability to relate to others from a paradigm of trust rather than fear. How does this compare to the leaders in your organization? If you are one of those leaders, how do you measure up?

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

Leaders set the tone

In organizations, the leaders set the tone for everybody else. Studies by the Hay Group have shown they are the greatest influence on an organization’s culture and bottom-line performance, which they can affect by as much as 30%! Meanwhile, according to The Conference Board CEO Challenge:

“the cultural DNA of an organization is critical to success, from operational efficiency to better customer service, to greater talent attraction and retention, to higher levels of business performance and breakthroughs in innovation.”

So it seems crazy how very few organizations take a proactive approach to creating and measuring their culture.

Discover how to face up to the cultural challenge, and how organizations are risking their future.

– 5 mins read –

Observing the speed with which an organization of Kodak’s history and calibre is overtaken by disruptive innovation, and reading research by Innosight that estimates “three-quarters of today’s S&P 500 will be replaced by 2027″ (reported by @HBR), it’s no wonder big organizations are scrambling for answers to these new threats.

I was reflecting on this after speaking at the Corporate L&D Summit hosted by Luxatia International – a great opportunity to connect with fellow senior professionals to share ideas and concerns.

I was reflecting on this after speaking at the Corporate L&D Summit hosted by Luxatia International – a great opportunity to connect with fellow senior professionals to share ideas and concerns.

The boom in executive coaching
– Financial Times

Tiffany Gaskell describes the most powerful way of investing in learning and development to create transformational leaders and maximize productivity in a fast-moving world.

– 8 mins read –

Most people think of “coaching” as 1:1 executive coaching which focuses on helping key leaders to achieve high performance, but what if a coaching culture could enable everyone to perform at their peak?

The latest research shows over 80% of organizations use coaching and believe in its benefits.¹ However, there is still a broad lack of understanding of what coaching is and how to use coaching to maximize results – another recent study found that only 30% of people surveyed actually understood what coaching was.² Even those organizations already embarked on creating a coaching culture acknowledge the opportunities for development are huge, with growing awareness of the different types of coaching and most effective applications.³

Among the growing awareness and interest in coaching, organizations are missing a trick. It is well-known that the greatest influencers of an organization’s culture are its leaders: studies show that leadership behaviour impacts bottom-line performance by up to 30 per cent.⁴ External executive coaching is rightly seen as one of the most effective forms of leadership development,⁵ with many organizations choosing to invest in it, however helping leaders to develop a coaching leadership style is overlooked.

“It is a weight off my shoulders, my team is more self-sufficient.”

“People come up with solutions that are wildly different. And they have full ownership and are acting with commitment.”

“They figure out through the process what they want to do and then have the excitement and energy for next steps.”

In-house Coaching for Performance participants