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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.

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COACHING TRAINING FOR LEADERS CREATED BY SIR JOHN WHITMORE

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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.

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For more information on 1:1 leadership coaching, coaching skills training for managers and leaders and our Coaching for Performance: Leadership Programme, please contact James Neville.

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How can you bring a coaching leadership style into your organization?

Sir John and his colleagues at Performance Consultants were the first to take coaching into the workplace and coined the term “performance coaching” in the early 1980s. We continue to lead the field in performance improvement through coaching leadership training.

Select one of the options shown. Or get in touch and one of our world-class leadership development consultants will work with you to create a tailored programme that meets your specific needs.

Attend a Coaching Course – experience the benefits of coaching first hand. See our Global Training Calendar to find the right course for you
Transformational Leader Pathway – learn how to be a leader–coach with a coaching leadership style that creates a culture of high performance for you, your team and entire organization
Performance Coach Certification – become a coach or take your coaching skills to the next level so that you can practise transformational leadership coaching
Individual Coaching (1:1) – take your leadership to the next level with a tailored, fast-track professional development coaching programme
Team Development – unlock the next level of potential in your team with team coaching

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.

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The boom in executive coaching
– Financial Times

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I talked about The Performance Curve which we use to measure company culture and bottom-line performance. It maps culture states from Impulsive to Interdependent, showing how the quality of interactions between leaders and their direct reports releases untapped potential, in the right-hand quadrant. Our experience working with leaders using a coaching style of management, as pioneered by Sir John Whitmore, has shown how this can be achieved.

The Performance Curve coaching style of leadership | Performance Consultants — The Performance Curve

When I took the opportunity to poll the audience to gauge where delegates felt their organizations were on The Performance Curve, the vast majority of people in the room felt that their companies had a Dependent Culture. This tends to be characterized by a “command and control” paradigm. Dependent Cultures are typically the second phase of organizational maturity where the introduction of processes and systems to curtail inconsistency and mitigate risk, simultaneously stifle innovation and autonomy with employees expected to “follow the rules.”

While there is a rational justification for a Dependent Culture, the risks of limiting employee performance and organizational progress are obvious.

Change needs to come from the top down however, conventional leadership mindsets are the key challenge for today’s organizations – a view echoed in the conversations that took place at last week’s Summit.

Enabling leaders to empower their teams can only happen by shifting mindsets, which is where we see the power of Coaching for Performance. The motivation has to be intrinsic and systemic; meaning everyone, from the CEO to the new hire, recognizes the power of coaching practices in unleashing potential for both people and organizations.

It’s frequently neglected but an essential part of all transformations whether these are Agile, Digital or Innovation. The alternative for organizations is a slow decline and eventual irrelevance in a market where change is accelerating and disruption is constant.

If you’re looking to improve your business culture and performance, or would like a copy of my presentation, get in touch – [email protected].

Finally, I highly recommend Luxatia International’s Corporate L&D Summit. The quality of content and conversations was exceptional and the event provided a refreshing mix of interactive presentations, exercises and case studies.

The author Tiffany Gaskell is Performance Consultants’ Global Director of Coaching and Leadership.

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How can you bring coaching into your organization?

Select one of the options shown. Or get in touch and one of our world-class leadership development consultants will work with you to create a tailored programme that meets your specific needs.

Attend a Coaching Course – experience the benefits of coaching first hand. See our Global Training Calendar to find the right course for you
Transformational Leader Pathway – learn how to be a leader–coach with a coaching leadership style that creates a culture of high performance for you, your team and entire organization
Performance Coach Certification – become a coach or take your coaching skills to the next level so that you can practise transformational leadership coaching
Individual Coaching (1:1) – take your leadership to the next level with a tailored, fast-track professional development coaching programme
Team Development – unlock the next level of potential in your team with team coaching

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 –

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.

COACHING FOR PERFORMANCE
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER PATHWAY

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“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

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What is transformational leadership?

A “transformational leader” is a leader who can engage and inspire by using transformational soft skills that create high performance in themselves, their teams and their whole organization. Transformational leaders are the leaders of tomorrow and will enable their teams and whole organizations to rise to the complexity and multiple challenges of today’s business world.

If, instead of coaching an individual leader to improve their own performance, coaching skills are leveraged to create a transformational leadership style and taught to leaders, the organization will achieve a maximum return on their investment in coaching.

According to the recent survey by the Leadership Institute at the London Business School, today’s leaders find themselves fire-fighting and unable to spend time on strategy and planning. In such an environment, leaders need to be supported to break the pattern and, instead of solving problems for others, develop others to solve their own problems. Leaders who are able to do this will find themselves freed from fire-fighting to attend to those overarching strategic opportunities where they can make a difference.

“If leaders manage by the principles of coaching, they get the job done to a higher standard and develop their people simultaneously. It sounds too good to be true to have 250 days a year of getting the job done and 250 days a year of employee development per person, but that is precisely what a coaching leader does get.”
Sir John Whitmore, Co-Founder, Performance Consultants

Transformational leaders achieve a triple win

A leader leveraging coaching skills to create a high performance culture creates 250 development days per year for employees:

It is clear that transformational leaders achieve a triple win. The leader develops themself and gains the skills to develop their teams; groups of leaders from the same organization undergo the same leadership development, focused on finding their personal connection to leadership. This creates a shared language which they take with them into the workplace. They in turn develop others. This is what we mean by transformational leaders.

The return on investment is significant, with transformational leaders reporting an average 800% ROI. For one cohort of 17 leaders, this represented US$1,245,000 which came from improvements in bottom-line profitability and cost reductions. One participant reported that by delegating more and trusting in his team, the culture of the team had strengthened. This in turn impacted productivity which he estimated to have improved by at least 10% or US$350,000 per year.

Leaders with coaching skills create a high-performance culture

With organizations typically missing out on approximately 60% of the talent available to them,⁶ a coaching leadership style enables leaders and organizations to harness the full potential of their employees by inspiring and engaging them in a way that shifts the relationship and moves the culture to one of high performance. To help leaders and organizations reflect on the culture being created in their organization, we developed The Performance Curve model which we published in Coaching for Performance, Fifth Edition. The four stages of The Performance Curve are described by our CEO David Brown in his thoughts on Creating the Conditions for High Performance.

By leveraging coaching skills to create a high-performance culture that is led by transformational leaders, the investment in coaching benefits everybody, not only the few, and organization most of all.

Never has this new leadership been more relevant with leaders and organizations challenged to evolve by society, including employees who want to find fulfilment and purpose in their work. Equally, customers demand that companies act with integrity. Meeting these extended demands requires leaders today to be able to inspire and engage, with results that are truly transformational.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP COURSE | TRANSFORMATION AWARENESS FOR LEADERS AND COACHES

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The author Tiffany Gaskell is Performance Consultants’ Global Director of Coaching and Leadership.

¹ Leadership Institute, London Business School (2017) Leadership Survey 2017 – Navigating Uncertainty: Global leadership challenges, London Business School.
² The International Coach Federation (ICF) 2017 Global Consumer Awareness Study showed consumers struggle to differentiate between coaching, consulting, mentoring, counselling etc. 66% indicated they were aware of professional business and/or life coaching, however when presented with definitions for five personal and organizational support professions only 30% understood what coaching is, many getting it confused with mentoring.
³ Mann, Clive (2016) 6th Ridler Report: Strategic trends in the use of coaching, Ridler & Co.
⁴ Hay Group and others.
⁵ Leadership Institute, London Business School (2017) Leadership Survey 2017 – Navigating Uncertainty: Global leadership challenges, London Business School.
⁶ Research by Performance Consultants International.

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meeting your needs

How can you develop transformational leadership in your organization?

Select one of the options shown. Or get in touch and one of our world-class leadership development consultants will work with you to create a tailored transformation programme that meets your specific needs.

Attend a Coaching Course – experience the benefits of coaching first hand. See our Global Training Calendar to find the right course for you
Transformational Leader Pathway – learn how to be a leader–coach with a coaching leadership style that creates a culture of high performance for you, your team and entire organization
Performance Coach Certification – become a coach or take your coaching skills to the next level so that you can practise transformational leadership coaching
Individual Coaching (1:1) – take your leadership to the next level with a tailored, fast-track professional development coaching programme
Team Development – unlock the next level of potential in your team with team coaching

Discover coaching as a management style.

– 3 mins read –

Join our free webinar on the Application of Coaching as a Management Style led by Jon Williams, Senior Consultant at Performance Consultants, who has over 20 years’ experience of building a coaching culture in a leading bank. On this call, you will learn simple and effective tools that you can incorporate into the way you carry out your role as a manager which will radically improve your performance and also that of your teams.

As our Chairman Sir John Whitmore liked to remind us:

“Coaching is much bigger than coaching!”
Sir John Whitmore

Coaching for Performance around the world

Are you interested in reaching your full potential and enabling your team and organization to reach theirs? Or are you looking to become a certified coach? Performance Consultants have the right solution for you delivered through our highly acclaimed public courses which we host across the world.

If you have a group of people who want training, all programmes are available in-house, and can also be customized for your organization. To learn more, please contact our CEO David Brown at [email protected].

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Join one of our webinars to find out more about a coaching leadership style

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CIPD London: Have your cake … Eat your car!

We had lots of fun at the CIPD Learning & Development Show in London explaining why we had a fabulous bright yellow racing car cake on our stand.

In the business world, Sir John Whitmore (shown here with his ‘car-cake’ at our CIPD stand) is best known for the GROW Model, his work on leadership development and book Coaching for Performance which is now the No. 1 Best Seller on Amazon.co.uk in three categories: Management; Business team management skills; and Business coaching & mentoring skills.

In the world of sports, Sir John is a racing legend. In fact it’s not so long ago that Olympia London hosted an entirely different event at which a 1965 Ford Lotus Cortina driven by Formula 1 World Champion Jim Clark and Sir John sold at auction. And early in his racing career, Sir John achieved his dream of racing at Le Mans, competing in a Ford GT40 with Innes Ireland.

A slice of chocolate cake disguised as the bright yellow McLaren M8F Sir John drove to victory in his 1990 racing comeback is not all that people wanted from us at the CIPD show. Companies also were keen to find out how Performance Consultants could work with them on leadership development, performance improvement and organizational transformation, based on our 30 years of experience working with individuals and companies around the world.

Management coaching tip: Developing a coaching mindset

When you go to work tomorrow, try incorporating the three fundamentals of a coaching mindset:

Look for potential, not problems
Acknowledge progress and success
Don’t criticize or blame

Write down at the end of the day what you learned and what the impact was. Keep this up for 40 days, and you will have started to develop a new coaching management style.

If you enjoyed this article, you may like to read next:

Connect with us:

meeting your needs

How can you bring coaching into your organization?

Select one of the options shown. Or get in touch and one of our world-class leadership development consultants will work with you to create a tailored programme that meets your specific needs.

Attend a Coaching Course – experience the benefits of coaching first hand. See our Global Training Calendar to find the right course for you
Transformational Leader Pathway – learn how to be a leader–coach with a coaching leadership style that creates a culture of high performance for you, your team and entire organization
Performance Coach Certification – become a coach or take your coaching skills to the next level so that you can practise transformational leadership coaching
Individual Coaching (1:1) – take your leadership to the next level with a tailored, fast-track professional development coaching programme
Team Development – unlock the next level of potential in your team with team coaching

In this article:

A coaching style of leadership strengthens purpose and performance

In this article:

What is transformational leadership?

Transformational leaders achieve a triple win

Leaders with coaching skills create a high-performance culture

In this article:

Coaching for Performance around the world

CIPD London: Have your cake … Eat your car!

Management coaching tip: Developing a coaching mindset