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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
A powerful new approach to leadership tailor-made for the 21st century
In Coaching Power, a team of veteran executive coaches delivers a singularly insightful and original way of looking at leadership: as a form of coaching. The authors explain this new way of leading others and offer readers a set of tools, frameworks, and mindsets to take with them in their professions.
You'll discover how to succeed in a world that's evolving faster than ever, and how to navigate a workplace that can include as many as five unique generations, each of which demand a different style of leadership.
Coaching Power shows you:
- The fundamentals of coaching, including listening, questioning, and intuition
- How to create and enhance high performance teams, and how to have courageous conversations
- When it's time to bring in an external coach and what to look for to ensure the right fit
Perfect for managers, executives, directors, and other business leaders, Coaching Power is also a can't-miss resource for entrepreneurs and founders seeking a powerful new way to lead others through challenging circumstances.
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Seitenzahl: 320
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for
Coaching Power
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
CHAPTER 1: Let Us Introduce Ourselves
About Us
CHAPTER 2: Coaching Power
Your Job as a Coach
Coaching Is a Key Leadership Skill for the Future
Looking Forward
Notes
CHAPTER 3: Fundamentals First: Leadership in Combination with Coaching
The Fundamentals of Leading with Coaching
The Anatomy of a Good Leader
Looking Forward
Notes
CHAPTER 4: What People Want from Work
Purpose and Authenticity
Remuneration
A Sense of Belonging
Flexibility
Taking Inventory of Your Leadership Levers
CHAPTER 5: Coaching Fundamentals
Listening
Questioning
Forward Momentum: How Coaching Can Take You from Reflection to Action
CHAPTER 6: The Magic of Storytelling: Emotional Leadership
Tricks from the Best
The Emotional Leadership Flow
Example 1: Setting a Team Up for Success
Example 2: Delivering a Proposal to a Board or Articulating a Vision
Looking Forward
CHAPTER 7: Beliefs and How They Influence Leadership Styles
Looking at Core Beliefs
Coaching the Different Mindsets and Beliefs
CHAPTER 8: How Your Life Story IS Your Life Until Challenged
Deconstructing Early Life Influences
Looking Forward
CHAPTER 9: Using Intuition as a Coach
CHAPTER 10: One‐to‐One Coaching
Trilogy Questions
©
: The Secret Sauce to Effective Thinking Partnerships
Beware: “Why” Is a Four‐Letter Word in Coaching
The Performance Equation
CHAPTER 11: The Art of Self‐Determination: Deciding on My Way of Being
Beware the Overuse of Humility
Over to You, Coach
Obedient Minds
CHAPTER 12: The Power of Visualization
The Business of Sport: See It, Feel It
Carpe Diem
Visualizing for Public Speaking: How to Tame Your Performance Anxiety
Looking Forward
CHAPTER 13: The Importance of Values in Leadership and Coaching
Time to Practice on Yourself
CHAPTER 14: Personal Branding: Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand
Coaching Leaders to Develop Their Personal Brand Manifesto
CHAPTER 15: Redefining Impostor Syndrome
Note
CHAPTER 16: The Gray Zones: Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, and Advice
CHAPTER 17: Coaching Teams
Common Traits of High‐Performing Teams
Coaching Your Team
CHAPTER 18: Strategic Thinking
Building Your Strategic House
CHAPTER 19: Stakeholder Influencing
Developing a Stakeholder Map
Looking Forward
CHAPTER 20: The Power of Safe Feedback
Courageous Conversations
CHAPTER 21: Coaching for Empowerment
Practicing Empowerment
Looking Forward
CHAPTER 22: Great Team Meetings in Any Environment
CHAPTER 23: When to Get the Pros In: Hiring External Executive Coaches
External 1:1 Executive Coaching: To Have or Not to Have
External Team Coaching: To Do or Not to Do
Keep It in the Family: Ultra High Net Worth Family Coaching
Best Practices for Finding the Right Coaching Firm and the Right Coach
CHAPTER 24: Want to Build a Coaching Culture?
Preparation
Formation: The Combination of Training and Practice
Note
CHAPTER 25: A Look into the Future: What Leaders Need to Be Future‐Fit
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Digital Literacy and Technological Fluency
Adaptability and Agility
Cultural Competence
A Last Reflection: Leading in a World Where Certainty Is Over
Notes
CHAPTER 26: Artificial Intelligence: The Single Most Powerful Force Shaping the Future
The Impact of AI in Business
Then What? The Impact of AI in Leadership
Notes
CHAPTER 27: A Last Word on T.R.U.S.T
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 4
FIGURE 4.1 Studies Indicate That Money Is a Small Part of the Pie That Drive...
Chapter 5
FIGURE 5.1 The CALM Listening Model
Chapter 6
FIGURE 6.1 The Emotional Leadership Flow
Chapter 10
FIGURE 10.1 The Trilogy Questions Structure
FIGURE 10.2 The Performance Equation
Chapter 17
FIGURE 17.1 Commonalities of High‐Performing Leadership Teams
FIGURE 17.2 The Performance Equation for Teams: Performance Is Equal to Capa...
Chapter 18
FIGURE 18.1 The Strategic House
FIGURE 18.2 Strategic Thinking: Building Your Pillars
Chapter 20
FIGURE 20.1 A Reminder to Check Intention Before Offering Feedback
Chapter 21
FIGURE 21.1 The Empowerment Readiness Matrix
FIGURE 21.2 The Empowerment Framework
FIGURE 21.3 The Benefits of Empowerment at Every Step
Chapter 25
FIGURE 25.1 EI Components and Benefits of Coaching
FIGURE 25.2 Identity Wheel.
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Praise for Coaching Power
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
Index
End User License Agreement
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Praise for Coaching Power
“All leaders today are expected to have coaching skills as part of their leadership repertoire. This book is a treasure trove for anyone looking to develop, improve and refine their coaching skills.”
—Jayne OppermanCEO, Consumer Relationships, Lloyds Banking Group.
“Coaching Power redefines leadership for the modern age, offering tools and mindsets to navigate the complexities of a multi‐generational, fast‐paced world. With insights from experienced executive coaches, it transforms coaching into an essential leadership art that unlocks agility, adaptability, and emotional intelligence. A must‐read for anyone looking to inspire and empower in today's ever‐changing landscape.”
—Dr. Kirstin Fergusonbest‐selling author of Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership
“As businesses transform and adapt to unprecedented levels of change, this book gives the reader new ways to engage, access creative solutions and navigate uncertainty. A real game changer for leaders.”
—Christine Siemssen Chief Marketing & Digital Officer, Danone
“The most effective professional mentors in my life have exhibited the best qualities of a good coach: exacting, but collaborative; firm, but encouraging; confident, but humble. Rooted in decades of experience coaching thousands of leaders, Tom and Luciana have delivered an indispensable guide that transforms the concept of coaching from a leadership nicety into an essential skill for navigating the complexities of today's business landscape.”
—Jay LaufCo‐Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Charter
“Coaching Power is a transformative book for leaders who are looking to incorporate a coaching style into their existing suite of skills. However, it goes beyond that—it redefines how you listen, respond, question, understand, support, and challenge. Easy to read, practical, and impactful—every leader should keep this book within arm's reach.”
—Kim MorganChairperson, Barefoot Coaching Ltd.
“Having an executive coach has been instrumental in my developmental and leadership journey. Sharpening my coaching skills is a key area of focus for me and I am very aware that it is a skill that is expected of me from the people I interact with and lead. This book is not just a good read; it will help you become the best coach you can be.”
—Temi OfongGlobal Head of Customer Channels, HSBC
“Transformative and practical: Coaching Power is more than a guide—it's a transformative approach to leadership that equips you with the tools to inspire, adapt, and thrive in a fast‐changing world. Coaching skills are essential in unlocking your team's—and your organization's—potential and success. This is a refreshing, pragmatic, and meaningful must‐read to transform your business while inspiring your people.”
—Luck DookchitraVice President People & Culture, Leapsome
“More than ever, coaching skills have become a key differentiator to executive advancement. This book helps put structure around these skills in a straightforward and accessible style.”
—Philip EisenbeissPartner, Executive Access Ltd., Practice Leader, Private Banking and Asset Management
“Human resources professionals are going to want to recommend this book to their people to augment their coaching skills. It is full of easy to apply coaching methods and techniques to unlock the full potential of individuals, teams, and organizations. Having directly experienced the phenomenal coaching skills of the authors, I can fully vouch for the tremendous value contained in these pages.”
—P.B. SubbiahDirector, Human Resources & Administration, Pacific Basin Shipping
Leading with Coaching to Create Individual, Team, and Organizational Outperformance
COACHING POWER
TOM PRESTON
LUCIANA NÚÑEZ
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial intelligence technologies or similar technologies.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Preston, Tom, 1962‐ author. | Núñez, Luciana, author.
Title: Coaching power : leading with coaching to create individual, team, and organizational outperformance / Tom Preston and Luciana Núñez.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2025] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024047967 (print) | LCCN 2024047968 (ebook) | ISBN 9781394293414 (hardback) | ISBN 9781394293438 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781394293421 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Executive coaching. | Leadership. | Success in business.
Classification: LCC HD30.4 .P724 2025 (print) | LCC HD30.4 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/092—dc23/eng/20241121
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024047967
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024047968
Cover Design: Vanessa Mendozzi
Cover Image: © Elena Pimukova/Shutterstock © Artistdesign.13/Shutterstock
Author Photos: Courtesy of the Authors
Tom: To Emma and Charles Preston. The two most important people in my life.
Luciana: To Leticia, Gisela, and Claude: my lights. To my family and friends: my gifts.
Preface
Tom Preston is the CEO and Luciana Nunez is the Head of the Americas of The Preston Associates, one of the world's leading Executive Coaching consultancy boutiques. Between them, Tom and Luciana have coached thousands of leaders in some of the most well‐known companies of our times. Both have also been senior business leaders themselves, Tom in the world of commodities and private equity, having done CEO roles in both, and Luciana in world‐class corporates doing strategic marketing and divisional CEO roles.
What they see today in their Executive Coaching work is that the ability to Lead with Coaching is now not a nice‐to‐have, it is an essential.
Leaders today are navigating ever more complexity that comes from every angle. We are leading across five different generations, all of whom expect different forms of leadership. The commercial and organizational landscape is fast moving and unpredictable, yet we are expected to navigate it with a deep duty of care to customers, employees, the environment, and the regulatory framework, to name just a few of our stakeholders, and still make companies sustainable and profitable.
So, we have an obligation to take “VUCA” negative and turn it into “VUCA” positive, as illustrated in the following image.
Moving from VUCA negative to VUCA positive
How exactly are we supposed to do this against the commercial troubled waters we live in and the geopolitical climate across the world which is a constant assault on our and our people's psyches?
Well, we need to be clear on our definition of collective success at any given time, we need to empower people to respond with agility to the solutions we need to find every day, and we need to motivate and engage people while supporting them, providing them with both strategic and emotional leadership in a flexible style that is accessible to the panoply of people we lead.
This requires that we adopt not just a new mindset or set of learned skills—we need to acquire a totally new way of being as leaders. And this way is called coaching. Our ability to navigate change, which is all about our future value as leaders, relies ever more on this new way of being simply because every other way is diminishing in effectiveness. Hierarchy doesn't fit any more, finding all the answers ourselves and then telling people what to do increasingly runs the risk that expiration happens before implementation. Those we lead expect multiple forms of support for the mental gymnastics they are expected to perform everyday while they too undergo psychological assault in their own lives due to the pace and extremity of change. They need to find the balance between the need to be a human being as much as a human doing.
Tom and Luciana have always believed that, whether coaching an individual 1:1, a team, or a group of people, they have a responsibility not only to be great coaches to help the people they are working with, but also to help them to develop their own coaching skills to become ever better leaders. This belief was the genesis of this book. This book will equip you with the tools, frameworks, mindset, and way of being to do that, for yourself and for the people you lead and influence.
This is a book for leaders who want to Lead Through Coaching and thereby succeed, in an ever‐changing world.
CHAPTER 1Let Us Introduce Ourselves
Hello, it's good to meet you. Thank you for choosing to join us on our Leading Through Coaching journey. It's our privilege to be your coaches and guides. Although Executive Coaches don't often talk too much about themselves to the people they work with, we feel that you have a right to know a bit about each of us. As you will see as we explore Leading with Coaching together, understanding where people come from in terms of who they are and their life stories, what they do, how they became successful, and how they interact with others are important data points.
About Us
So, I'm Tom and here is a bit about me.
On the second day of my first job at the age of 21, I got off a plane in a country I had never heard of, in a city I had never heard of, with the mission to sell 28,000 tons of sugar stored in 50 kilo bags on two giant ships that had been stranded offshore as a result of a coup d'état in Nigeria.
The country was Togo in West Africa, the city was its capital Lome.
I sold the sugar bag by bag mostly for cash which I then gave to gold dealers who bought gold and sold it in Switzerland and then paid my company for the sugar. It was a commercial baptism by fire. It took courage, creativity, resilience, and a big dose of pragmatism. It required judgment about people and situations and the ample use of intuition.
I was totally ill‐equipped and completely unprepared for the commercial jungles of West Africa. I was the son of a doctor who was brought up to believe that we are born to be in service to others.
Yet I did it. Something shifted in me during those months. I learned to navigate change, to spot opportunity, to understand others.
Over time I went on to build a very successful commodity trading business, followed by a creative private equity investment business in Asia. At that time, I came to understand that calculating internal rates of return was the easy part—the difficult part, the magical part, the part that made the difference between success and failure, was the people. And I also realized, once I discovered the power of coaching, how much better I could have been had I had a coach or had I known how to coach.
This ultimately led me to do a post graduate program in Executive Coaching and then set up The Preston Associates in 2003. We are now a leading firm that specializes in the provision of Executive Coaching services to the business elite across the world—enhancing business performance through the development of better leaders.
I have had the privilege over the past 20 years of working with senior leaders from every walk of life, in multiple geographies, navigating through the Global Financial Crisis, globalization, wars, pandemics, and fundamental societal change.
Most, if not all, of those leaders would now attest to the power of Leadership through Coaching.
I look forward to sharing with you some of this experience and how to stay ahead of change through this book.
And I'm Luciana.
I am a child of the 70s in Argentina: my mom was a lawyer from a traditional family, and my dad was a guerilla fighter, so I was probably destined to be an unusual combo from the start. Reflecting on how my origins influenced me as a leader, I realized that the common theme was that I became a successful mainstream rebel: operating mostly in traditional leadership environments in Fortune 500 global companies, but known for doing things a bit differently than the norm, which helped me create a unique track record and culture anywhere I went.
Throughout my professional career, I was very fortunate to live and lead businesses in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the United States, working with people from incredibly different backgrounds, management styles, cultures, and worldviews. This led me to be a firm believer that regardless of the quality of your ideas, if you are not capable of truly engaging your people from within, you will not get anywhere. This led me to discover the power of coaching as the not‐so‐secret sauce of my leadership style, helping me throughout my 20+ years in the corporate world in managing multi‐million dollar businesses, and leading teams that even to this day stay in touch and remember our time together as a highlight of our careers.
As I transitioned to full‐time Executive Coaching, these same beliefs stayed true, and I am now able to multiply the impact of coaching by working with thousands of leaders across industries, from start‐up founders to global executives.
In addition, after decades of being the only diversity in the room, I am personally very passionate about helping under‐represented leaders make the most out of their unique insight, energy, and untapped brilliance.
I will share with you through this book the many lessons I have learned on the dos and don'ts of Leading with Coaching in organizations, big and small.
“The art of coaching is to guide the person from within.”
—Bill Gates, Co‐founder of Microsoft and Former CEO
CHAPTER 2Coaching Power
Here's what we know about what makes coaching such a powerful tool today.
Even just 20 years ago it was viewed as a fad, something that wouldn't last, another form of corporate snake oil. Yet here we are today with a widely held view that it is perhaps the single most effective leadership development tool out there. It is also viewed as a prerequisite for being a servant leader, being able to create psychological safety, and the ability for people to be their authentic selves in corporate environments. It is known as a valuable skill in the worlds of stakeholder management, employee engagement, the creation of purpose, and shared definitions of success. And it is a vital part of client relationship management skills whether as a private banker, a head of sales, or even, when time allows, for doctors—to name but a few. Even the biggest names in the world of corporate consultancy now struggle to stay ahead of the change curve, especially when it comes to how to stay ahead of the game, of the competition, of innovation, and of the myriad of other challenges that exist for all corporations today.
We know that the power of coaching is derived from the concept that when we create something ourselves, when we discover solutions to problems that are completely congruent to us, then we can own these and we act with conviction. This is because they are ours, we believe in them, we are their co‐creators.
Sometimes, while we have the answers deep in our subconscious, we are unable to access those answers unaided; we can be too close to our own trees to see the forest we are standing in. And that is where an objective thinking partner is so valuable, as they can ask the questions we don't see that prompt the answers within us. And when we do that, we take on the role of coach.
We find it extraordinary that nobody would ever think of putting a world class athlete onto the field or into the Olympic Games without a coach, yet they do it every day in business. Almost always, the difference between a gold medal and a bronze medal is not physical, it is mental. It is about attitude, confidence, determination, ownership, and mindset. It is often also about visualizing success and what it takes to get there; yet how often do business people or those leading people take the time to facilitate that in their people and their teams? Sadly, not often enough.
Your Job as a Coach
Some time ago, the dictionary definition of a coach was: “A coach is a vehicle that takes you from where you are to where you want to be.” That probably came from the time when coaches were better known to be harnessed to horses. However, that is exactly what the job of a coach is today. Someone who helps take one or more people from where they are to where they want to be, in life, in business, in their careers, or even in their level of happiness. We are people who help others to succeed, to understand, to influence, to mitigate the unhelpful, and to amplify the traits that help ourselves and others to reach goals.
Very often today, that means enhancing our performance within an organization, both individually and collectively.
When we as leaders can help others to achieve that, when we can help people navigate change and uncertainty, when we can help people find solutions that they couldn't find on their own, we become extremely valuable. The time when expertise was the most prized asset of a leader is no longer, now it is the ability to help ourselves and others navigate change. Perhaps it was, actually, ever so. But the advent of Google, AI, and all of the technological advancements in recent years have made it clear that knowledge is becoming a commodity. Real value today resides only in our ability to react and adapt to change with agility.
Hence, the power of coaching.
Coaching Is a Key Leadership Skill for the Future
As we move into the future, leadership skills are evolving to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world. In the past, many of the competencies that were considered essential had a lot more to do with classic management: expertise in a functional area, decisiveness, directing, and having all the answers were some of the most valued aspects in a competent leader.
The skills that the future will demand of leaders are much more attuned with some of the most fundamental coaching skills that we explore in this book and define in the following sections.
Adaptability and Flexibility
Leaders need to be able to navigate uncertainty and lightning‐fast changes in the business landscape, while considering the consequences and anticipating the impact. Being adaptable and flexible allows leaders to adjust strategies, make quick decisions, and pivot when necessary. According to a survey by McKinsey,1 94% of executives believe that agility and the ability to quickly adapt to change are critical to their organization's success. Furthermore, the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report2 lists adaptability as one of the top skills needed for the workforce, emphasizing its importance in a rapidly evolving job market.
Coaching skills help leaders to develop adaptability and flexibility by exploring a wider range of options, asking better questions, and creating thinking partnerships that are second nature to the best leaders in order to broaden and enrich perspectives.
Emotional Intelligence
Understanding and regulating emotions is core to effective leadership. Thanks to the extensive work done by Daniel Goleman in this area, we know that emotional intelligence (EI) helps leaders build strong relationships based on trust, communicate effectively across the board, and navigate conflicts with empathy and understanding. According to a report by Gallup, teams led by managers with high emotional intelligence have 50% higher levels of engagement compared to teams with low EQ leaders.3
Coaching skills help leaders gain self‐awareness through self‐reflection, and equip leaders to put themselves in the shoes of other people by inquiring from a place of curiosity to understand what's truly important to them and find common ground.
Collaboration and Team Building
The times of the “hero leader” are over. The future of work is increasingly collaborative, with teams working across geographies and disciplines, and often assembling for ad hoc projects and then disbanding just as soon as they complete their mission. Leaders will need to excel at building and managing diverse teams, fostering collaboration, and creating an inclusive culture where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute. This is not only a nice to have, but a proven driver of performance: a recent Gallup study4 found that teams with high levels of collaboration have 21% higher profitability and performance versus industry averages.
Team coaching is a highly specific skill that leaders need to master in order to get teams through the different stages (from forming to norming, storming, and performing) much faster than before, to help accelerate the curve to get to peak performance.
Visionary Leadership
Having a clear vision for the future and the ability to inspire others to follow that vision is key to engage teams at all levels. The best visionary leaders communicate a compelling purpose and motivate their teams to achieve ambitious goals by clearly articulating what's in it for them. Visionary leaders who are able to rally an organization behind their vision ultimately drive superior performance: According to a Deloitte study5 companies with a clear vision statement, often developed by visionary leaders, are 70% more likely to outperform their peers in terms of revenue growth. Visionary leaders who prioritize growth and innovation are significantly more likely to outperform their competitors, reporting up to 7% higher stock price appreciation over three years compared to industry averages.
In this book we explore how the “Emotional Leadership” coaching framework can help you articulate a compelling vision, provide context for what matters, establish what's in it for the organization at large and for the individuals, and set the scene for defining and tracking success, which is key to make the vision more concrete by helping people see how it will ultimately move the needle.
Cultural Competence
In an increasingly diverse and culturally complex world, executives need to lead people of all ages, races, sexual identities, religions, geographies, personal views, and abilities. What we see in our coaching practice is that today most leaders mean well, but they are often afraid of making mistakes that can offend people, and therefore they are holding back from having competent conversations where they can invite these aspects of diversity into the forefront, which we know ultimately drives performance. The data on this front is conclusive: McKinsey & Company's research found that companies in the top quartile for diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.6 A study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that diverse teams generate 19% more revenue from innovation compared to non‐diverse teams.7 Even though companies have put a lot of effort in recent years in creating more diverse workplaces, our experience showed us that when it comes to creating a culture of inclusion and belonging, the missing link is the skill of “cultural competence.”
Looking Forward
The coaching frameworks that we explore in this book will enable leaders to have capable and courageous conversations that can create an environment of true inclusion and belonging. Culturally competent leaders understand the multiple aspects of identity, and they regularly reflect on their own existing filters, beliefs, and habits. In this book, many of our frameworks will help you explore your out‐of‐comfort zones and unconscious biases, to help you become more culturally competent.
“The advice that sticks out the most is to have a coach. The one thing people are never good at is seeing themselves as others see them. A coach really, really helps.”
—Eric Schmidt, Former CEO of Google
Notes
1
. McKinsey, How To Create an Agile Organization,
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/how-to-create-an-agile-organization
2
. World Economic Forum's The Future of Jobs Report 2023,
https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/
3
. McKinsey, How To Create an Agile Organization,
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/how-to-create-an-agile-organization
4
. Gallup Workplace Research,
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/285674/improve-employee-engagement-workplace.aspx
.
5
. Deloitte's Global Technology Leadership Study and Deloitte's 2020 Digital Transformation Survey.
6
. McKinsey Diversity Matters,
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/why-diversity-matters
7
. Boston Consulting Group,
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/how-diverse-leadership-teams-boost-innovation
CHAPTER 3Fundamentals First: Leadership in Combination with Coaching
Leading with Coaching clearly has two fundamental components to it—that of leading and that of coaching.
The Fundamentals of Leading with Coaching
There are many views on what constitutes good leadership, so let's look at leadership through the lens of leadership in combination with coaching.
Defining Success
One of the most important aspects of Leading with Coaching is to establish what success looks like—where you are going, what you want to achieve, and your definition of collective success. In the past these answers often depended on what shareholders expected, yet today that is not enough. Yes, you need to set performance metrics, you need to know how to measure your progress against them, and you need to be able to demonstrate to stakeholders that you are being successful. However, today it is also just as important to wrap into your definition of success your purpose, your contribution to the world and to society, and to be clear on both how your moral and cultural compasses contribute to your success indicators.
People are less and less inclined to get out of bed simply to achieve a defined profit margin or level of market share. There needs to be more.
Involving Others
Leading with Coaching also means that you take the approach of wanting to co‐build these metrics with your team rather than them being told what success looks like. This is a vital step as it addresses a fundamental human motivator—that of self‐determination. If you have been involved in the crafting of the definition of what a good future looks like, you are so much more invested in the work needed to reach that. You own part of it; it is yours as you helped to define it. And that makes you so much more likely to accept and embrace the responsibility to deliver it. So, successful co‐creation is an essential step of Leading with Coaching from the outset.
Staying Invested
Once you have a definition of success, Leading with Coaching means being invested in keeping teams and individuals engaged, focused, and enabled to deliver.
In today's world, distraction is everywhere. Complexity is distraction's best friend. Pressure and fear stalk organizations looking to derail, discombobulate, and sow discord. It is the combination of these specters that are most likely to move people away from their definition of success and toward many people's greatest fear—that of failure.
As a consequence, a great leader today has to have the intent and the ability to “absorb pressure, transmit clarity, and build the confidence in others that they need to succeed.” Without confidence, a sense of optimism, and high levels of trust in our collective ability to problem‐solve, it is close to impossible to thrive. It is the responsibility of any leader to create and maintain these conditions, regardless of the storm levels that may prevail around them.
Avoiding the Common Pitfalls
There are a number of mistakes we frequently see leaders make that need to be avoided. The first is the constant reinvention of the wheel or consistently changing the definition of success and reinventing the strategies needed to get there. That is not to say that if something isn't working it shouldn't be changed. Rather it is about getting the “what” right in the first place and then sticking to it long enough to prove that it will work, or if not, that it needs to be changed and a new success definition or strategy crafted.
A second frequent mistake is that leaders communicate something once, or maybe twice, and assume that a single message is enough to inculcate that message to a team, group, or entire organization. This is simply never true. Leaders need to repeat messages over and over again before they fully live. Focus on repeating the chorus; you can never do it too much.
