Leadership Coaching - Are you ready?

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Leadership is difficult. Coaching is tougher!

There’s no simple, multi-step coaching process that you can follow to become a great coach (or leader for that matter). Coaching is a way of being, not doing. Despite what many authors will have you believe, there is no universal formula for coaching – it’s far too big an endeavour to be compressed into a finite number of steps. Coaching is a complex human-to-human process that needs to be adapted to the countless different ways that humans interact with and respond to one another – much to the frustration of those who set out to coach!

Now for the bad news...you have to change. I wish I could give you better news, but I cannot. You must change. Being a great coach is primarily about who you are in your relationships with other people. Think for a moment about your staff, co-workers, boss, and customers. Think about your interactions with them, about your influence on them, and the impact you have on their working lives. Are you important to them? Do they perform better because of their relationship with you? Would others call you a coach? Do the people with whom you interact trust that you have their best interests at heart? Do others attribute their success to you? If you continue following the same course, you will keep getting the same results – or lack of results – you are getting now. Are you happy with these results? No? So a change is required. Since who you are with others is the key factor in determining your ability to coach others for high performance, the change must start with you.

Take a long, hard look at yourself as a leader. What do you see? Is it time to change? Are you ready to be a different leader? Are you ready to be a leader coach?