To answer the question as to whether leadership coaching is different than other forms of coaching, one would need to believe that leadership coaching is a “form”. In my view, it is not. It is a focus of coaching. When coaching leaders, the form is the same, but the content may be different.
When I work with leaders who want to be better leaders, then that becomes the goal, or should I say, the direction or aim. It is not quite a goal for it is not precise. It does, however, give me a starting point to what the client wants. Inevitably, the leader will say, “I want to be a better leader,” to which I reply, “What do you mean by leader? What is a leader to you?” Later, I’ll ask “What does better mean to you; better in what way?” But for now, we begin by being sure we are on the same page as to what we mean by “leader”.
Interestingly, often the client isn’t sure what a leader is to him or her. Through the conversation, we almost always find our way to exploring the classic distinction between management and leadership. Management, as is often understood, is about getting stuff done. It is about directing, controlling, measuring, monitoring and evaluating, which are often, depending on a person’s role, important parts of what they do. Yet, management is not same as leadership. You can be a good manager and get stuff done, but still be a poor leader, and vice versa. Leadership is more about inspiration than direct task management. Leaders inspire others to do the right thing or to do the thing well, while managers get it done. Often, people, when inspired, do the thing they’re inspired to do well, or work hard to do things better and that is what many leaders want from others.
While leadership is about inspiration, this is often not enough to set the goal of our work. Although directionally useful, it is still vague. It defines the territory of our exploration but still not the goal. At this point, I often ask, “What does it mean to be a great leader?” Almost always, the client says that a leader gets stuff done through other people and therefore a great leader is someone who inspires others to get stuff done faster or better than they otherwise might not. While I might agree, I don’t think we’re yet in the realm of leadership that will define a powerful journey of transformation. You can get others to do things faster and better, but can they sustain it? Crack the whip more and they will work harder, but this is hardly sustainable, or if it were, is it desirable? In my value system it is not. If it is in their value system, then I’m not the right coach.
My sense of what great leadership is about has less to do with what a leader does directly to or at people. It has more to do with how the leader shows up and the context he or she creates. In my view, great leadership is about being and doing things that create conditions where others want to raise their game to new heights.
What are those conditions? They have to do with clear, high standards, and with trust and commitment. They have to do with speaking in ways that cultivate focus and clarity of attention, where goals are understood, and purpose is infused in everything we do. They have to do with developing a strong sense of teamwork, that we’re all in this together, pulling our oars in the same direction. This is the realm of great leadership in my mind, and when I say this to clients, almost always, they get excited. “Yes, that’s what I want to get better at!”
So now client and I are in the realm of leadership and we can explore much more fully where, in that territory, the client has strengths and where are there weaknesses to address, develop, or transform. As is almost always the case, because of who I am, I’m mostly interested in coaching others toward transformation, so I ask the question, “If you could be the great leader you want to be, and there are no limitations, what would that look like?” Often, I hear things such as:
-“I want to have more confidence or gravitas.”
-“I want to have stronger presence.”
-“I shy away from confronting people or issues and I want to be bolder.”
-“I’m too controlling and not inspiring enough.”
-“I’m new to this executive role and I want to do it well.”
Whatever the client says, we explore this more deeply which sets the trajectory of our work together.
Whatever their desire, it will almost always require the shifting of one’s paradigm. I have spoken about what a paradigm is, in prior articles, so I won’t belabor the point here. What is most relevant, is that inevitably, the search for great leadership requires a journey toward being and embodying a more expansive paradigm.
A more expansive paradigm, in my experience, has the following five characteristics:
1. Spacious and expansive: It is by definition more holistic. It takes into account all the relevant variables and seeks to create a win-win-win outcome – I win, you win, we win.
2. Generous: It has the feature of being in service to others and to the whole system.
3. Generative: It tends to help you and the people around you to learn and grow.
4. Life-affirming and life-giving: It leaves people more encouraged, more vital and alive.
5. Sustainable: It takes into account the long view. It is like the Native American idea that one should make decisions that positively affect the world seven generations from now, so that it finds ways to achieve its goals in a sustainable way.
With this in mind, when shaping an exploration, a good leadership coach might ask what a more spacious way of viewing would be; or what would be more generous; or what would be more generative, and so on. These questions will help your client seek out, find, and define a better paradigm.
Ultimately, no matter where you go, the direction of leadership coaching will take you toward helping the client find greater wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to make decisions or take action that, by definition, bring us to a higher and better place. To make or take wise actions require us to broaden our mind, to look further or deeper, and this becomes the role of the leadership coach—to help the client do just that.
Let me explain further what I mean. Picture a paradigm as a box. It’s a box of one’s thinking. We all have paradigms, and we all are in a box. Some boxes are bigger than others, but they are boxes just the same.
There are three primary dimensions to the box: width, length, and depth. Width represents the degree to which the person thinks of multiple variables and in systemic ways. (Coach: “What other variables might one need to think about to address this problem?”)
Length represents the degree to which the person demonstrates long-term thinking. (Coach: “How might you think about this if you were committed to a sustainable solution?”)
Depth represents the degree to which the person can self-reflect and become aware of their own role in the dynamic they are trying to change. (Coach: “How are you thinking about this? What assumptions and beliefs might be guiding you? What alternative assumptions or beliefs might guide you differently or better? How are you affecting the very thing you are trying to change?”)
My clients often find this image of a three-dimensional box useful as a way to understand the limits of their current thinking and personal paradigm. They recognize that, at least up to this point in their lives, they were only able to consider possible choices and actions that fit inside the box, represented as a “p” (for possibilities) in the image below.
However, desirable possibilities, represented as larger “P”, might lie outside their existing paradigm.
In theory, if they want a different possibility or different outcome in life, it will require different thinking – in essence a different paradigm. That means the box of the client’s thinking has to shift or expand in order to produce a different behavior and, therefore, a different outcome.
This, then, is what leadership coaching is all about. It is about enlarging a client’s box. But here’s the rub. The same is true about coaching anyone. If you are in the transformational arena of coaching, then that is always the goal. So again, what’s the difference between leadership coaching and other forms of coaching? My answer is NONE! It’s the same form if we are talking about transformation. The only difference is the content. You or I, as a coach, don’t need to be an expert leader to coach another toward greater leadership. We do need, however, the ability to cultivate wisdom and that doesn’t require leadership knowledge; it requires the understanding of what wisdom is and to embody that wisdom for oneself.
My greatest guidance to anyone who explores the realm of leadership is to therefore cultivate wisdom in oneself. The journey to become a leadership coach is, therefore, an inner journey. It’s a journey toward wholeness, depth, and grace. John Dewey, the famous educator, once said, “He who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” It is those words that guide me to keep working on myself, for that is what enables me to be a better coach to others.