As a team, our combined years of positive engagement with leadership development must run into the hundreds! During this time various leadership development models and mantras have hit the market, engaged people’s imagination, burned with fury for a short period of time and then fizzled out. These leadership fads have had the tendency to leave leaders disappointed, a little cautious of new learning, a little cynical if they are in a challenging personal place and perhaps, most importantly, frustrated that they are not getting the support that they need. There is no lonelier place than a leader who, facing the intense complexity of their role, feels isolated and with little support or guidance.
Where we believe has evidenced demonstrable and sustained performance improvement for leaders over the last decade has been the growing impact of coaching and mentoring.
- A coach pulls the information out of the leader who already has the knowledge:
- “What else have you thought of doing?”
- A mentor shares or pushes their experiences towards the client:
- “Have you thought of doing…….?”
It was Socrates who stated that a leader only needs three things:
- Integrity
- Courage
- Self-awareness.
While the Emotional Intelligence literature has utilised this wisdom to excellent effect, we would say that coaching and mentoring, when delivered appropriately, has helped to operationalise it! During effective and authentic coaching sessions integrity, courage and self-awareness are explored in a complex weave of performance enhancement? When they are missing – we would suggest the session never progressed beyond a cosy chat! And there are too many leaders having cosy chats!
There are certain basic skills embedded within coaching and mentoring that we believe, if developed carefully and with compassion, help encourage a creativity and self-assuredness that shapes unique performance delivery. These skills can be taught and learned, contextualised within an organisation’s operational framework and constantly adapted and updated to drive excellence. ‘Appropriate coaching skills aligned to organisational context’ are the secret to delivering a high performance coaching culture.
We have a passion for creating such coaching cultures within organisations. It is not just that we think that coaching adds to the bottom line – though it does; rather we believe that in a culture where people:
- listen
- consider the context
- reflect
- And finally take action
an environment of continual performance improvement emerges.
Building on our experience, our energy and our passion we have created a challenging and rigorous coaching and mentoring programme that has been externally verified by the Institute of Leadership and Management. At our Coaching Centre we ‘create energy for excellence’ within organisations by helping them create and then self-sustain a positive performance focused coaching and mentoring culture.
View: PM ILM Coaching Mentoring Programme Overview
We do not need to have necessarily worked in an environment to help create an outstanding coaching culture; but we do need to have the appropriate listening skills, a flexibility of approach, a clarity in communication and an ability to coach people towards making change happen and a self confidence to speak truth to power. We never get confused about who are the experts within an organisation – it is its leaders and those working towards the organisational vision. We are here to offer compassionate coaching services that have integrity, courage and self-awareness at their core.
To find out more about our ILM Coaching and Mentoring Programme or bespoke Coaching and Mentoring Programmes please contact us.