Category Archives: Leadership Coaching Tips

Leadership Coaching Tip: Getting to the Heart of Communication: Being with Perception

Leadership Coaching Tips / January 2008

You are a business leader. You want to change the culture of your company. Engaging and motivating your people is a key factor. Where do you start? What do you need? Where to go first? The answer is, start with communication. What do you need to get there? Ask your coach! First develop your own capacity to communicate and learn to perceive, to observe others.

The first step to deepen the quality of communication is to bypass the context, the …

Leadership Coaching Tip: Organizational Challenges in Leadership –Defensive Routines

Leadership Coaching Tips / November 2007

“When you stand up for what you believe is right, you must have the courage to acknowledge your actions and face the consequences.”~ Mahatma K. Gandhi

As a 21st Century Leader, you encounter defensive routines in organizational settings every minute of every day. The trick is not to try to eliminate them, rather to discover how you skillfully work with them. Defensive routines can defeat even the best leadership practices unless they are named and directly addressed. But when faced

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Leadership Coaching Tip: Steve March We Are Hardwired to Take Our Eye Off the Ball

Leadership Coaching Tips / August 2007

In the Summer 2007 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people, wrote about eight core concerns that we all have as human beings.

The Eight Worldly Concerns: Wanting to be praised …and not wanting to be criticized.; Wanting happiness …and not wanting suffering.; Wanting gain …and not wanting loss.; Wanting fame and approval …and not wanting rejection and disgrace.

These concerns are an inheritance of sorts from our families …

Leadership Coaching Tip: Boomer Leadership’s Tipping Point

Leadership Coaching Tips / June 2007

As Baby Boomers (born between 1946-1964) transition from marketplace leadership roles, they clear the way for new mental models and cultural shifts borne of Gen Xers (born between 1965-1981) and Millennials (born between 1982 and 2000). While “fair process” and “challenging the institutional powers-that-be” were revolutionary breakthroughs in the Boomer heyday—they now drag on the dynamism, energy, and collective intelligence of the differently constructed 20 to 40-something crowd. What once was fought for is now assumed, expected, and embodied. What’s

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Leadership Coaching Tip: From an Adult-Developmental Perspective

Leadership Coaching Tips / March 2007

Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM), www.interdevelopmentals.org

Laske image I understand “Coaching Tips” as highly generic suggestions thought to apply to all kinds of clients. From an adult-developmental perspective, such suggestions should be specific to different levels of social-emotional and cognitive maturity, measured by semi-structured interview (Laske, 2006). The notion is that generic coaching tips need to be customized to the developmental “size of person” of the client.

Below, I am taking a stab at formulating some developmental Coaching Tips specifically geared to “leadership coaching,” …

Leadership Coaching Tip: Leadership and Organizational Culture

Leadership Coaching Tips / January 2007

Theorists from Ed Schein to Fred Kofman have been talking about the importance of organizational culture for organizational success. Culture has am important role to play for leadership. It shapes the meaning of the actions of leaders, as well as provides them with the context of their own meaning making. Much of integral theory, so far, seems to treat culture as that which is shared in a society or an organization. When you are exploring culture it is vital to

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Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / October 2006

Purpose and Principle in Leadership

Dee Hock said, “I believe that purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization.” Such purpose and principle as exists is initiated and sustained by players throughout an organization. Purpose and principle guide the actions of leaders, collaborators and followers. Gaining clarity about purpose and principle on the part of the organization as well as the individual provides the foundation, not only for the growing

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Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / August 2006

Reflection

I recently read somewhere (the source has momentarily escaped me – but the quote rangers are on the hunt already) that top executives make sure to include time for reflection in their daily activities. That reflection takes many forms: alone time to read, write, journal and the like; meditation; walking a golf course or other exercise with time to think; and the like. Coaches bring a partnership in reflection. Sometimes they are referred to as strategic thinking partners, etc. …

Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / June 2006

Watch out for SHAMs

It has become pretty clear that self-help programs do not, in themselves, work. Evidence to the contrary is anecdotal, as far as I can discover. Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic, recently published a short article in Scientific American debunking self-help from fire walking to Tony Robbins. “Do these programs work? No one knows…no scientific evidence indicates that any of the countless SHAM techniques – from fire walking to 12-stepping – works better than doing something else …

Leadership Coaching Tip: Leading and the Mental Model

Leadership Coaching Tips / March 2006

Your client has a mental model of leading. This includes the very concept of leadership that she holds. It involves what it is to be a leader, what leaders do, relationships with collaborators and followers, the relationship between leading and the strategic directions of the organization, the role of culture in determining leader effectiveness. It also involves personal values, personal intentions, questions of self-identity. In your coaching process, be aware that omitting any of these dimensions in exploring leadership generally

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