Category Archives: Leadership Coaching Tips

Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / March 2002

In working with executives around attunement, there are a myriad of potential openings to explore. Ultimately, the executive must choose which to follow. As a coach, however, it is important to support the executive in exploring them. In the case of attunement, openings will include attention to issues of identity, such as values and beliefs about being a team player. As executives explore these, support them to look not just from their own point of view, but also from the
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Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / February 2002

When coaching an executive about engaging in dialogue with others it is useful to distinguish dialogue from other types of conversation. Dialogue is about learning. The focus of the learning is oneself. It is learning about one’s values, beliefs, assumptions and intentions. It brings to awareness what we already know and believe and often surfaces new levels and areas of meaning that can be profoundly important in testing attunement. The leadership coach can support learning this skill by making the
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Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / January 2002

Leaders are seeking outcomes from their coaching experiences related to awareness, purpose, competence and well-being, says B\Coach’s Mike Jay. Coaching is probably the most valuable support system for achieving these outcomes through an evolving process of self-management. But coaches need to beware. Because we see behaviors or hear words that have meaning for us about developmental needs related to self-management, does not mean that is what is going on. When we coach to these, we are coaching to gaps. When
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Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / December 2001

Coaching a leader is very much about dealing with the questions and challenges of connectedness. On the one hand, getting at motivation for relationships with others through exploring assumptions, beliefs, values, aspirations and guiding principles leads to more effective formulation of strategy through the development and testing of alternative scenarios. To do so means looking for double and triple loop openings and inviting the client to explore them. Often this can lead to shifts in self-perception, as well as clarification
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Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / November 2001

What are the kinds of questions that can be raised with a business leader when coaching them that relate to their role as entrepreneur? Be alert to their view of their role. Does it include this capacity for entrepreneurship? What are their critical stakeholder interfaces? How are conditions for stakeholders the same, changing? How do they know? Here is an arena where testing assumptions may be very important. What do they assume about stakeholder requirements and potential responses?
Many executives
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Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / October 2001

Coaching for Enterprise Leadership
Executive coaching can be helpful to leaders in developing strategy. They may want to get a handle on their relationships with stakeholders and how those relationships link to business objectives. It is also important to look at relationships with other leaders and the levels of alignment and engagement they have with them in moving the business forward. Alignment is about what is important. Engagement is about how they implement what is important.
“What’s important” questions can
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Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / September 2001

It is not enough to help the individual leader develop competencies. It is also important to help them understand their motivations and relationships with what is challenging them and their businesses. When they are clear that this is something valuable for them to attend to, you can help them open the door to creativity and generativity. Explore their assumptions about innovation. Explore their boundaries to creativity. Help them reflect on how their behaviors relate to these. Help them build integrity …

Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / August 2001

Recognize that leadership is both an individual and a collective phenomenon. Also recognize that defining what this will look like, particularly in the area of teamwork, is something that the CEO and other members of the executive team will need to define. The idea of teamwork has been around for so long and people have so many diverse relationships to it that it is easy for people to treat the idea as though they already have a set of shared
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Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / July 2001

Help the leader define their context in terms of strategy, business objectives and relationships with others in the leadership system. Then, look at their roles as committed members of the leadership group and competent contributors to the leadership organization. Compare and contrast what is important individually and collectively for leadership. Identify the requirements for individual and collective action to apply competencies and commitment to achieving business objectives. Support the leader in identifying developmental opportunities and strategies.

> Russ Volckmann…

Leadership Coaching Tip

Leadership Coaching Tips / June 2001

When working with business leaders to enhance their competencies, use time, energy, information, influence and credibility as sources of key questions to make sure that leaders are anticipating what is required and how they will respond. When looking at potential courses of action-scenarios-check out the implications of each for these critical leader competencies. Help the leader identify what is important and what behaviors will demonstrate that by asking solid questions about these leadership resources.

> Russ Volckmann…