Leadership Coaching
As a leadership and executive development coach, I provide one to one and team coaching at senior levels within a wide variety of organisations. Industry sectors include health, transport, engineering, telecommunications, drinks, insurance, fashion, retail and manufacturing.
Leadership Challenges
Technical skill and hearts and minds?
Successful professionals in specialist areas such as finance, IT and engineering have developed deep technical skills.
Success leads to promotion, often resulting in technical experts leading large numbers of people. However, being a technical expert and being a good leader of people are entirely different challenges. This is when emotional intelligence and mature leadership skills are more useful.
Dealing with unfamiliar people challenges which don’t respond to technical fixes can become overwhelming. It becomes harder to perform at our best and organisational performance suffers.
Fortunately, the same deliberate and disciplined attitude of the technically skilled professional, is required for leadership. So, the challenge becomes how to develop the individual into a fully rounded high achiever. This is when the technical focus is of an entirely different nature – the uncertainties and complexities of working with hearts and minds.
To excel in a new role, choose wisely
Your first few months in a role will present many business challenges to overcome and more demands on you than there is time. This is relatively important.
What is essential for success is your leadership. There are choices to make about what to nurture and grow. You can be a larger leader and create more value. It’s equally possible to fall into self-deception, believe an old formula will work and continue using approaches which are better retired.
Choose wisely and you’ll excel at the business challenges and find you have all the time you need.
When Rapid High Potential fails
Some people accelerate quickly in their career. Early success can lead to the illusion that the individual is ‘special’. The reality is very different.
Promote enough people labelled as ‘Rapid High Potential’ and you’ll soon see overwhelmed behaviours, supressed characteristics and people hitting a glass ceiling. They are unable to fulfil their early promise and eventually become marginalised.
It’s the responsibility of the hiring managers to act at as seasoned professionals. Provide lateral moves before promotion to build breadth in the individual. Alternatively, provide coaching and mentoring to dispel the illusion of being special and ground the individual.
Can burnout be healthy?
You’re already successful in your executive career. Why would you need to change your winning formula?
Burnout is one of the first symptoms that it’s time for change. Time to expand your winning formula so it’s larger and better able to deal with more complexity.
If you spot burnout early, it can be a healthy indicator to re-evaluate your approach. Left too long and performance will decline, along with your mental and physical health.
Yet, executives do ignore the first warning signs of burnout. What follows is entirely predictable. It doesn’t have to be this way. Often the impartial voice of an experienced coach can make all the difference.
Become a better leader
Growing mature leaders.
Improving performance.
Making a difference in the world of work.