Developing Leadership Effectiveness
Leadership development identifies essential leadership competencies for leaders in a particular organization. Leadership development continues with leadership coaching to help leaders increase awareness and build commitment to reach greater proficiency in the essential leadership competencies. Coaching blends the coach's expertise in the process of human development with the leader’s role expertise to raise leadership effectiveness.
Leadership Development Process
The development of leaders in organizations depends first and foremost on the strategy of the business and organization. From strategy, the leadership competencies are identified and modeled so that assessments can be made and expectations for leader development can be determined. Then we design, pilot and refine leadership workshops and launch the leadership coaching process to ensure that leaders are developing and putting leadership competencies into practice. To learn more about our approach to developing leaders, please see
Leadership Coaching Process
Roles in the Leadership Coaching Process
Leader: The person who is pursuing a learning and development agenda to increase leadership effectiveness to advance business performance.
Coach: The coach is the person who builds a partnership with the leader to develop and pursue the learning agenda. The coach also engages with the Coaching Team to build insight and support for the leader’s development work.
Coaching Partners: The Coaching Partners include the coach, the leader, and the leader’s sponsor, usually the leader’s boss.
Coaching Team: The Coaching Team includes the Coaching Partners and a group of individuals that the Coaching Partners assemble. These are usually comprised of direct reports, supervisors, peers, and other relevant stakeholder.
Coaching Program Activities
Coach-Leader Matching
After the workshops, the matching of coaches and leaders will occur. Criteria for matching leaders and coaches will be developed based on assessment information to ensure effective matches.
Expectations and the Coaching Partners and Coaching Team
The coach and leader determine who the Coaching Partners will be and set expectations about the objectives of coaching, the learning agenda, confidentiality, progress reporting (progress checks), and success and termination of the coaching program. The Coaching Partners determine who comprises the Coaching Team, the peers, direct reports, and other stakeholders that will contribute to the support and development of the leader. The Coaching Partners set expectations with the Coaching Team to engage their support and commitments.
Assessments
During the Leadership Workshops, each leader will conduct and review assessments to generate awareness and insights that contribute to the design of the leader’s learning agenda.
Learning Agenda
Each leader will draft a learning agenda during the leadership workshops. The leader and coach will develop the learning agenda further before the coaching actually begins.
Beginning the Coaching
The coach reviews the multi-rater feedback, other assessments completed, and the leader’s draft of the learning agenda. The coach and leader meet and begin their partnership to advance and finalize the learning agenda. The leader presents the learning agenda to the Coaching Partners for agreement. The coach and leader proceed with development work.
Progress Checks
The coach conducts progress checks periodically with the Coaching Partners and Coaching Team to ensure that the coaching process is making progress. The progress check feeds into the learning agenda and coaching approach and evaluation of the leadership development program.
Transition
After the final progress check, if the Coaching Partners agree that the conditions for termination of the coaching program have been reached, then the Coaching Partners proceed with the Transition Phase of the program to determine the approach for continued development for the leader.
Theories We Apply in Leadership Coaching
We borrow fundamentals of positive, humanistic, behavioral, and cognitive psychology to build our coaching competencies and process. We draw heavily from Richard Boyatzis and Robert Kegan.
Intentional Change Theory (Richard Boyatzis)
The foundation of our coaching approach is Intentional Change Theory, developed and proven by Richard Boyatzis, PhD., co-author of Primal Leadership and author of Resonant Leadership, over the last 40 years. The Intentional Change Theory is a validated process for how individuals and organizations change in desired and sustainable ways.
Immunity to Change (Robert Kegan)
It is common that despite the clearest of goals, the availability of time and resources, and the greatest aspirations and intentions of a person, that progress toward goals is less than expected. We find that many leaders have invisible commitments that drive actions that are counterproductive to a new aspiration but make perfect sense in the context of competing commitments. We use an approach based on Robert Kegan’s Immunity to Change process to surface these commitments. This powerful approach reveals how an leader may be equally committed to two goals driving incompatible actions. With this insight, we guide the leader to test underlying assumptions so they can consider whether and how to modify beliefs, allowing them to meet commitments and pursue aspirations effectively.
