Part 1 of a four part series By Gary B. Henson, Founder and President, BusinessCoach.com

Sponsored by:

The mindset you utilize in each discipline is the difference: the action aspect of leadership vs. the insight bias of coaching. Weaving both into your leadership style creates a powerful package, enabling you to operate with impact in every moment, because every moment in business requires either insight or action.

As we discuss weaving a coaching mentality into a leadership style, I'm going to cover four unique ways in which a coaching mindset will strengthen anyone's leadership. I'll begin in this issue with the greatest addition that a coaching mindset can add to a leader's behavior: the ability to uncover deep motivation in people.

Uncovering the Dream Within

In my view, all great motivation and achievement does not begin with setting goals. That may sound odd to the natural leader, but hear me out. "Barrier-breaking" drive comes from emotional desire. And emotional desire comes from discovering what's deeply locked in the heart of a leader as something that's out of his or her grasp. I'm talking about something that's unattainable, but without which life is not entirely fulfilling. Sometimes this factor has been desired for so long but denied through failure so repeatedly that it is buried deep, as a survival response. Coaching as leadership begins when you skillfully move past surface satisfaction to a buried dream. Dreams are often hidden under layers of what I call "accepted success". They take a little thought and, quite often, a little boldness to bring to the surface.

I remember my initial interview with the founder of a large commercial landscaping company. He's been my coaching client for several years now, but back then in that first meeting, he was so proud of his success that it took some probing to touch the "tender spot" of his denied dream.

I recall how he leaned back in his big office chair as I talked about the benefits of coaching. He squinted his eyes at me, folded his hands behind his head, and said "Why would I need a business coach? I've built this company into the biggest of its kind in the West. We have all the business we want, we've pounded out the best margins in the industry, and we've invented new methods that have people calling me from all over the country to ask how we do what we do. To top it off, financially I'm getting all I want. Why would I need you?"

Not moving back an inch, I looked at him and said, "That may be true, but you may still have room to grow in your leadership. You see, a big part of my definition of leadership at the CEO level is this: getting consistently more results while working consistently fewer hours. So let me ask you, how many hours did you work in this business last week?"

He was silent for a long moment, and then quietly replied, "I worked between 70 and 80 hours here last week". As the gleam in his eyes faded, I simply said, "I want to help you change that".

Three years later this leader's business is bigger than ever, but he's got his life back. In fact, I recently was a guest at his home as he and his wife invested some of their new found freedom by hosting a citywide charity event. Yet it all started when I was able to inject a coach's quest for insight into a leader's conversation about his achievement. When I did that, a denied dream was suddenly revealed. The pain of that denied dream woke this satisfied leader up and motivated him to take unusual action. The result was profound. That's the impact of asking a coaching question in the midst of a leadership conversation.

August 28th - Next issue: Coaching as a Leadership Tool Part II - Declaring The New Future.

Feedback is welcome at ExpertSeries@choice-online.com
__________________________________________

This email is sponsored by The International Coaching Consortium for Coaching in Organizations ICCO invites you personally to attend the 6th annual symposium, "Leveraging Cultural Differences in the Global World" being held Oct 11 - 13 in Toronto , Canada . There will be conversations about organizations and coaching and how they interrelate. For more details see www.coachingconsortium.org/events- 0507.html.