|
Part 2 of a four part series By Gary B. Henson, Founder and
President, BusinessCoach.com
Sponsored by:
Coaching
as a Leadership Tool
Gary Henson "The Coach of Coaches" is a master business
coach and a veteran to the business coaching industry. He is the
founder and President of BusinessCoach.com which has been committed to
transforming business and lives since 1989. BusinessCoach.com
specializes in business coaching, organizational development and
cultural design. BusinessCoach.com guarantees bringing the dreams of
leaders to life by creating breakthroughs in business that make the
difference.
Visit their website at www.businesscoach.com
When I teach business leaders how to integrate coaching practices into
their everyday leadership, I begin by reminding them of an important
distinction: leadership is accomplishment oriented, while coaching is
insight oriented. Each practice is distinct from the other, but each
also enhances the other. Good coaching reveals unseen mental and
organizational barriers to higher performance. Good leadership then
organizes the operation into new efforts to work from the new
insights. I also remind my clients "You're not leading all the
time, and you're not coaching all the time; but you need to learn to
be ready to do both at any time."
In
part two of this series on utilizing coaching as a leadership tool, I
want to focus on the second of four high impact possibilities that a
coaching mindset can bring to a leadership conversation. It is this:
coaching can enable us to help our employees or clients see a future
that is hidden from them unless they take a different look at their
role and their potential. Simply put, when you inject a coaching
mindset into a leadership conversation, you can literally help a
person discover an unlimited future.
Declaring a New Future
To understand how this unique result can occur, it's important to
remember that when we begin a coaching relationship with someone, we
should never begin with a discussion of problems or challenges.
Although it is natural for a client to want to begin with an analysis
of what's not going right and how we can change all that, great
coaching doesn't begin with that focus. Coaching can be defined as an
extraordinary relationship between two people who commit to a common
future. My coaching relationships begin, not with an analysis of the
problems, but with an open ended conversation about the future. We do
discuss the problems my clients are experiencing, but we discuss them
from a different frame of reference. Let me explain.
As I analyze a business, I constantly revisit four reference points in
every meeting: What's so? What's desired? What's missing? What's next?
In fact, in a typical coaching relationship lasting the better part of
two years, these are the reference points for just about every
conversation I have with a client. They work because they lead us into
repeated analysis, discovery, implementation, and improvement, all of
which then leads us to apply the same questions to yet another aspect
of their business or personal life.
As we live in this conversation, I am able to do something else for my
clients. I practice orienting them to the two different kinds of
future that every business possesses: the predictable future and the
invented future.
The predictable future is the future they will experience if they
don't make major changes in perspective and practice today. It is a
future that is governed entirely by the past of the business and the
leader. That's why it's predictable. Unchanged limitations and fixed
positions in the life of the leader and in the organization will
guarantee the same future every time. This is their automatic future.
It is already fulfilling itself in the business, and nothing new needs
to be done to ensure its arrival. It is automatic.
By contrast, when these self imposed limitations and fixed positions
in the past of a leader are revealed, analyzed for their weaknesses
and regularly "called out" by the coach as they occur, a
different future can be conceived: the invented future.
The invented future is designed from the deep conversations the coach
has with a leader about buried passions and visions for themselves or
their organization. These conversations are where the past is
intentionally exiled from consideration. The invented future is not
dictated by the past, and therefore, is unlimited.
This type of conversation quickly begins to give my clients access to
being in the present. It's the core of the accountability
conversations I have with them. Once the unlimited future begins to
become agreed upon between us, it is the place where I always take my
stand. I live there in every coaching conversation and challenge that
may arise.
Few understandings have altered my relationships with clients or
employees like this one has. It brings the relationship into a realm
of new possibility from the very beginning. And it keeps the coaching
relationship fresh, because the great thing about an unlimited future
is that it can always be re-invented; over and over again.
Try these concepts in your thinking with your next coaching or
leadership challenge. See if they don't reinvent your future.
September 11th: Next issue: Coaching as a Leadership Tool Part
Three-Revealing Hidden Barriers
Feedback
is welcome at ExpertSeries@choice-online.com
__________________________________________
Visit
choice, the magazine of professional coaching Website
choice
Magazine
customer
service phone: 310-941-7249
|
