6 Ways The IMPACT Model Unlocks Leadership Potential

The 2024 Global Leadership Development Study by Harvard Business Publishing, yet another piece of research highlighting a fundamental shift in leadership development. Leaders must transcend technical expertise and team management, delegating these roles and functions to focus on developing the mindset necessary to navigate challenges and drive transformation. What I know as an executive coach is that modern leadership is a critical mix of aquiring skills and developing self-awareness, resilience, and the ability to inspire and lead change.

The IMPACT Model, the product of my twenty years of coaching and therapy experience, provides a structured yet tailorable framework for executve coaching and leadership development, equipping leaders with the ideas and concept, tools and strategies to navigate the demands of their roles. By following its six stages (IMPACT, MEANING, PATTERNS, ACCEPTANCE, CHALLEGE, and TRANSFORMATION), my Model helps leaders unlock their potential and deliver sustainable success.

How The IMPACT Model Enhances Leadership Development

1. IMPACT: Conversations Driving Leadership Growth

Leadership is shaped by the quality of conversations, from internal self-talk to discussions with colleagues and stakeholders. Yet, many leaders feel stuck or uncertain about why their conversations aren’t yielding results. The IMPACT Model begins with 'conversations with impact', structured, reflective, and insightful exchanges that reveal blind spots and open up new perspectives. Coaching using this stage of the model helps leaders:

• Monitor and assess their self-talk, identifying positive and negative patterns.
• Reflect on conversations within their support network, deciding which relationships to maintain, upgrade, or move on from.
• Reprocess key leadership experiences and memories to gain fresh insights.
• ‘Road test’ responses and strategies to identify strengths and weaknesses before applying them in real-world scenarios.

2. MEANING: Achieving Leadership Clarity

Leaders often have access to vast resources, yet they still struggle to make sense of why things are as they are. Without clarity, decision-making is reduced to misdiagnosis and guesswork. The IMPACT Model’s Meaning stage applies tailored strategies such as The Meaning Map to diagnose leadership difficulties and guide effective responses. This structured approach ensures that:

• Leaders gain insight into why certain challenges persist and how to navigate them.
• Decision-making syns with personal leadership values and organisational goals.
• Leaders develop the ability to make sense of their internal and external worlds and respond effectively to change.

3. PATTERNS: Breaking Free from Leadership Ruts

Leadership requires adaptability, yet many leaders find themselves trapped in rigid patterns of thought, behaviour, emotions, and relationships that hinder performance. The IMPACT Model’s Patterns stage builds self-awareness, allowing leaders to identify and overcome these patterns. Through coaching, leaders develop new, productive habits internally, such as refining self-talk, and externally, such as effective delegation or time management. Breaking free from unhelpful patterns is key to unlocking higher performance for both leaders and their teams.

4. ACCEPTANCE: Closing the Leadership Fantasy-Reality Gap

Many leaders hold themselves to unrealistic expectations, creating a Fantasy-Reality Gap, the difference between what they expect of themselves and what is realistically achievable. The IMPACT Model’s Acceptance stage gives leaders the ability to acknowledge their Fantasy-Reality Gaps, accept their limitations, and focus on meaningful, achievable goals. Coaching in this area ensures leaders:

• Work within their finite mental and physical resources while maximising potential.
• Develop confidence and wellbeing, avoiding burnout and decision fatigue.
• Accept that leadership success is about strategic allocation of effort, not relentless pursuit of impossible standards.

5. CHALLENGE: Sustaining Leadership Growth

Leaders thrive on challenge, yet without the right approach, they risk overextending themselves. The IMPACT Model’s Challenge stage ensures leaders define challenges effectively and assess whether they have the necessary resources, such as confidence, wellbeing, time and support, to meet them. Using tools such as The 0-10 Challenge Scale, coaching helps leaders:

• Assess whether a challenge is too high, too low, or at an optimal level for growth.
• Identify key internal and external resources to sustain challenge without exhaustion.
• Use challenge strategically to build resilience and foster long-term development.

6. TRANSFORMATION: Mastering Leadership Change

Leadership is an ongoing process of transformation, yet many leaders struggle to stay on course. The IMPACT Model’s final stage ensures leaders track their progress, identify when they have veered off course, and how to reconnect personal and organisational journeys and destinations. Coaching helps leaders:

• Assess their current position in relation to their desired leadership trajectory.
• Adjust their strategy to ensure ongoing growth and transformation.
• Achieve sustainable impact for themselves, their teams, and their stakeholders.

Why The IMPACT Model is Crucial for Leadership Development

Leadership is about posiitve outcomes and understanding the internal and external processes that lead to them. The IMPACT Model isn’t a quick fix, even if it can produce immediate change, but a structured approach to leadership development that shifts leaders from reactivity to proactivity, from feeling overwhelmed to feeling grounded, and from being stuck in old patterns to achieving meaningful transformation.

By investing in leadership development through The IMPACT Model, leaders don’t just survive, they thrive, building the confidence, resilience, and insight to navigate complexity and lead with IMPACT. If you’re a leader looking to upgrade their conversations, find meaning, break old patterns, find acceptance, develop clarity, and create lasting transformation, please get in touch (after checking out my Linkedin Recommendations, of course).

Executive coaching with The IMPACT Model could be the key to unlocking your full leadership potential.

www.conversationswithimpact.co.uk