Leader as Coach - A leadership Approach for the 21st Century

With the ever-increasing pace of technological change, ‘disruptors’ overtaking traditional established businesses, and with the existential challenge of climate change, there is the need for a new style of leadership, that of the Coaching Leader, in which a leader takes a coaching approach to their leadership of their team and organisation. ???

The traditional command and control hierarchical cultures in which the expert leader provides direction, based on historic knowledge, is no longer valid. With the pace of change, expertise becomes outdated faster than ever. Historic market knowledge holds organisations back, rooting them in the old ways.?The heroic front-runner, the source of all knowledge, the figurehead with extensive experience based on years of service in a market sector, is now a thing of the past.?

There is now the need for leaders to undertake a paradigm shift. The leader’s role has changed, they now need to be humble and know their skills and knowledge are limited, and they need to seek out and engage hidden expertise. That is, to find experts who may be buried within organisational hierarchies, whose market and technical knowledge are more current, who are closer to customers, service-users, and stakeholders. The leader’s role is to enter meaningful dialogue, to listen and enable these people. Leaders need to be vulnerable enough to be able to say, “I don’t know”, and have the wisdom to listen. Leaders need to know that alternatives are possible, and once the right question has been asked and the right person has been engaged, the solution is there to be found.??

As Einstein famously said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them" so it’s time for leaders to take a coaching approach to leading their teams. The Coaching Leader enables talent to flourish, to overcome the Wicked Problems of the VUCA environment, through listening deeply to understand, and questioning to discover possibilities, by asking “what if…?” and “how could we…?” questions, to promote curiosity and the exploration of new possibilities.??

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Coaching Leaders do not need to be the expert, the saviour, as if the heroic medieval knight charging on a horse, to save their organisation. The Coaching Leader seeks to develop wisdom, so that people, organisations, and society can flourish, through engaging and listening to the best experts who can be anywhere in an organisation, and society. ??

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Through self-awareness the Coaching Leader asks themselves the question, “who am I being as a leader?”??

Many line managers have joined?my?Postgraduate level 7 Coaching Courses at Warwick University, and Leadership and Team Coaching is one of the modules for the Postgraduate Diploma. Our next course starts April 2024, with a closing date for applications at the end of February. For more information and to apply, follow this link https://warwick.ac.uk/study/cll/courses/careerstudies/coaching??or contact me at? [email protected]??

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