At SeattleCoach we believe that coaching is a 21st Century leadership movement. Organizations that are succeeding in the 21st Century have leaders who are both empathic and agile--both with their markets and with their talent. Jobs and careers are changing. What isn't changing is the fact that people who find ways to work well together (and with their screens) are more likely to, as we say at SeattleCoach, "make money, have fun and do good" in the short time we all have on the planet.
We think of coaching as a way of partnering to create highly customized and collaborative, just-in-time adult learning and leadership development. Leaders who have experienced coaching usually begin to listen differently, to ask questions differently and to keep a laser-focus on agreed-upon priorities, competencies, competitiveness and performance. Their teams then join the learning and the results can be impressive and contagious, the ROI, compelling.
At SeattleCoach, we have trained and developed hundreds of leaders, managers, physicians and faith leaders as coaches in scores of small, carefully chosen cohorts. Many have earned professional credentials through the International Coach Federation (ICF), all have become better professionals, maybe even better people.
Approximately half of the coaches we’ve trained have become entrepreneurial, external coaches. Just as many have stayed in place in great companies and organizations based in the Pacific Northwest.
In the coming years
External coaches will continue to be crucial. Their impact has become contagious as organizations have now begun to develop internal coaching leaders and through them, coaching cultures. From C Suite leaders to new hires and highpotentials, the ROI is compelling:
- Improved engagement, development and retention of key talent—at every level and every generation, and
- Improved leadership development—at every level and every generation,
- Better performance individually and by teams—even and especially in times of conflict and rapid change,
- Motivation and lowered stress as people connect what they do in the majority of their adult waking hours with what matters most,
- And in countless conversations, meetings and human connections things just go better.
Forward-thinking organizations are beginning to explore a new question: What happens to a company’s growth mindset, culture, values, leadership at every level--and to their costs--when senior leaders themselves learn to coach?
As companies partner with SeattleCoach to sponsor and customize their own internal coach-development programs, they embed a coaching mindset into their culture by equipping senior leaders in the key skills, presence, models and competencies of leadership coaching.
With each of our “on-ramps” we talk about how people-managers can best grasp the best, high-trust practices of coaching leadership. Leaders begin to:
- Understand the neuroscience of human change and to explore all the reasons that causes us as humans to “tap the brakes.”
- To use their own style and temperament,
- To balance advocacy and inquiry, knowing when to coach—and when not to,
- To find the coaching agenda that address both performance and production and
- To make the solid delivery of perspectives and feedback an on-going practice at all levels.
At SeattleCoach we think of coaching as a crucial additional gear in the engine of a seasoned leader. We think of it as simply, an elegant conversation of any length that facilitates innovation, improved performance, crucial results and talent retention and is marked by:
- Clear agreed-upon outcomes and measurements of success,
- Clarity about “why these outcomes are big enough to matter”,
- The participant’s initiative, strengths, assets and solutions,
- The coach’s proven competencies and
- Increased systemic health at every level of their shared organization.
So, “What Happens When Leaders Learn to Coach?”
Some key questions we raise with companies that are ready for that question: Who will champion the process? How will you select the first key leaders? What are the real and immediate needs and starting points? How will we measure success? And what will internal coach development look like as it is customized for your organization? Visionary leaders today understand that the nature of work has changed. Their most talented employees are looking for two key elements:
1. Work that matters—a sense of purpose and service, and
2. Opportunities at work for personal and professional development
And if both elements are not present, those employees are more likely to change companies than they are to simply change jobs. And, as always, the determining factors are the company culture and its managers.
Companies that succeed in building a coaching culture weave together a long-term approach that requires executive sponsorship, external coaches and the regular equipping of internal managers and leaders in key coaching skills.