COACHING - A new language of modern leadership
Leaders as ‘coaches’ ask the right questions, boldly communicate what they see and listen to answers to truly hear them. They create a culture of clear expectations, responsibilities and empowerment. They value and promote connection, closeness, support and acceptance. And in the end they achieve both results and meaning.
Looking at leadership through contemporary eyes, it is becoming increasingly clear to us that much of the leadership role is actually relationship building. But this relationship building is not an intangible concept, it has its specific components that we can call leadership competencies and components that each leader must develop to ensure the effectiveness of their own role: caring for others, encouraging teamwork, cooperation, mentoring and development and interpersonal intelligence as the ability to understand and interact with others. If we look at them a little more closely, we will see that it is almost impossible to engage these competencies without creating a positive and productive relationship in the form of conversation. A conversation that in its basic form involves knowing how to listen and how to speak.
Theories and concepts
Of all the theories and concepts that represent leadership through the perspective of conversation, two are my favorite. Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind in their book called ‘Talk, Inc .: How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power Their Organizations’ in which they present the leadership model they call organizational conversation. I would like to briefly single out perhaps one of the most important messages from it.
Namely, the authors state that leaders who take leadership seriously as an organizational conversation know very well when to stop talking and start listening. They seem to be talking about the basic skills of a good coach. Then there is the theory of Peter Block , an American author and consultant in the field of organizational development, who in his book ‘Community: The Structure of Belonging’ talks about six types of important conversations.
When we start these conversations in smaller groups of people, simply put, we encourage a change in reality and create a different story for our community. Block thus talks about conversation with the intention of encouraging what we might call creativity and innovation, contribution and participation, empowerment and commitment. Reminding us first of all that real transformation happens through choice (perhaps just the one we will be aware of in conversation) rather than through orders or instructions. No matter how we ultimately define leadership and through what perspective we look at it, it is clear that we cannot talk about it without talking about - talking.
The result ratio
Conversations largely shape our lives in all spheres, including the work environment. What is talked about in organizations, and even more what is avoided, affects the success of that organization and the meaning of each individual who creates within it. Therefore, good leaders are aware that the quality of their conversations largely defines the quality of their leadership. They are also aware of the fact that, by releasing a managerial command & control management style and developing a leadership mindset within organizations, we all realize together (or at least finally talk about it) that we truly achieve the result through a relationship. In addition, we build a truly positive and productive relationship through conversation, in which we are able to boldly say (and hear!) And what is not necessarily pleasant, and perhaps even more important and necessary.
What if there is no conversation?
Let's go back for a moment to the necessary competencies of leaders in the field of relationship building. We concluded that it is unlikely that we will be able to build them successfully without talking. But what happens when we as leaders don’t build them? We will briefly look at what potential in this case we fail to release within the system. If we look at any extremely successful team, we will see that one of its prominent characteristics is the connection among team members. In a practical sense, this means that its members take care of each other in a way that they talk about what is important to them, what is bothering them, what they may be missing. When there is no conversation, there is no connection. Encouraging teamwork often means directly addressing what is preventing team performance.
Furthermore, collaboration is a key competence that most often depends on the leader's ability to hear different perspectives from his own and thus create a culture of valuing different initiatives. If we do not have developed interpersonal intelligence as the ability to understand and interact with others even in the most demanding moments, there will be many creative conflicts that could lead to more innovative solutions. Finally, the link between the interview and the mentoring and development competence is probably the clearest in this context. It ensures the satisfaction of the strongest human motive, and that is finding meaning through supportive growth and development.
How to talk?
If there is no release of full potential in organizations without a culture of important and bold conversations, how exactly to empower leaders within them? Numerous studies speak of the importance of acquiring coaching skills in leaders. If contemporary leadership is a conversation, coaching is the new language of contemporary leadership. And while primarily talking about coaching skills, what leaders truly develop in coaching education is the coaching mindset, and they need it to primarily change the perspective that achieving results is the primary goal, and people are the means to it. Continuous nurturing of coaching mindset from leaders supports idea that the development of human resources and the achievement of business potential are two parts of the same whole.
But some might see the idea of developing managers and leaders as coaches as some kind of soft version of management. If so, they need to be reassured. Today’s great leaders are essentially great coaches - they talk about what matters. They open more important and bold conversations with everyone, with the ability to confront directly without entering into personal conflict. In this way, they support the development of others within a different relationship, a different conversation. They openly address the difference between good intentions and the actual performance of an individual and a team.
Moreover, by sincerely supporting the growth of others, they grow themselves. And often in the most uncomfortable conversations and circumstances.
Leaders as coaches ask the right questions, speak boldly about what they see, listen to the answers with the intention of truly hearing them. They create a culture of clear expectations, responsibilities and empowerment. They value and promote connection, closeness, support and acceptance. In the end they achieve results so they don’t have to choose between achieving results and achieving meaning.
This article first appeared in Lider.media on December 30th 2020