The most successful leaders continuously coach and develop their teams, individually and as a group. This proactive approach develops professionally-satisfied and challenged team players, as well as, a path to natural leadership succession in your organization.
How does a leader coach a team? Here are the essentials:
- Communicate the big picture perspective with your team, LISTEN to them, then ask coaching questions to get them on the same team goals, their individual learning needs and goals will come out too; address both to show that you value them and LISTENED to them, while bringing clarity and direction toward your organization's big picture goal.
- Be honest about your past successes and failures to give learning examples, to encourage creativity in trying new things without fear of failure. This develops trust that leads to mutual understanding and honesty from the team, plus continued learning and development of the team and leader when hearing the team's honesty.
- Once honesty and trust are established in a team, then positive accountability can be achieved in which proactive approaches are developed within the team, not reactive blaming for organizational problems. The leader can nurture this behavior by continually affirming the positive and acknowledging those who create it -- emphasize that everyone in the team/organization, regardless of position or title, can grow, learn and succeed professionally and personally.
- Encourage constructive conflict to achieve higher understanding of issues and create solutions with more productive results. It is only when problems arise that we develop a way to create a better process/approach/solution. Again, open and honest communication is the key to team success in dealing with team conflicts.
When a team is not functioning well together, the consistency of the leader's actions and communication can bring a team to more successful interaction and results. The commitment of the leader to the team and the team to the leader is vital to team success; proactive coaching and team development creates this environment.
For assistance in developing a coaching leadership style, contact us.
If you are having difficulty in getting projects or changes implemented in your organization, hire a professional consultant to help your team get organized and focused on how to accomplish your goals. Understand that a consultant does not take the place of a leader or make leadership decisions, but advises and coaches you and your team.
The most common benefits that a professional consultant provides are:
- an objective perspective in gathering information and identifying problems
- a creative approach to change and new process implementation
- data-driven and constructive analysis, not emotional, which provides a new perspective to your situation to help get past current hurdles
- an accountability to results when guiding new project implementation
- evaluation & training based on specific expertise and analysis.
We give a free initial consultation to discuss your situation and needs. Please contact us to see how we can help you and your organization.
Last weekend I attended and assisted in training, at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, the Executive Skills Series class: Exercising Leadership to Facilitate Adaptive Change.
One thing that struck me, is that we often rely upon our technical expertise so much, that we don't want to make the effort to learn how to change our thinking, our environment, or our paths. Change is scary, it's the unknown, letting go of our control and what we know.
Yet, when I think of the times that I "let go" as a leader and listened to my co-workers' suggested actions and paths, they were turning points in my leadership experience and learning, as well as, how they viewed me as their leader. That is the key to successful adaptive change in my experience -- when your team members participate in the change, they believe in and facilitate the change to endure, and they start to really believe in their leader.
