The reality is that the experience will be different with every coach. We all bring our unique specialisations, accreditations, experience, tools and frameworks to the party. That’s why it’s so important to ensure the coach you engage is a good match to the problems you’d like to solve.

So, what does the Leadership Coaching Journey look like?

Our leadership coaching journey has four ‘phases’, and we usually commence with fortnightly coaching sessions for a minimum period of six months. Some clients need less, sometimes more. 

All phases are equally important, useful and practical. Although they don’t always progress sequentially, the first two – self-awareness and self-leadership – are absolutely foundational.

The beautiful thing about leadership coaching is that on the platform of learning to know and lead ourselves well, you’ll be able to bring to the table any leadership challenge you’re facing right now and tackle it with greater insight and behavioural flexibility.

We’ve coached hundreds of leaders over the years, and we can assure you that no journey is the same. We tailor every coaching program to you and your specific needs and meet you where your challenges are in every session. 

Angela’s approach to leadership training is unique as she doesn’t arrive with a toolbox full of tools. Instead, she guides you in creating your own tools, each aligned to your personal leadership challenges. This approach is fantastic as it leaves you with an intimate connection to each of your new tools, and an enthusiasm to jump in and use them.

Wayne McAuliffe, Engineering Manager, Millmeran Power Station

Sacred Ground

We’ll coach you around all the challenges and topics that position you to be a better leader. That could include exploring your values, beliefs, past experiences and behavioural profiles which impact your leadership approach.

We are not psychological therapists or counsellors, however. This means that matters which are truly personal represent sacred ground, and we respect this boundary. If we uncover signs of trauma, mental illness or other matters of a deeply personal nature, we’re ready with referrals to the appropriate health professionals.

Don’t worry, we’ve always got your back.  

Let’s get started, shall we?

Contact Angela to talk about your leadership development, team building and culture change challenges.

You’re also invited to check out our free downloadable leadership resources.

The post LEADERSHIP COACHING: WHAT TO EXPECT appeared first on EQUENTI Leadership and Learning.

Leader: I’d like to work with a leadership coach. I have this proposal from XYZ Coach who I really respect and connect with, what do you think?

Boss / In-house HR / L&D: Ok, sounds like a good idea but surely we can do this in-house cheaper and more effectively?

Leader: *feels ignored, not valued, like they’re about to get a compromised ‘solution’.

CEO: All we need to do is train up some internal coaches, right? How hard is this people stuff, anyway?

Leader: *face palms, waits 6-12 months so internal resources can be deployed to help, forgets why he even needed to develop, looks on Seek for more progressive company to work with

Sound familiar? Read on, my friends…

Most people have never truly experienced the 1-to-1 attention and focus on solving problems about their leadership confidence and skills with a skilled, experienced and certified leadership coach – so naturally, they’re not sure what’s involved. This leads us and our organisational decision-makers to hesitate about engaging a coach when we could already be breaking through to the next level of leadership and getting some real wins on the board.

In 2019, we conducted more than 500 personalised leadership coaching sessions with corporate clients at the front line, middle and senior management levels.

We know why organisations engage external leadership coaches, even when it could appear (on the surface) to be more efficient to attempt it with internal resources, such as our bosses or even internal L&D.

The key reasons we engage an external leadership coach over trying to work with our boss or internal L&D include:

• We want someone to hold space exclusively for us, so we can go directly to the heart of the matter in a confidential, 1-to-1 forum. This means it will only be about ‘us’ and what we must learn to next-level our leadership – not about what the boss wants or needs this week, not shoe-horning our learning needs to match the organisational direction, and not conveniently matching a curriculum of learning designed by our L&D department (which does play a very important role in leadership development, just not in a 1-to-1 coaching situation).

• We know that if we are coached by our boss or someone internal to our organisation that not only our performance will be judged, but our character and all our flaws, too. This means that we can never truly experience the level of openness and vulnerability required for deep, transformational learning. If revealing the deepest leadership fears and foibles so they can be addressed could also result in being regarded negatively for promotion or performance reviews, then there’s no way these problems can be safely aired and solved unless we’re with an independent, external coach.

• Often we don’t have the internal resources within our organisation which are needed to truly take our leadership to the next level. Either we don’t have these skillsets at all in our leaders or L&D department, or they are already heavily deployed, thus making personalised time developing key leaders 1-to-1 a ‘luxury’ when in fact, it’s an absolute necessity.

• Most people don’t have the core leadership coaching skills of being able to diagnose patterns, to articulate those back to the leader so they can be received in a safe and supportive way, to hold space for difficult or uncomfortable realisations and to do all this in a way that balances challenge and support. The biggest mistake an internal coach will often make is that they begin, over time, to prioritise the comfort of the ‘relationship’ with the client (which to them, means job security) over truly serving the leader at the highest level. Experienced coaches who have worked with many clients over the years are skilled at walking the fine line between challenging and developing the client and maintaining the professional relationship, with the knowledge that the relationship will come to a natural end and other clients will enter.

• Often, the contemporary leadership theories, frameworks, models and tools which contribute to a leader’s education are either: 1) not present in the organisation or 2) not applied with the leader at the critical points in their leadership learning and development. A skilled coach draws upon an extensive library of tools, but never with a pre-meditated objective or curriculum-based approach – we offer the exact tools to match the client’s current challenge, as it arises. We know that forcing a client to learn leadership content that doesn’t solve a current problem or match the exact challenge the leader is facing is a complete waste of time.

The consequences over time of struggling along with leadership development without a skilled coach to partner with are that key leaders never really break through to the next level of leadership competence – all because they don’t receive the individualised challenge and support needed.

Which leader, with a burning challenge right now, wants to engage with the standard, run-of-the-mill internal leadership programs with rigid curriculum imposed by someone who did an organisation-wide, generalised training needs analysis three years ago? Nobody. #wasteoftime

We want to engage with leadership learning that is pitched precisely for where we’re at right now, otherwise in the midst of all other work priorities, we’re unlikely to engage with leadership development at all.

The beautiful thing about leadership coaching is that on the foundation of learning to know and lead ourselves well, you’ll be able to bring to the table any leadership challenge you’re facing right now and tackle it with greater insight and behavioural flexibility.

We’ve coached hundreds of leaders over the years, and we can assure you that no journey is the same. We tailor every coaching program to you and your specific needs and meet you where your challenges are in every session. 

If you’d like to explore leadership coaching with Angela from Equenti Leadership & Learning, just reach out for a conversation.

You are also invited to check out our free leadership development resources.

The post LEADERSHIP COACHING: WHY ENGAGE AN EXTERNAL COACH? appeared first on EQUENTI Leadership and Learning.

So, how do you know if leadership coaching is for you? If you’re experiencing any of the following, then leadership coaching can help:

• You’re a leader, but not 100% confident that you’re doing this leadership stuff well
• You’re a technical expert with deep knowledge and operational experience and have found yourself leading other real, live humans
• You have a new leadership role, and you’re feeling the pressure to build relationships and deliver
• You have a consultative, supportive leadership style but need to get comfortable with being more directive and engaging, because sometimes your team just aren’t doing the right work
• You have a directive, lively leadership style but sometimes find that your people seem too scared of you to truly engage or challenge you with honesty

• You are a seasoned leader but have trouble really connecting with your team, or results are inconsistent
• You’ve got a hard-to-manage person (or more than one?) in your team and it’s creating conflict and affecting your team’s mojo
• You’re fire-fighting daily on low-level operational and administrative details, so you don’t get time to do important, strategic and value-adding work
• You don’t feel like you can properly delegate work to your team, so you’re overwhelmed with detail
• You’re stepping down to do the work of your team (because they need you, and you’re capable of things they aren’t), which doesn’t leave enough time for true leadership work
• Your team is working hard, but they are really just ‘treading water’ without much forward progress
• Work of the team is ‘happening’, but not in a planned, consistent way where progress is consistent, tangible and measurable
• Sometimes leadership feels great, and sometimes you feel wobbly as a leader – you want greater consistency

Coaching is 100% confidential, and informed by contemporary, corporately-valued models, theories and frameworks which you can immediately convert into practical action to create tangible results. You’ll experience compassion, challenge and truly valuable, implementable learning.

And by the way, the most wonderful signpost for deep learning is some mental wrestling and discomfort – so if you’re looking for a fluffy, cruisey, learn-without-challenge coaching experience… well, you’ve come to the wrong place. 

Our approach encompasses a mix of pure coaching, as well as mentoring. What’s the difference, you ask?

Coaching is ‘client-led’, relies on the assumption that all the answers reside within you, and that asking the right questions will extract those insights. 

Mentoring is ‘expert-led’ where the mentor offers new ways of thinking, tools and frameworks from the zone of their expertise to boost your leadership thinking and toolkit. 

When you’re working with Equenti Leadership and Learning, expect both coaching and mentoring. It’s the way we roll, and we know our leadership stuff.

If you’d like to explore leadership coaching with Angela from Equenti Leadership & Learning, reach out for a conversation.

We also invite you to download our free leadership development resources.

The post LEADERSHIP COACHING – IS IT FOR ME? appeared first on EQUENTI Leadership and Learning.