You could argue that the most important attribute of a leader is their ability to inspire others.  Successful leaders are able to mobilise and motivate people inside and outside their organisation, to deliver the organisation’s key strategies and objectives.

The more you as a leader can develop your ability to inspire and influence, the more successful you are likely to be, the more successful your people are likely to be and the more successful your organisation is likely to be. 

When we talk about inspiration and influence we are referring to it in the most positive sense.  Inspiring in a way that takes into account the needs and objectives of all stakeholders, and influencing in an ethical way.  Influencing in an “I win, you lose” way is neither advisable nor sustainable.  This is about inspiring a direct report to step up in a way that benefits both the organisation and the direct reports fulfilment and career prospects, it is about inspiring a prospect to give you their custom delivering significant revenue to you, and providing them with increased value over their current supplier relationship.

So what are the two core foundation stones from which leaders inspire? 

They are:
• your thinking/attitude;
• your relationship with the other person or party.

This may seem obvious, yet in our experience when the ability to inspire is compromised, it is often these areas that are overlooked and these areas that make the biggest difference.

a)  Thinking and attitude:  Think back to when someone had a positive influence on you, when they motivated you to perform at a higher level, inspired you to develop or change.  My guess is they cared for you, they thought well of you and they wanted the best for you.

b)  Relationships:  Inspiration is much more likely to occur when you have taken some time to connect with the other person or party.  The more rapport you have, the more likely it is that your efforts to inspire and influence will gain some traction.

Take some time to reflect on those who you have successfully inspired and those you wish to inspire more.  In the latter case check your thinking and attitude towards the person, take time to get to know them over a coffee or a wine and then don’t be surprised when your efforts to influence and inspire them deliver greater results.

Improving leadership performance often focuses on improving capabilities and behaviours.  This may range from impacting areas of interpersonal capability right through to technical areas such as the leader’s ability to read a balance sheet.

Typically when leaders are ready to take a significant step shift with their leadership, impacting behaviour will not be sustained if it occurs in isolation.  In order to get a significant step shift, and to sustain that shift, it is likely that the thinking and emotions that underpin behaviour need to be impacted.  As this occurs the improvements can be dramatic.

We all have beliefs and related emotions and where our behaviour is delivering the results we want, and not creating undue stress, we are quite happy to retain these.  Where our behaviour is compromised it is likely that we have limiting beliefs or conflicting emotions. Developing new behaviours and skills will often be required and often the breakthroughs will come from uncovering and shifting or learning ways to manage the related limiting beliefs and emotions.

Take a simple example where a leader is ready to develop new interpersonal skills around understanding what drives their people and how to tap into those individual motivators. If the leader believes all people should motivate themselves or if they feel overly nervous about asking searching questions of their people , then impacting that thinking and having them feel more comfortable are key to ensuring any new skills they develop will be utilised and therefore make a difference.

Performance = Capability – Interference 

The interference is what primarily occurs internally at a mental and emotional level and this interference can often be reduced quite quickly allowing you to perform at the level of your capability. Becoming aware of your interference and your ability to manage yourself is key to reducing interference.

Whatever you are doing to take your leadership to a new level, check your development is occurring at a mental and emotional level, and not just at a behavioural or skills level.

You aspired to be top dog in the organisation, you have achieved that success and yet somehow you do not feel…. well, successful.  Irrespective of whether you have a great quarter or a mediocre one, there’s something missing…. your mojo is not there like it was and you want it back.

When you have some space, which is not very often, and you reflect on yourself and your role, you know there is a significant gap between who you are, and who you are being as CEO.  You are not always being true to yourself, to your values, your principles and your beliefs.  Bridging that gap is critical on two levels:

1. To ensure your leadership is credible and effective enough to deliver significant results.
2. To provide you with the fulfilment, health and wellbeing required to sustain your leadership.

I know what it’s like to be running a successful business and yet to wake up feeling totally unfulfilled.  To know the stress and anxiety was less to do with business situations and more to do with the lack of honesty between who I was and how I was operating.  To know that the holiday I am hanging out for is going to provide a short term reprieve rather than a long term fix.

There is no one leadership model for all leaders, irrespective of the business and the phase that business is in.  Leadership must be tailored and central to that tailoring is you, the CEO.  True and sustainable leadership. leadership that inspires you and those around you, can only occur from the inside out.

More often leadership development is thought of as being outside in.  We need to build new capability in order to achieve certain objectives.  The more powerful approach is to uncover and realise more fully the capability that is already there.  Being an authentic leader requires you to be more of who you are, and to empower those around you to do the same.

Leaders who continually strive for personal mastery are essential to business growth and to our wider business community.  Each significant step in this journey begins with renewed or updated self awareness so that strengths can be leveraged and weaknesses or preferences can be covered or balanced.  Knowing yourself provides the platform to know your team and when this is combined with your business strategy you have created the best environment for delivering both strong business results and recapturing your mojo.

In my previous roles I was exposed to successful business leaders (both as clients and colleagues) and I had been fascinated by the factors that separate successful business leaders and teams from those that are less than successful.  I was interested in the matters which either enabled or prevented an individual or team success. In my study I became aware of business coaching or mentoring as a highly effective tool for identifying those enablers and disablers and impacting on them in a way to deliver superior performance.

What is important to you about being a leadership coach?

I am passionate about personal growth and development within a business context. Business leadership is a very challenging role. Coaching allows our clients to deliver outstanding business results while also developing themselves individually and as business leaders.  The combination of learning and successful implementation leading to increased profit, growth and personal satisfaction is a powerful blend resulting in a focus on continual personal and business improvement

What common matters arise in a coaching session?

There are many and varied issues facing a business leader or a leadership team.  At Blue Chip Coaching we focus on the area of emotional intelligence (or EQ) which broadly speaking covers four main areas namely self awareness, self management, awareness of others and influencing others.  In other words we focus on the role of people in business in dealing with those matters– how to get the best out of yourself, your leadership team and those leaders, managers and staff around you. All business is ultimately undertaken by people.  Business success is therefore highly influenced by the effectiveness of people.

What is Appreciative Inquiry?

Appreciative Inquiry as it relates to executive coaching is a particular way of asking questions and envisioning the future that builds on the basic strengths in an executive or leader. In so doing, it enhances a leader’s capacity for growth, development and success.  Appreciative Inquiry utilizes a 4-stage process focusing on:
1. DISCOVER: The identification of thinking, emotions, and behaviours that lead to outstanding results currently.
2. DREAM: Creating a vision using the leadership strengths identified that would work well in the future.
3. DESIGN: Planning and prioritizing actions that would deliver exceptional outcomes for the executive and the organisation.
4. DELIVERY The implementation (execution) of the actions proposed.

The basic idea is to develop executives and leaders around what works, rather than trying to fix what doesn’t. It is the opposite of problem solving. Instead of focusing on fixing what’s wrong. AIl leadership development focuses on how to create more of what’s already working. The approach acknowledges the unique contribution and skills of individuals, encourages the leader to fully exploit their distinctive abilities.

 
Appreciative Inquiry is one of several coaching tools and approaches that Blue Chip Coaching uses.

Self analysis

 ”I took a break from the NPC and did some research which was the best thing to happen to me. I started looking at other ways of running the group and started to challenge my own thinking and realised there was a whole lot out there that I was missing.”

Motivation

“My personal motivation, in the back of my mind, I keep asking myself, am I making a difference here? Am I adding any value? If not then you need to consider what you do as it pertains to the people you work with.”

Listening skills

“There is no doubt I was more of a teller - I am a better listener now. I was a bit inflexible - if players couldn’t do something I used to make them go harder. That was how it was done. I have changed a great deal. I thought it was all about knowledge and what the coach wanted and then driving that through but that method is a short-term fix.”
Working individually with team members

 ”I treated the team and people generically, for example they would all get flogged at training for the benefit of a few. Now the work is far more customised, much more individual.”
The coach’s role in managing stress

“Look, you go in at the break, points down and you are struggling or it is not going too well.  There is no point in getting them agitated. You are frustrated and the team is probably frustrated and you go in and rant and rave and tell them what they already know.  All you’re doing is making yourself feel better and that is only temporary. You have got to help them find solutions. If you don’t have one you have to talk to them because they may have one, collectively you’ve got to find one.”

Positive thinking

“Through those (bad) times we had to consider what we had all contributed to that demise.”

Corporate financial health and fiscal responsibilities

a. Achieving consistent financial returns in a highly competitive global market
b. Forming strategic alliances to leverage resources
c. Ensuring your organisation is a compelling place to work to attract and retain high quality people

2. Organisational change and chaos

a. Handling the speed of change.
b. Potential mergers, acquisitions, and sizing issues
c. Accelerated change causing turbulence
d. Succession planning and implementation

3. Managing time effectively

a. Resourcing time to manage details
b. Leadership challenges (team, collaborative approaches, board responsibility)
c. Clarity of vision and focus and buy in from staff and colleagues 
d. Balancing daily and long term agendas

4. Performance issues (self and team)

a. Managing stress and burnout issues
b. Under challenged
c. Blind spots
d. Performance in the job
e. Building relationships
f. Missing skills and/or competencies (content skills: strategic thinking and implementation, effective management and process skills: communication, facilitation, relationship skills, presence)

5. Balance of personal and work life

a. Lonely at top, no one to talk to, no effective feedback
b. Career/leadership development (mature leaders, emerging leaders, star “fast trackers”)
c. Shift from technical to management to leadership to fostering leadership
d. Personal mid-career transition
e. Balance of life (never enough hours)
f. Balance of multiple intelligences (head, heart and feet)
g. Self-care

Historically some business people were assigned executive mentors who had “walked the path” to help guide and coach them.

The upside was that these executive mentors had been there and done that, the downside was that they often had no mentoring skills and the relationship they would form with the mentee was left to chance.

Over the past 5 years executive mentoring has become more sought after and there has been a shift from internal mentoring to more external results focused mentoring from professional mentors.

Mentees need to be given the opportunity to choose their executive mentors as the relationship and fit is crucial, and executive mentors need to have the mentoring skills to uncover and impact those enablers that will make the biggest difference for the mentee.

Blue Chip Coaching work with leaders and aspiring leaders as they take understand more about their leadership and take it to a new level.

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Read more about executive mentoring.

When Blue Chip Coaching’s business consultants work in the area of leadership team development, they start with a gap analysis exercise. They then act as facilitators to assist the team to look honestly at where they are, where they want to be and how they will committ to getting there. The awareness that comes from this honest gap analysis assessment is critical in providing a foundation for team development and effectiveness. 

Key stakeholders are involved in the process and they are encouraged to provide open and honest feedback and assessment. Hearing respective views, even when they at variance, is critical to building team unity and committment.  The team is then encouraged to use the information to plot their future path, agree how they can best work together, build more effective relationships and in some cases develop new leadership skills.  Teams often have some level of dysfunction because team members lack relationships or trust, or because different agendas are in play. Further developing the relationships, trust and team unity can make a significant difference to the way people interact, the way they perform and the results they achieve. This generally starts with open and honest dialogue and can often benefit from an outside facilitator.  

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Find out more about Blue Chip Coaching’s business consultants and the facilitation process.

Blue Chip Coaching provides business coaches who specialise in the domain of executive and leadership coaching. We work with managers and senior managers who are ready to get the best from themselves and their people. This doesnt involve being a certain type of leader - it involves identifying and bringing out the best in your leadership. This real, honest and authentic leadership is the only leadership you can sustain to deliver success in business while at the same time feeling good at a personal level. We place a lot of emphasis on our strengths based approach that involves leveraging your personal, business and leadership strengths and covering any weaknesses. Business coaching from this platform delivers real and significant results for clients.

Blue Chip Coaching work with organisations and individuals to achieve critical goals through realising the potential of capable leaders and senior teams.

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Contact us for more information on Blue Chip Coaching’s business coaches.