COACHING FORLEADERSHIPDEVELOPMENT 129
As a coach, knowing what needs to be done is only half the job. You also
need to get people there. If coaching or leadership fails, it may be that you’ve
done a lot of up-front work on directing people toward a goal and even laying
out the path, but you didn’t finish the cycle. The important thing isn’t what
happens when you’re there, but what happens when you’re not there. To move
people from dependence to independence, you need to see them through a
Situational Leadership journey that raises their levels of commitment and
competence to the point where they no longer need your direct guidance.
People start out as Enthusiastic Beginners, high on commitment but low
on competence. They need information, expertise, and direction from their
coach or leader to get them started. The work doesn’t stop there, though.
What happens next is that people often find the goal more difficult than ex-
pected, and become what we call Disillusioned Learners. This means that
they have some competence but are low on commitment. They are depend-
ent on you to dialogue with them in order to work through their concerns. In
other words, they still need direction but they also need tender loving care.
The third level of development is Capable but Cautious. By this point,
people are able to follow the path and see the benefits, but they don’t have
full confidence in themselves. They need you to be a supportive cheerleader
for a while longer. The final level is Self-Directed Achiever, meaning they
own what they are doing and only need you to delegate and cheer them on.
It takes will and determination for a leader or coach to fulfill the vision
and direction to the point where people become Self-Directed Achievers.
It also takes humility. The traditional hierarchy is fine for setting vision and
direction, but it’s lousy for implementation. To move people to independ-
ence, you need to turn the pyramid upside down. Suddenly, the ones who
developed the vision and direction are now at the bottom of the hierarchy
as cheerleaders, supporters, and encouragers. This is where servant leader-
ship kicks in.
A major part of my work right now is involved in a Lead Like Jesus move-
ment around the country. Our mission is to challenge and equip people to
lead like Jesus. We’re not trying to evangelize. What we want is for people to
behave differently. We want leaders to serve rather than rule; to give rather
than take. The goal is to become—as Jesus mandated—a servant leader.
Servant leaders understand that leadership is not about them; it’s about
what they can do to help people live and develop according to a vision. But
that only exists through humility. People with humility don’t think less of
themselves; they just think about themselves less. They don’t deny their own
power; they just recognize that it passes through them, not from them. To de-
velop humility you have to recognize a higher power or something that is your