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inf luence and coach through personal power. The dynamic may change, but
the end goal remains the same. People are coached to help maximize their
potential. If the coaching is successful, they eventually become self-directed
rather than leader-directed.
If this sounds like a natural activity for managers, it should. So why aren’t
they doing it? We train trainers to go back into their organizations and work
with managers from executive to supervisory levels. We start at the top if pos-
sible, but we have a philosophical conviction that the change we advocate can
begin from any where. For a manager to fulfill his or her leadership capacity,
being a coach means passing that capability along. If the manager gets it, who
are they giving it to in turn? Are those who are being coached coaching oth-
ers as well? How are those people doing? Are they pushing it deeper still?
That’s how the impact of leadership gets measured, and that’s how legacies
are created. The process can begin with any single manager at any level.
Organizations rise and fall based on how effectively they use their human
resources. The individual manager is in the most powerful position to make
the most of that potential.

Nancy J. Adler

The Art of Leadership: Coaching

in the Twenty-First Century

Dr. Nancy J. Adler is a foremost authority on cross-cultural

management and women’s global leadership. She is a

Professor of International Management at McGill Uni-

versity in Montreal, Canada. She has authored over

100 articles and published the books, International Di-

mensions of Organizational Behavior, Women in Man-

agement Worldwide, Competitive Frontiers: Women

Managers in a Global Economy,and From Boston to

Beijing: Managing with a Worldview.Also a visual artist

working primarily with watercolor and Japanese and Chinese ink techniques,

she currently teaches seminars on “The Art of Leadership.” She can be

e-mailed at [email protected].