COACHING FORLEADERSHIPDEVELOPMENT 147
In coaching leaders, I aim for depth in exploring their life issues as well as
their approach to business. I draw on my own business knowledge and experi-
ence to help business leaders translate their feedback into practical action. I
also use several tools that aim at many of the common dilemmas of my busi-
ness clients.
One approach I use is to have clients develop a leadership agenda. It is
challenging and enlightening for leaders to articulate their key goals and
plans. Often, I have them map these to a balanced scorecard format where
they look at their system/process, financial, people, and innovation goals.
The purpose is to help them test the clarity of their communication about
their own vision and direction to others.
Another coaching exercise aimed specifically at the area of strategic
thinking is to have clients write a future business scenario. A typical ques-
tion is “If you were head of this business, what two actions would you take
that would dramatically improve results over the next two years?” I often ex-
change these scenarios between people I am coaching or have them re-
viewed by senior business leaders. This leads to new insights on risk taking or
new development plans for how to improve and expand that person’s external
perspective on the business.
I use 360-degree feedback in my practice. I find, however, that providing
verbatim comments is sometimes the most useful part of the data provided.
Typical questions we ask are “If you were to give this person one piece of ad-
vice what would it be?” or “ What is one thing you most admire about this per-
son?” I have increasingly found that connecting this feedback to validated
personality inventories, such as the NEO-PIR or the Hogan Personality As-
sessment, makes it much more powerful. Many of the leaders I coach are what
I call successful introverts—people whose personality scores reveal that they
would rather connect to small groups or spend time alone than be occupied
with socializing or reaching out to others. Such leaders have trained them-
selves to accept the social part of their roles; however, they need to be mind-
ful of a tendency to withdraw from others. Often, they receive feedback that
they don’t recognize others enough or do not provide enough feedback them-
selves. For such leaders, connecting personality feedback to the behaviors
rated in a 360-degree instrument is essential.
Even more important is the follow-up to feedback provided to leaders. My
fellow coach, Dick Gauthier, speaks of the fact that 360-degree feedback is
“just data; you need to talk to people to turn it into real information.” I spend
a great deal of time working with leaders on how they will react to feedback
they have received, how they will ask others for further clarification without
getting defensive, and how they will signal their sincerity to follow through
on the changes they need to make.