COACHING FORLEADERSHIPDEVELOPMENT 151
manager, are “Does it help me do my job? Do I understand it? Does it
matter if I do it right? Who cares?”
- Branding.Some clients find branding or marketing a product distasteful
or even unprofessional. “The product should stand on its own merits!” I
don’t agree, and I shamelessly advocate putting bells and whistles around
a leadership development product. Certainly, overhyping a product can
backfire, but most of my clients err on the side of underhyping, or they
want to surround the product with superficial words rather than a clear
branding strategy.
- Engaging the CEO.People pay attention to and support what the CEO
pays attention to and supports. I have found that many of my clients are
reluctant to engage the CEO in the leadership development process.
One reason for this reluctance is the barriers that organizations put
around CEOs to protect them from access by people lower in the orga-
nization. Another is the HR person’s fear of the CEO or his or her in-
ability to communicate in language the CEO understands. I encourage
my clients to blow through these barriers. Most CEOs are eager to get
involved in leadership development activities, and when they are en-
gaged, success is highly likely.
- Using a common language for leadership.As my colleague Marshall
Goldsmith has said on many occasions, “Nobody fails to be a good leader
because they fail to understand some complex theory of leadership.”
Everybody gets it. It’s the doing that’s hard. In addition, although most
people understand the concepts, they use different language to describe
it, making it difficult to focus the organization on specific leadership
themes. I encourage my clients to develop a common language around
leadership (a leadership model or profile) and reinforce it in multiple HR
processes and tools.
- Understanding the political environment.A coach can be helpful to the
client in helping him or her identify the people and actions that could
derail the project and develop strategies to prevent this.
- Creating the image.This is the art of leadership development. How do
you create an environment where executives are banging on your door
to take advantage of your leadership development services? There is
no prescription here. It means designing the whole experience includ-
ing rewards, punishments, exclusivity, and so on. One of the best
pieces of advice I ever received in my corporate leadership develop-
ment life was from a line executive who told me that if the folklore is
positive, the program will have a life of its own, but if the folklore is
negative, it’s over!
