COACHINGLEADERS/BEHAVIORALCOACHING 77
most lasting.” It’s hard to imagine leaders getting up day after day, putting in
the long hours and hard work it takes to get extraordinary things done, with-
out having their hearts in it. The best-kept secret of successful leaders is
love: staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with
what their organizations produce, and with those who honor the organization
by using its work. Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an af-
fair of the heart.
Another essential characteristic of would-be leaders is their willingness to
exper iment with new behaviors. Increasingly, I’ve been more effective when
we’ve determined not what the individual wants “to change” but rather what
they want “to improve.” Even at the university, we recently revised our lan-
guage from “strategic planning” to “strategic improvement” and found a
world of difference in people’s energies and excitement for the challenges
and opportunities. Leaders are great learners, and, in fact, we found this to
be empirically true in a recent study. We found all five of the leadership
practices of exemplary leaders to be positively correlated with the individ-
ual’s active learning inclinations and strategies. What’s the motive for
change? Consider, do you think you could be even more effective than you
are today? If so, what do you think it would take? Are you willing to try some
new behaviors (perhaps even some neglected or unappreciated behaviors) in
order to become even more effective?
Leadership, at any level, is fundamentally about the relationship between
people. Without a relationship, there is no trust, and without trust, leader-
ship doesn’t seed itself and grow. Mutual respect is essential in the leader-
ship development process, and just like the leader, leader-coaches must care
about their developing leader more than they care about themselves. Listen-
ing, patience, encouragement, imagination, energy, and spirit are additional
personal characteristics that help both parties, both inside and outside of
the developmental process.