Why the best leaders are lifelong learners
How leadership coaching upskills leaders and managers effectively for emerging needs
There’s demand industry-wide for leadership and soft skills. Trouble is, it’s really hard to truly learn nuanced, soft skills of leadership or conflict resolution, from watching passive content. Ultimately, our most human of skills are best learned…human to human.
Educational institutions haven’t adequately prepared managers to manage in volatile times — they are great at instilling knowledge, which is most relevant in stable environments. In times of advancement and uncertainty, that knowledge is insufficient.
For the world’s top organizations, this has left them with the responsibility of developing the soft skills and leadership traits required to deal with these times of crisis and rapid change.
While virtual leadership development was a growing trend prior to Covid-19, the pandemic exacerbated the need in 2020. Now, we’ve swiftly entered 2021.
It has become apparent from talks with our clients that we are at a crossroads: it’s time to support employees with tools to upskill or else miss out on key business outcomes (or worse, risk losing employees to another company). The future will require a steady cadence of coaching support at all levels so that companies are not caught off guard by underprepared employees.
The mid-level managers in larger organizations are critical to achieve a semblance of agility and speed, which is normally not advisable (or possible) for large entities like Fortune 100 companies. Small things can move quickly safely because they benefit from shocks and stressors.
In other words, human to human leadership coaching facilitated by companies like Sounding Board establishes a kind of infrastructure which allows big companies to adjust to change and remain productive in uncertain seasons or broader climates.
Response
One immediate response presents itself: Dedicate your organization to leadership coaching and use the discipline to foster learning, human to human. That means one to one.
A two-way conversation requires the most attention from participants. Like a game of tennis, where both participants help uncover the other’s weaknesses, giving rise to adjustments of strategy, tactics, and techniques, leadership coaching serves as a reflective, constructive, and imaginative exercise.
- Reflective in the sense that sessions are periodic. What didn’t work can be discussed.
- Constructive in the sense that leadership (or other skills) might be unpacked and plans developed to acquire them.
- Imaginative in the sense that participants can stretch themselves to consider further ways to tinker with how they lead, strategize, manage, delegate, and help their teams be most effective.
At its essence, leadership coaching is a human to human, one to one conversation which is as much reflexive and corrective as it is creative and augmentative of the potential of each individual. Humans learn by doing, especially those things which are on the edges of our abilities. Short of that, a conversation is arguably the most direct path to realize the learning of cognitive skills one is undergoing, because such a conversation focuses one’s attention keenly on those particular areas where one should like to become an expert.
Practice
Those who have embraced the necessity of lifelong learning, whether individuals or organizations, have likely internalized the preceding philosophical aspects of this piece. And maybe those readers are now looking for additional guidance of practical nature.
If one is already convinced that one wants to include Leadership Coaching in their HR or L&D or cultural foundations, how can it be done?
One of the principles at Degreed, which I co-founded in 2012, was: be a lifelong learner. It’s now obvious that the ability to learn effectively carries a premium in volatile environments, like the one we are in. And no one can say how long this period will last.
Regardless of your company culture, time and money are two constraints to any form of learning, whether training, self-taught, project-based, or coaching. Leadership coaching is effective because it is time-bound, effective, and potent. Leaders can invest in weekly or as infrequent as quarterly sessions.
Instead of merely suggesting leadership coaching, C-suite and executives could also take on the mantle of learning themselves by investing in leadership coaching so as to be able to more genuinely share the benefits of doing so with their leaders and managers. This is also a chance to better understand one’s shortcomings, blind spots, and weaknesses. And, of course, to solidify where one is expert.
For some confident and capable leaders, this might mean engaging oneself as the leadership coach as a service to others in the industry.
Outcome
The result of developing this practice is an organization that not only has more people — at various levels — with leadership and soft skills, but also has an effectively designed approach to upskilling leaders and managers effectively for emerging needs.
Leadership coaching is the perfect partner to support learning initiatives and drive behavior change. Coaching is an accelerator to traditional education.
