I love coaching and being a confidential sounding board to people that sometimes don’t know whom to trust or want a ‘neutral’ conversation.
Finding the right coach can be exceptionally empowering. To have a coach and learn how you can be a coach manager has to be top of your list.
Learning to be a coaching-manager1 is a natural extension of servant leadership2. Open listening, courageous honesty, and not fixing. I see so many people who think they are listening but aren’t. They miss the signs and are trying to fix a problem. What they are doing is persuading or commanding to their own values and thinking.
There is no one size leadership. Who you are is how you lead and to grow into your best version you must be authentic and understand your own values and work preferences (adapted from Jesse Sostrin, 2017).
Your top values are not negotiable; they are the ones that you feel strongly about (not the ones that you think should be valuing). From here you’ll identify the gaps between your values and actions. These gaps are likely leading to your frustration in your career, about yourself, or your actions with others. It’s possible that there is a mismatch with your work environment.
Your work preferences and behaviour can be identified through psychometric tests. For example, MBTI3 can identify how you make decisions and how you take in information. It can spark conversations, motivate individuals, facilitate communication and build greater efficiency.
Leadership is about status or a task you must do. It’s not about a qualification or an award. It’s a journey of fulfilment that you know you are developing as a leader, you are continually learning about yourself and people, and your desire to learn and how to get the best out of your teams.
1 https://leadershipfreak.blog/2015/07/01/13-challenges-all-coaching-managers-face/
3 https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/home.htm?bhcp=1
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