By Neil Phillips.
Not every leader feels that they need or want a coach. If you are feeling good about their abilities, team, and business direction, then you may not want to mess with success. Who can argue with that?
Even in the circumstances where things seem to be going right, there are some good reasons to have a coach. Here are three of them:
- Powerful leaders distrust advice.
- Powerful leaders seldom get useful feedback.
- Powerful leaders have power stress.
There are other reasons, but these three have something in common—the leader can’t get past them without coaching. They are negative leadership attributes that won’t go away without the external support of a coach.
Powerful leaders distrust advice. One characteristic of powerful leaders is self-confidence. Unfortunately, the higher the self-confidence, the less likely they are to take advice. Marshall Goldsmith identifies self-confidence as one of the biggest barriers to improvement. It’s a “What I did made me successful and my approach will make me even more successful.” That is, until it doesn’t, and then self-confidence becomes a weakness. A coach, working with a top leader, can support her in looking at alternatives, seeking advice, and evaluating ideas.
Powerful leaders seldom get useful feedback. If a leader is not willing to seek or follow advice, what do you think the likelihood is that they will listen to feedback? Subordinates eventually decide that feedback is not worth the effort and quit trying. In addition, feedback situations are fear producing ones. Coaching a way to support the leader is finding productive sources of feedback and encouraging them.
Powerful leaders have power stress. Leaders are under a steady flow of stress over their exercise of power and its responsibility. In addition to the mental anxiety, stress creates real physical symptoms of ill-health. Richard Boyatzis and his colleagues make a very strong case for training leaders in compassionate coaching. (They use the phrase “compassionate coaching” as a way to describe coaching for personal development rather than performance.) Compassionate coaching focuses the leaders on the people under them and relieves the stress associated with the exercise of power. In a real sense, up-and-coming leaders experience compassionate coaching along with their mentoring.
These three possibilities are all ones that require coaching AND the powerful leader doesn’t often recognize that need.
What other possibilities come to mind of unseen and unfelt need for coaching for powerful leaders?
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