We don’t have to wait for the future to present radically different challenges to the demands on leadership; the future has unveiled itself already; the future is NOW!
In the drastic changes that the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world has seen the leaders have to adapt to manage their business results amidst the social and business environments evolving at breakneck speeds. While these times have thrown up unprecedented challenges, they have also provided opportunities to leaders to evolve, innovate and drive change for individual, team and organizational growth.
The leaders of today can make the most of ‘coaching’ with experienced coaches and their skills to optimise the support available in these times for setting strategies, managing priorities, keeping an engaged workforce and driving performance.
Leading Self through self awareness, increasing interpersonal effectiveness, leading teams (‘leading virtually’ being a critical aspect of it), ‘letting go’ to delegate more effectively and helping the teams spread their wings in demanding times are some fundamental yet foundational pillars of leadership where Coaching can help leaders surpass performance expectations and pressures of today.
Self-awareness, identified as crucial yet frequently a derailer, ranks high for all leaders and is at the top of the list for C-suite leaders. Other areas where coaching can help immensely are listening, collaboration, building relationships, trust and influencing stakeholders with empathy and empowerment being major culture builders.
The ‘speed’ demanded by business along with ‘empathy’ and ‘transparency’ that the leaders must exhibit in their decisions and actions bring a lot on the shoulders of the leaders and getting a ‘safe environment’ to help them navigate these challenges is what coaching can provide very effectively.
These are times where Leaders and Coaches both have experienced VUCA and can benefit from questioning past practices, patterns, models to deal with business and people situations and adopt transformational thinking, challenging their own limitations and boundaries for expanding their horizons.