Can a Leadership Coach
Turn an Ordinary Manager
into an Effective Leader?

Changing people’s abilities is simply a matter of changing their behaviours. And that is something we do all the time.

There is a certain amount of natural ability involved in some physical behaviours. For instance if you weigh 300 pounds you’re unlikely to be able to run a hundred metres in 10 seconds.

But the same rules do not apply to leadership in the commercial arena. Here leadership is about vision, strategy, decisiveness, confidence, communication, honesty, integrity, values, energy, persistence and courage.

McCall and Lombardo (1983) identified that outstanding leaders were especially notable for 4 factors:

* emotional stability and composure: defined as the ability, when under stress, to remain calm and confident and behave in a predictable way.
* The ability to admit to their mistakes rather than trying to cover up.
* Good interpersonal communication skills and the ability to persuade others without recourse to negative or coercive tactics.
* The ability to understand a wide range of subjects and not being narrowly focussed on just one or two specialist areas.

There is nothing in these lists that cannot be learned. No behaviour that cannot be adopted.

The challenge for most managers

To change any behaviour requires persistent effort. Change does not happen over night. The difficulty is to maintain focus on the areas you are trying to change as you go about your daily business. The slings and arrows of everyday business life can easily knock your best intentions and cause you to revert to type.

This is where a good leadership coach can help you. He/she can discuss with you all the different situations you face and help you develop coping strategies. In this way you can be prepared for the situations you are likely to have to face.

So, can a leadership coach turn any manager into an effective leader? Take a look at the success stories and form your own judgement.

And remember that one of the greatest leader/orators of all time, Winston Churchill, suffered from a stammer from childhood into adult life. But he managed to change his behaviour so that he spoke fluently and passionately.

The great skill of a leadership coach is behaviour change

One of the reasons why I studied Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to the highest level was because I recognised the importance of being able to help people change their behaviours if they were to be able to change their results.

It is well said that, “if you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got.”

Neuro linguistic programming is one of the most effective tools for enabling people to make changes in their behaviour.

It is my belief that if you have a vision that is bright enough it’s power will draw you towards it like a moth to a light.

As Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric Co. put it: “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

So if you have a vision of yourself as a highly effective leader you could well benefit from our Transformational Leadership Coaching Programme.

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