My 21st Century Leadership program can be delivered in three segments:
Leadership of Self
Leadership of Teams, and
Leadership of Organizations.
I’ll bet you can guess which segment I am regularly asked to skip over. I think it’s the most important one.
The program is designed to mirror a typical career trajectory for employees. Although I regularly meet with clients who do not want to be employees, coaching can integrate high performance and FUN in the workplace.
One of the most difficult shifts for companies is when they promote employees who are individual contributors into roles that manage people. The employee moves from simply leading herself to becoming a leader of others. It’s a pivotal point in anyone’s career and an important decision for the organization.
Does this employee have what they need to manage other people? What skills are those exactly? Every study will show that trust is the number one reason leaders have followers. So how does someone build trust? The answer plays out within Leadership of Self.
It’s easy to think that jumping to Leadership of Teams could work, but you’d be mistaken.
Leadership of Self addresses the foundational components of the person. Knowing thyself comes first and skipping thyself can lead to significant and predictable problems – in any realm.
The intent in Leadership of Self is to create new coaches and coaching teams that will continually serve the organization, so eventually they won’t need me. Organizations will be able to walk the talk every day.
I can hear you… “Lori, this isn’t the best way to keep a Coaching business profitable.” But it actually is. By creating internal coaching teams, companies not only learn how to use tools that work, they will also be pulled (or challenged) by others to stay in their integrity everyday, and they will be able to push or pull others to do the same. This creates a new standard for cultural operating procedures based upon strengths, values, intuition, mindfulness and best-case scenarios.
Not weaknesses.
I firmly believe that their success is my success. And let’s face it; there is no shortage of companies that need empowered, trustworthy leaders! On a similar note, when companies hire Directors of Diversity, I hope eventually the role won’t be needed; and that diversity will become so ingrained within the culture that its leadership won’t operate any other way.
A learning, growing company is an evolving organism designed to generate goods or services in the market. A learning, growing individual is the key to this development – just as it is the key to our own personal development.
Yep, it’s Leadership of Self. The foundation for just about everything you do. It’s the way you choose to show up in this world, and it’s not a “soft” skill. It’s THE skill.
I’ll deliver it separately, but I won’t skip it because truly, Leadership of Self is the most important work any individual can do – for themselves AND for their company.
Originally published at lorigiuttari.com