What Expert Coaches Do To Develop Leaders
At the World Congress of Positive Psychology (June 2013), David Peterson, who is currently Goggle’s Director of Leadership and Coaching, and has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Time and USA Today, discussed how to accelerate leadership development.
Dr. Peterson described the principles of great coaching require the coach to:
- Be the coach you want to work with by assuming the leader has the best intentions
- Aim to be a great coach by…
- Ensuring your service is faster, better, cheaper
- Continuing to learn
- Creating a big tool kit
- Staying focused on the client: “What would YOU like to get out of this? What will make this worthwhile for you?
Coaches need to stay focused on what happens after the coaching conversation. Great coaches keep asking…
What are you going to do differently? Where? When? How? What will get in the way?
They teach leaders to self coach by:
- Focusing on critical priorities
- Implement something every day
- Reflect on what’s working and what you need to do differently
- Seek feedback and make changes
Encouraging leaders to reflect is key to making sustainable positive change. Consider using Dr. Peterson’s calendar for reflection…
Daily (one minute): What new thing did I do today? How did it go? What one thing will I do differently tomorrow?
Weekly (5 minutes): What kind of progress did I make last week? What do I need to focus on this next week?
Monthly (10 minutes): How am I doing on my learning objectives? What do I need to do to keep learning? How will I get meaningful feedback?
Quarterly (15 minutes): How am I doing on my development? What is most important for my success going forward?
Annually (1 hour): Where do I stand relative to what matters to me? Where do I want to be a
year from now and how do I get there? What do I need to do to manage my learning more effectively? How do I make sure I’m not missing something important?
Decadely: Every 5-10 years (one day): Who do I want to be? What values do I want to live by? How am I doing? What do I need to do in the next 5 years to accomplish what matters most?
Remember…
“The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.”
