Exceptional Leadership during these times.
“I am being strategic”
Today one of the leaders I coach said to me today:
Your coaching has helped frame what has taken place with my organisation during this year into the strategic paradigm. I have noticed again that the strategy is in action and is happening now. Even in amongst the changes and transitions of the impact of Covid19. I am being strategic: I feel in control of the direction of travel that we are going in as an organisation embedded in Leith.
I’ve been working with Mike across the last two years and it is my intention to publish a longer case study of how the organisation has developed under his leadership, with my support services. For now though, I just want to celebrate the impact that can be achieved by coaching CEO’s.
Across the last 20 years it has been my privilege to coach many such journeys of leaders and ‘Agents of Change’ who are leading organisations that are at the forefront of co-creating a better society. Some of these organisations are large initiatives, such as community land buy out projects, others are anti-destitution charities at the heart of saving lives of refugees, others are environmental campaigning organisations. Most of whom are cyclically funded by a mixture of funders and have volunteers as their board members and amongst their workforce. They are all at the heart of the true green economy and for many years I used to do Social Return on Investment analyses reports showing the economic impact that they have, literally creating jobs and saving the state cash.
It can be incredibly difficult for leaders in these circumstances to be strategic. It can be easy to write business plans and strategic plans, especially when angling them towards a particular funding investor. Yet to actually craft and develop your strategy requires skills which we often don’t see. Remember most entrepreneurs actually fail. (see my other article)
Two heads are better than one.
However at the heart of this experience is leaders who are willing and able to examine their own practice, seek out proper external supervision/coaching which gives them what i like to call ‘extra-vision’, and stick at it. In my experience there is an incredible creative tension about harnessing both their time and energy and avoiding burning out. Whereas the average leader makes the mistakes of thinking its all about themselves, over-working or under-working, playing blame games and behaving like some of our top British politicians, or other famous people we obsess about in the media. A couple of my coaching clients have accepted OBE’s or MBE’s for their work, but some have refused as they don’t buy in to that type of reward system.
For me its just rewarding to coach these agents of change and to be part of a network who diligently co-creates a better society.
Well done Mike for your journey so far. I wonder what will come next for you?