The Leader-Coach: New Role, New Challenge
Today, leadership at all levels is increasingly held responsible
for the professional development of their direct reports. Indeed,
many organizations base a portion of a manager's reward system on
how successfully he/she accomplishes that goal.
Leaders are now challenged to acquire new behaviors and skills,
and to act as coaches to their direct reports. They face the demand
of developing, challenging and guiding them to success. The new
role of Leader-Coach is the result of this demand, and the Leader-Coach
Development Program is designed to answer the need.
Leader-Coaches require new behaviors, mind-sets and skills, which
traditional training cannot supply because there is no application
of the learning. LIM's
Action Reflection Learning (ARL) process,
creates learning in organizational systems at both the individual
and the group level.
LIM believes that adults learn best while they are engaged in meaningful
work, and in this program, participants learn while solving actual
business problems. The problem becomes the team project, and thus
serves as the vehicle for learning. The managers, working as members
of the project team, learn their new responsibilities and test their
skills in a real work environment. As they learn, they solve the
strategic problem, to the benefit of the organization. We call this
Earning While Learning.
What are the outcomes of the program?
By the end of the Leader-Coach Development Program, managers will
have:
- Practiced and demonstrated the mind-sets, behaviors, skills,
and tools identified by the organization and by
LIM as essential
for the effective leader-coach
- Increased their own self-awareness, and self-confidence in the
role, through feedback from a LIM
learning coach and co-participants
in the program
- Contracted their new role with their direct reports back at
the workplace
- Practiced the new role, and received feedback on their performance,
from the Learning Coach and their direct reports back on the job
- Established a system for future assessment of the professional
development and performance of their direct reports
- Created a supportive network among leader-coach colleagues
so that they can continue to learn together
- Set new learning goals for themselves as leader-coaches for
ongoing development
Who will benefit?
- Managers who want to increase their leadership skills, and to
become Leader- Coaches both to their individual direct reports and
to their teams.
- The individual direct reports and the teams who report to the
managers
What are the behaviors and skill sets required of Leader-Coaches?
To support the development of direct reports, and to help them
attain their personal learning goals, the Leader-Coaches focus on
modeling the behaviors they expect of their reports:
- being open to giving, and receiving, timely feedback
- seeking learning from every opportunity
- experimenting with new behaviors and attitudes, and taking risks
- creating a safe environment that fosters courage in their workplace
- identifying, and ensuring transfer of, the lessons learned
- facilitating inclusive planning and implementation processes
- allowing one's own vulnerability to show
How is this program designed?
All Leader-Coach Development Programs contain these basic elements:
- A product that is co-designed by the client and
LIM
- Participants work in teams to solve an actual business problem
- Teams consist of five to six candidates being developed as Leader-Coaches.
As they work together they provide feedback and suggestions to each
other while working on the real organizational problem.
- A program that is, optimally, divided into two modules of
three days each, with a break between modules, to
- provide participants with time for reflection and for application
of their learnings, and
- (b) to get feedback on their new skills
LIM Learning Coaches create a supportive environment, where
participants can:
- inductively develop an understanding of their new role
- receive coaching in developing the new mindset and behaviors of
a Leader-Coach
- practice new behaviors, tools and skills in a safe environment.
- Learning Coaches introduce concepts and tools Just-in-Time
and invite Reflection, which enables team members to discover what
is happening inside the team, and thus take responsibility for their
own learning experience.
- Each participant receives special coaching sessions after the
end of the formal program in order to support them as they try out
their new role.
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