Coaching & Mentoring Corporate Heros

Once in the leadership saddle, what next? Leaders begin their journey for excellence once they take-up leadership reigns. Leaders gain wisdom while they lead their organization towards its mission & vision. Nobody is perfect. Everybody needs to go through a self-discovery & improvement program. Leaders are no exception. Leadership coaches are just not 'devil's advocates'. They instigate a thought process, make leaders think harder and facilitate change. Coaches help leaders to fix the jigsaw puzzles by providing missing pieces in terms of a few tricks, tips or secrets. They provide a solution by changing perception and perspective. What should be the objective of the leadership development program? How to conduct leadership development? Difficult questions.

Leaders can't be trained. They have to be coached. Coaching is honing, refining, tuning, aligning and re-directing.

Methodology Used Leaders can hardly be trained. They have their own methods of learning. They learn faster than any other group. They love participative, interactive sessions rather than training lectures. Leaders are the jack of everything, they need not be taught from zero level. Hence, coaching and mentoring works better with leaders. In case of highly successful, knowledgeable and skilled leaders, mentorship delivers better results. A mentor has to be a person with 'monk-like wisdom'. The leader must know him well and hold him/her in high regard. Mentor's advice should be like a decree or creed. Mentor & mentees have emotional & spiritual relationships rather than formal or commercial.

Training V/s Coaching Training is the transfer of skill or knowledge. It can be one time and works in the short term. Coaching is continuous, it takes longer. Coaching has to be done hands-on/on the job rather than in the classroom. In coaching, the candidate has to take an active part, ask questions, seek solutions, raise doubts because coaching is an enhancement of existing knowledge. The coach should know the existing level before imparting new skills or knowledge. The existing levels could be different in different candidates hence coach can't form a formal structure of the knowledge enhancement. It happens through interactions and discussions.

In Training skills & knowledge are imparted, in coaching they evolve

Alignment Coaches align leaders to teams by working on his prejudices & by providing different perspectives. Coaches help leaders to align the top line and bottom line to the organizational mission & vision. Coaches help leaders by aligning organizations with society & nature.

Tuning Engine losses power when it misfires. It requires tuning. Success or fatigue can make leader misfire. Coaches help leaders to tune-in so that they get synchronized with the team & with the resources. It requires redefining the objectives & increasing commitment to them. Tuning re-allocates resources for better productivity. Coaches also tune leaders to the aspirations of his team members & channel partners.

Re-Directing Coaches help leaders in the process of candid review. They show courage to share many unpleasant facts which the team members are hesitant to share. Coaches highlight the flip sides and make a leader redirect the resources.

Honing For the benefit of non-mechanical-engineers, grinding is a finishing process that provides finish to any rough surface.

Honing and buffing are super-finishing processes. They are usually applied to a finished surface, after grinding, to make it even smoother. After buffing, one gets a smoother finish which shines like a mirror. Similarly, leaders have leadership traits, skills, and the required attitude. They go through a lot of grinding during their work-life. They raise to leadership on the basis of their strengths. The real challenge lies in taking them further on the learning curve, honing them to make them shine even brighter, de-burring their rough edges and helping them to regain their lost sheen. What leaders have learnt over the years can become speed breakers in their journey of getting educated further.

Challenge in coaching leaders is, how to make them unlearn what they haven't learnt right.

Success can develop an intellectual arrogance Success converts conviction into arrogance. More success deposits more arrogance. This arrogance is not the arrogance in demeanor, it is intellectual arrogance, feeling supreme, intellectually. Intellectual arrogance is an offensive display of superiority.

Success hardens agility. Successful leaders tend to become stiff unless they take extra care not to be so. Success shuts ears and opens mouth. Successful leaders speak more and listen less. They listen with filters. They listen to what they want to listen, rather than what is being said. Success develops stereotype thinking, success leads to prejudice and prejudgement. Any change is difficult but changing successful leaders is most difficult. Success is like fat in the body. It should provide energy to work further and harder. But successful leaders deposit fat and make themselves more difficult to coach.

Success should not be built like fat. It increases inertia, reduces agility and puts pressure on daily working.

Celebrated Coaches A leader needs a thought leader. Only a thought leader can coach a leader. Thought leaders need not be the leader of actions. We have seen enough examples of thought leaders who guided the leader. Mahatma guiding Pandit Nehru may not be the right example because Mahatma himself was a leader and a man of actions. Rasputin though misguided but was the coach of Russian king, Czar. In India, we had Chanakya coaching Vikramaditya. Above all Lord Krishna coached Arjuna the great. Jack Welch became a leadership coach after a successful corporate career as the CEO of the Fortune-500 company for years and started a leadership academy in New York. These are examples of thought leaders who coached heroes. To add to the list, Phil Jackson coached Michael Jordon and Kobbe Briant in NBA basketball leagues, Achrekar Sir coached Sachin Tendulkar, Denis Lilly coached many Australian fast ballers in cricket. These are the coaches who proved their power while coaching heroes.

The approach of coaches What did they coach? I am sure Phil hardly taught basketball to Michael and Kobe like Lord Krishna never taught archery to Arjuna. Sachin Tendulkar should write what Achrekar Sir taught him. We will get to read different things than we expect to read. Coaches work on fundamental aspects rather than operational. They identify the root causes rather than getting busy in cosmetic surgery. Trainers use allopathy but coaches use Ayurveda for healing. Hence coaching takes a little longer to deliver results. It requires support from the patient. Better the support, faster will be the results.

The ultimate objective of coaching leaders is to develop wisdom and fit them in the right philosophy.

Agenda for leadership development Coaches focus on developing perception & perspective which leads to wisdom. Perception is how you receive things & perspective is how you look at the things. Perception is how we record things in our minds by giving meaning to the things around us. Perspective is how we look at things & deliver our thoughts. Perception develops perspective. How we look at a particular thing or incident is a function of how we recorded the related things, earlier, in our mind. Positive perception develops the right perspective. Perception develops wisdom and wisdom provides perspective. The right perspective develops a positive perception. Once the perspective is developed, perceptions are tunned to perspective. This combination of perception & perspective is called the leadership style.

The outcome of coaching has to be the development of appropriate leadership style

Leadership Style It is the set of beliefs & values of the leader which get reflected in his actions & reactions. Style is the pattern of behavior over a period of time and it remains identical. Style develops predictability. The team can predict the leader's actions and reactions based on his leadership style. A few leaders do not display any style of leadership. Their team keeps guessing about the actions and reactions of the leader. The ad hoc and impulsive actions and reactions of the leader lead to attrition because people are comfortable working with a leader having a predictable pattern of behavior.

Leadership style impacts morale of the team. Positive style provides inspiration. Negative can ruin the team dynamics.

Leadership Wisdom This is the ultimate step in the leader's intellectual journey. Pain is the source of wisdom. A leader goes through a lot of ups & downs, Boom & recession, growth & survival situations before he gets a wisdom tooth. All leaders may not get it though. Blessed are those who get wisdom.

Wisdom is the enlightment which throws light on things, events, & people around but they are pursued differently in that light.

When a leader gets wisdom, his/her life changes radically. Wisdom is the second birth of a person. The person starts from square one and understands the same world but differently. A leader focuses on his mission more than the top line or bottom line. He understands money as a resource and not an objective. He looks at his team as a 'human' rather than just a 'resource'. A leader understands that people don't work for organizations, the organizations work for them. A leader redefines his role as an enabler rather than an approver. He rediscovers the value of the team and knows that people also come to work for their reasons and not just for organizational reasons. ______________________________________________________

Take the example of conducting job interviews. When I was involved in the selection panels for job interviews during the early phase of my career, I would focus on out-foxing the candidate, taking catches, finding holes in their logic. But as I grew in the organization my perceptions improved with my experiences and I developed the right perspective. I then realized I was asked to conduct 'selection' interviews and not rejection. I was a member of the selection panel and not the rejection panel. Hence, my job was to find out what candidates knew and not otherwise. I grew-up professionally, developed some wisdom which led to the right perspective. Thereafter, I started charging up people by asking encouraging questions in the beginning. My focus became how do I put candidates in the comfort zone. I realized, when I started giving positive energy candidates started emitting positive responses. I observed that nervousness dampens performance. We could judge them better when they were not nervous and full of zeal. I am indebted to my senior for coaching me to conduct interviews when I was in the leadership saddle. Listen to the wisdom of Mr. Jeff Weiner CEO of LinkedIn on the job interview. The link to the CNBC interview is provided at the end of this article.

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Coaching corporate heroes is fun. I have been enjoying it on my consulting assignments. I am learning a lot while coaching young businessmen from Indian family managed businesses. They changed my perception and perspective. The wisdom I got in the process is my superannuation over & above the fees I charged.

About the Author: Prof Dr. Ajit Patil was awarded 'Top Voice on LinkedIn - 2017'. He is a Management Writer; Marketing, Business Development & Retailing Consultant. He conducts Management Development Programmes; trains & coaches Sales & Marketing teams. He has been teaching MBA students in India & overseas for over 18 years. He can be reached at ajitpatilmumbai@yahoo.co.in

Coaching 3 emerging corporate heroes, One for America, Two for India. With Arti, Supriya & Nishant at our Atlanta home, celebrating 3 grand achievements Nishant's admission to Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech University, Atlanta, The best part is he secured a Zed Miller Scholarship and his entire tuition fees for 4 years has been waved-off. He also scored 800 on 800 in the SAT Maths exam. Bravo. Supriya's selection as an 'Emerging leader' in Tatas after 6 rounds & 730 score in GMAT. Arti's bank's announcement that she would take over as Joint Managing Director, next year.