Definition of a Leader
And what do leadership coches actually do?
Somebody asked me how I’m a leadership coach without formal leadership experience.
I was annoyed for two reasons: Firstly, I never had a straightforward answer to what leadership coaching entails; it’s very much experiential. Secondly, the question arises because they think one cannot coach someone on something they never experienced.
Though I agree with the second point, the truth is that some of the highest-paid leadership and executive coaches have never held leadership positions. What experience are they coaching out of then?
There are many kinds of leaders — thought leaders, managers, technical leads, executives, C-suite, startup founders, small business owners, community builders, book authors, and social media influencers.
Then, it begs the question, who is a leader? And what is leadership?
I believe there are three aspects to leadership:
Leading yourself
Leading a mission
Leading your people
Each aspect demands you to go against your hard-wired default strategies of operating in the world.
Sure, strategies, tactics, business experience, social savviness and brilliance are essential to leadership. But ask anyone with a large-scope project to deliver; they’ll tell you there is a hard ceiling.
I believe the ceiling comes from the psychological growth of the leader. The level of development that got them success in the past fails to propel them when there’s a larger scope of complexity. They experience breakdowns in leading themselves, their missions, and their people.
The best leadership coaches develop the mental and emotional capacity of the leader to handle uncertainty in-the-moment— case in point: Satya Nadella handling the whole Open AI and Sam Altman drama. Satya is not merely smart or business savvy. He has an expanded psychological capacity to handle many different variables gracefully and yet not let himself, his mission, or his people astray.
But to develop such expanded psychological capacity in others, the coach must have a bigger capacity than their client. That’s the base for leadership coaches. The best ones constantly play with uncertainty and develop their capacity — they’re leaders too.
So that’s what I do. I support leaders in expanding their psychological capacity to lead themselves, their missions, and their people in the complex modern world. And I’m in the game of developing my leadership.