Coaching for leadership

OD practitioners can "coach for leadership" in a number of ways, depending upon their practice orientations. Leadership is exhibited at 3 areas within an organization: the individual, the group (team/Business unit/etc) and organization-wide. Therefore, coaching can occur on any or all of those levels. Furthermore, when coaching at any one level, one should be mindful of all 3 to achieve greatest impact.

"Coaching for Leadership" can occur as a formal program (e.g. executive coaching, leadership action learning) or informally, which is what happens very frequently with internal OD people and which, IMHO, is very effective when delivered by professionals who are highly respected within their organizations.

Betty Doo

Posted in response to:

Our July 16 program was on “Coaching with the Leadership Agility Compass” and featured Bill Joiner, author the award-winning book Leadership Agility and presenter at our February 2007 “Leadership Agility” and March 2008 “Four Types of Conversation” Program.

Bill gave an overview of the leadership agility concept and demonstrated the leadership agility compass. We then did an exercise and had paired discussion on using this tool, followed by a whole group consideration on applying these ideas in the workplace.

For our Question of the Month, we’ve taken the general question of how OD practitioners can coach for leadership. At the same time, we welcome members’ thoughts on related leadership and coaching issues.

Jim Murphy, July 17