On a scale from 1-to-10, how would you rate yourself on coachability?

While you're pondering that, let me tell you just how vital a leadership attribute this is. Coachability is the willingness to be corrected and to act on that correction. When we are coachable, we are prepared to be wrong. We can withstand a high degree of candor. We are willing to let others evaluate — and perhaps even plumb the depths of our performance because we understand that the journey of personal development cannot be traveled alone. We understand that our first fiduciary obligation is to ourselves, and that obligation is to gain accurate self-knowledge and then take the next step of progress. For the highly coachable, feedback, as the chalkboard aphorism goes, really is the breakfast of champions.

Henry David Thoreau observed, “It is as hard to see oneself as to look backwards without turning around.” I’m inclined to agree.  I observe many leaders who are in diapers in their understanding of themselves. They bristle at unvarnished feedback. They are too sure of themselves to listen. They travel down avenues of self-importance or self-doubt.

Those on the pride side of the line want to be the only noodle in the soup. They want people to be lap dogs of validation. They refuse to acknowledge that there are people wise in perception all around who have the precious gift of guidance to give. They can’t bear the thought of bad press or the possibility that someone might find a cockroach behind the wall. They prefer polite society, cocktail-party talk, fulsome praise and a fabled reality. They don’t speak truth to the power of themselves. The juice is not worth the squeeze.

So . . . how coachable are you?

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            If you're interested in learning more about intent and the inherent tension between stewardship and self-interest, take a look at my latest book: The Leadership Test: Will You Pass? or visit me at TRClarkPartners.com.

In my coaching practice, I occasionally meet a leader who has graduated to the final stage of confidence. It represents the culminating stage of a leader’s emotional and psychological development.

If you've ever come in contact with a leader who has reached the final stage of confidence, you may not remember it. The interaction may have left no impression on you.  In fact, that wouldn’t be surprising because final-stage leaders are people who have crossed over from the impulse to impress to the impulse to bless. It’s not important to them that you remember them.

Final stage leaders have made peace with themselves. They have arrested their egos. That fact comes out most prominently in their language and communication. They are far less prone to engage in attention-getting behavior, self-promotion or flattery.

Let me share some examples from my experience of final stage leaders: (Click here to  listen to my audio)

• They don’t need to hear themselves talk, so they don’t clamor for airtime. They finally stop telling the world how smart they are.
• They don’t seek status through association, so they normally refrain from dropping names.
• They don’t subscribe to the leader-as-expert model in which the leader is the repository of all knowledge. As a result, they become more content to listen more and ask more questions rather than talk more and give more answers.
• They value the appreciation and recognition of their peers when it’s meaningful. But it’s not a requirement. They have learned that leadership often requires that we go for long periods and long distances without reward or recognition, that we toil in obscurity, and that due credit might come but it might not.
• Final-stage leaders learn to fuel their efforts through intrinsic rewards. They learn that achievement brings its own compensation. At the same time, final-stage leaders don’t deflect recognition with false modesty. They are not coy or demure.
• They correct others faster and with more candor, but their feedback is given in the spirit of real concern.
• They praise genuinely and specifically, not gratuitously. Leaders not quite at the final stage often praise either profusely to be seen as generous or sparingly out of resentment or because they believe praise to be a scarce resource.
• They are less hurt and less provoked by the careless and mean-spirited acts of others. In one case I repeatedly observed an early-stage leader cut off a final-stage leader in a group discussion. The early-stage leader was attempting to establish dominance with tiresome alpha-male gestures. The final-stage leader patiently deferred. Everyone rolled their eyes.
• They become more kind and yet more demanding at the same time. They delegate more with the understanding that people grow only when they leave their comfort zones and travel to their outer limits. They realize that stretching is both painful and exhilarating, that it’s the only place where new capacity is built.

It’s a blessed day when a leader crosses the threshold to the final stage of confidence. 

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

            If you're interested in learning more about intent and the inherent tension between stewardship and self-interest, take a look at my latest book: The Leadership Test: Will You Pass? or visit me at TRClarkPartners.com.

When I first left college, I had a boss who liked to hide. He liked to hide in his office, behind his desk, behind his computer and behind his phone. He was as accessible as a bank vault. I got the message pretty quickly, so I backed off. I stopped sharing. I stopped asking. That’s what people do when they’re not invited to participate.

Since then I’ve worked with highly successful leaders who are unimaginative, boring and stale. I’ve worked with others who don’t think strategically, can’t comprehend operations or don’t have a technical bone in their body.

Of course we all have different strengths, but I have yet to meet a truly outstanding leader who was an interpersonal disaster. If there are any stylistic demands of a leader in the global age, it is openness. Leaders who haven’t figured this out possess a clear liability.

Some leaders are too withdrawn for people to risk with them. Others live on the dark side of charisma, leading with a false sense of openness that repels people for different reasons. In each case, lack of openness poses a challenge to effective leadership.

Different leadership styles can be effective, provided the leader remains fundamentally open to people, their views, feelings and aspirations. This stylistic variable is critical because the global age demands collaboration in order to maintain competitive advantage.

Leading is not a solo act. It’s not a function of individual brilliance. Nor is it skillful manipulation or cunning. The enduring truth is that change leadership is mostly about people. What an avalanche of data confirms is that an open, collaborative, transparent and approachable style is far more successful in leading people than any species of a closed, rigid, paternalistic or authoritarian approach. 

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

            If you're interested in learning more about intent and the inherent tension between stewardship and self-interest, take a look at my latest book: The Leadership Test: Will You Pass? or visit me at TRClarkPartners.com.

Let me share a page from the archives of history. After the civil war and the beheading of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell rose to power and became Lord Protector of England in 1653. As a leader and reformer, Cromwell has commanded intense controversy concerning his legacy. Some have castigated him as a ruthless dictator. Others have enshrined him as a founding father of England’s commonwealth and parliamentary democracy. Regardless of the view you take, it’s impossible to dismiss the power of the speech he made when he dismissed the Rump Parliament on April 20, 1653. It cuts to the heart of leadership intent and the tension between stewardship and self-interest. Read Cromwell’s blistering indictment and ask yourself the questions that follow:

“Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of potage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money; is there a single virtue now remaining amonst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion that my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. . . Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone!

Now here’s the challenging part: Resist the temptation to dismiss the speech as puritanical non-sense with biblical allusions and moralistic high-mindedness. Ask yourself this question: “Does this man have a point? Is the point relevant in today’s society and organizations? Does it apply to you?”

When Cromwell speaks of religion, substitute the word, values. Do you have non-negotiable, unassailable values as a leader—values that are not for sale? What are they and how serious are you about them? At what altar do you worship?  To what end do you invest your energies? What is the chief impulse of your labors? These are tough questions, but they're questions more leaders should be asking more often.

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

            If you're interested in learning more about intent and the inherent tension between stewardship and self-interest, take a look at my latest book: The Leadership Test: Will You Pass?

photo: olivercromwell.org