The Career Advancer
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The situation:
O was promoted from manager to leader and faced the challenge to focus on leading a team now rather than managing projects. -
The coaching objective:
How to transition to a leadership role after having progressed through the organisation since joining as a graduate. Learning to trust others to manage and shifting the perception of others accepting the leadership.
The situation
O was a successful manager who had worked his way up from joining as a graduate. When offered to join the senior leadership team, O was delighted. O had already worked very long hours and found that transitioning to a leadership role left him with the question – how do I make sure my team recognises my change in status and how do the previous senior leaders recognise I stepped up?
Working together
We worked on O’s ability to let go and trust his team to take responsibility to deliver on targets. In addition, we focused on O defining how he wants to be perceived by his team as a leader, what do they want to remember him for? The “doer” or the leader who can trust his team and let his team get on with the job of managing and delivering? O chose to lead and let go of the daily delivery and management tasks. He stepped up to communicate his expectations and invited his team to work in their way but meet delivery targets. He learnt that being able to provide meaningful feedback shows that he cares. He realised that there are many choices in life and maybe delivering a difficult message in an empathetic way will result in his team member making the changes they knew they had to make but hesitated to do.
The outcome
From the coaching, O recognised to manage himself better, to look carefully at how he spends his energy rather than focusing on time in the office as the main driver. He recognised that a successful leader trusts his team, accepted that an autonomous approach to leadership involves allowing his team to do it their way but still deliver to agreed objectives. O identified key alliances in the senior team to help him to integrate and be heard more easily in meetings.
The systemic aspect
O felt much happier in life after having gone through the coaching The changes made allowed him to focus on life outside work, on exercise and making sure he had time to relax which impacted positively on his sleep.