So I Need to Improve, How do I do That?

Jay Newman, PhD, Founding Partner, Culture By Choice

You’ve read my last 4 Blog posts. Now you are trying to figure out how to become a Legacy Leader or improve your Legacy Leadership skills. But, how do you do that? I’m writing this article to give you some guidance in that effort. You may not like what I’m going to tell you but my last 45 years of experience tells me there’s no better way. In fact, there’s no way that even comes close. The way forward must include a Coach.

For some reason business professionals think they can dramatically improve their performance all by themselves. The elite professional athletes, actors, musicians, and singers all believe in acquiring coaches. Why do the best athletes and entertainers seek coaching but business leaders don’t? It’s a bias we seem to have. Physical skills need an objective observer to provide feedback and suggest improvements but the more complicated mental and emotional skills don’t? This bias keeps way too many potential Legacy Leaders from even taking the first step down the path towards Legacy Leadership.

Becoming a Legacy Leader will require you to get some coaching. The quality of that coaching will determine the quality of the progress you make but quality is not equal to cost. Some coaches might not cost you anything, some will be very reasonable in their cost, but some may be more expensive. Not every leadership coach can help you become a Legacy Leader, so how do you know what to do? The rest of this article will focus on finding the right coach.

Of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the professionals at Culture By Choice are very skilled at coaching leaders and have helped several leaders on their Legacy Leadership journey but we do that as part of a complete cultural development program for our clients. There are many other ways to find the right coach for you. Sometimes there’s a coach right in front of you and all you need to do is ask for them to help. Some people will not have the luxury of having someone close by that can coach them and they will need to hire a professional coach. Finding the right coach is critical to your success.

What should you look for in a coach? First of all, the coach should be able to offer you some type of personal assessment. At Culture By Choice we provide what we call our Core Advantage Report which takes the results of the DISC, Motivators, and Hartman Values Profile and compiles them into a single integrated report that describes how a person is most likely going to behave, think, and make decisions under normal and stress filled conditions. There are several other assessments that could be used but your coach should always create a baseline based on your results to one of more of these assessments.

The second thing a coach should do for you is help you discover your own controlling idea. What is the fundamental value that determines what decisions you will make? When this is revealed, you can decide if that is what you want guiding your decision making or if a change in mindset might not be a good idea. Our controlling idea can change depending on what circumstances we find ourselves in and sometimes the subconscious changes we make are not in our own best interest. It is necessary to dig deep to find the primary motivation behind what we do, think, say and decide if we really want to be the best we can be. A skilled coach can help you do that.

The third ingredient of a good coach that I will mention in this article is the ability to provide honest yet helpful feedback. These three ingredients are not everything but they are fundamental for any coach. To help you on your journey towards Legacy Leadership, a coach will need to help you course correct. By watching you interact with your people or through conversations with you and your people, a good coach can help you see what you’ve done that was on track and what you’ve done that has missed the mark. Along with that performance analysis, a good coach will help you figure out what you could have done differently and the good coach will help you figure out how to do it better.

If you’re hiring a coach, insist on these three aspects of their coaching program. If you are using a coach that is already with you, have a conversation about these three things. You can make your life as a leader better by doing this and who knows, someday you might just be recognized as a true Legacy Leader. If you want to find out more, send me an inquiry at: jaynewman@culturebychoice.com.