Leadership Coaching

“Mastering yourself is true power” – Lao Tsu

Why do Leaders need Coaching

When a leader has all the technical excellence, knowledge and resources to achieve a desired outcome, but is unable to make the difference they need or want in the space they work, more training is often not the answer. Leaders need something much more personal and involved: leadership coaching.

The demands on leaders are usually such that they are focused on task and results. But for leaders to deliver results sustainably and also lead through times of uncertainty and rapid change, they need to have a much broader sense of who they are, what they can do, where they are going coupled with the ability to influence their communication, emotions and behavior on the way to getting there. Leadership coaching enables leaders to develop this skill of self-leadership as a crucial component of their overall leadership capability development.

Even more commonly, leaders are thrust into their positions with hardly any preparation and are expected to learn to lead while being in the thick of things. While this may work for select individuals, for a majority of leaders, investing in understanding their own leadership persona and consciously working on it, is critical to make them effective. Leadership coaching fills the need of turning leaders into demonstrably effective leaders.

How can you benefit from leadership coaching?

Operate confidently from a place of your strengths, and be aware and open to new perspectives – At Kavyata, we take a strengths based view of leadership development and through our leadership coaching, you learn to amplify your strengths. The space of leadership coaching also gives you the opportunity to reflect (instead of being continuously caught in a whirl of task and result oriented activity) on what mindsets and behaviours you need, in order to become more effective and what steps you can take to cultivate these mindsets and behaviours.

Acquire both emotional and cognitive flexibility which helps you adapt to a changing world – While the world around you is changing tremendously quickly, you need a space where you can safely process the impact of these changes, both on yourself and your people. Leadership coaching gives you such a space, where you can see what beliefs and perspectives are no longer relevant based on a changing context and how to set aside these limiting beliefs.

Learn how to drive yourself towards goals that matter to you – Your energy as a leader matters and this energy comes from working on goals which matter to you. It’s a sort of a chicken and egg situation which you as a leader may often ignore – since you aren’t paying attention to thinking about what goals really matter to you, your energy to drive results overall also dips, and that in turn leaves you even less attentive to your own purpose and goals. Leadership coaching helps you to grow your energy to do things which matter to you and the business, by putting you in touch with your intentions and your ‘why’.

When do you need Leadership Coaching?

In today’s dynamic environments, leaders have to lead with very different mindsets from those used in earlier, more stable times. Leadership coaching is especially important for leaders and people managers who are facing any of the following :

The need to lead in an uncertain environment, where a shift is required from control and planning to innovation and continuous experimentation. Leadership Coaching helps to remove the mindset blocks to taking risks, experimenting, letting go of certainty and becoming more collaborative, all helping to foster a climate of innovation. It helps make leaders examine how they view failure and by resetting this relationship, it enables leaders to role model the appropriate attitude towards failure which can support the level of innovation required.

The need to become ‘intrapreneurs’, driving innovation through one’s teams. Here, the coaching process helps you acquire fluidity of perspectives/approaches/behaviours, making you lead more effectively

The transition into people leadership roles, requiring you to work more collectively and collaboratively. With coaching, you develop self-awareness, inter-personal skills (empathy, listening) and the ability to engage and influence people.

When you need to be able to drive complex change in your teams /organization. Getting people to adapt to change requires you to be sensitive, empathetic, using a variety of communication and influencing styles and learning how to share purpose of change in a compelling way. These are very energy intensive activities and they require you to be an observer of yourself while you are putting these into action. In such a situation, leadership coaching where a coach acts as a mirror and helps you observe yourself, can be invaluable.

When you are feeling overwhelmed and you feel that the way forward is not to apply solutions which you are already familiar with. Yet you don’t know what new solutions can exist. This is especially felt by those who have suddenly transitioned into people leadership – previous skills and behaviours are not working as well and you need to understand how to lead.

Outcomes of Leadership Coaching

Leadership coaching works on your inner and outer leadership mindsets and behaviours. The inner mindsets and behaviours that get impacted through leadership coaching are

Intentionality :

helping you to clarify your ‘why’, which precedes any purposeful action (behavior). This intentionality positively affects your energy and resourcefulness.

Self-awareness :

understanding your intentions and values, as well as knowing what can ‘push your buttons’ and derail you

Self-confidence :

from creating a safe space where you can experiment with new behaviours, your self-confidence grows and you find yourself more empowered in different situations

Self-regulation :

you are able to modulate and regulate your responses based on cues you pick up from the environment. You learn to flex your perspective and behaviour, increasing the range of responses available to you.

As a consequence of working on your inner mindsets and behaviours, you also grow in your ability to Influence and Impact.

The process of Leadership Coaching

Our integrated leadership coaching approach blends Neuroscience, Positive Psychology and Eastern traditions. The major building blocks of our coaching are

Our leadership development programs are highly experiential and immersive. They are customized to each organization’s need, but some key parts of the process include

Individual reflection and self-awareness through psychometric tools
Personal Insights – experiential techniques to uncover personal narratives, strong suits and patterns. Connecting to personal purpose and meaning.
Storytelling to learn how to use stories to articulate values, purpose and influence key stakeholders
Personal Mastery tools and practices focused on managing Energy, Focus and Time
1-1 Coaching with experienced coaches

We draw upon neuroscience, experiential learning theory and adult development to focus on achieving awareness, developing lasting new practices and further enhancing existing strengths.

Knowing Yourself & your Aspirations

Use of psychometric tools, storytelling, structured exercises, personal purpose & visioning

Expanding your Potential

Exercises (supported by neuroscience) designed to break through old patterns and seed new ways of thinking and doing

Sustaining & Growing your Energy

Creative visualization of possibilities and putting in place practices to move towards these

How do our Leadership Development programs foster being purpose driven and centred?

Our leadership development programs have two defining characteristics – immersive and experiential. They are designed to impact the being and the doing of participants. We focus on enabling leaders to find and communicate their purpose through developing the following practices

Finding and conveying meaning at work – we help leaders connect to goals which they find personally meaningful and in line with their vision of who they want to be and how they want to lead. This becomes the source of their energy and they use their skills and strengths to rally people around this. Time and again, we find that leaders who are connected to goals which go beyond personal gain, are able to tell powerful and inspiring stories which bind people together and multiply their energy. Our leadership development programs therefore, teach leaders to dig into the source of such inspiring stories and communicate them compellingly.

Reframing difficult and challenging situations and emotions into growth opportunities – Purposeful leaders do not shy away from difficult and challenging situations, but instead reframe these to find possibilities for growth and learning for themselves and others. In our leadership development work, we encourage leaders to look at challenging situations in the face, and practice how they can see them more constructively.

Building connections and community – In a departure from the image of the leader as powerful, one who is an expert and has all the right answers, our leadership development programs enable leaders to become comfortable with asking for help and admitting that they may not know it all. This in turn helps them to be able to build authentic connections and facilitating the flow of important information across the organization much more quickly and effectively.

Experimenting and risking failure – By reframing failure as an opportunity to learn, our leadership development work enables leaders to see the value in experimenting. We get leaders to challenge what failure means to them personally and how they might reduce the fear of failure by de-personalizing it. This puts them in the space where they are then open to proactively looking at risks and possible failures with their people and plan mitigating strategies.

Managing their own energy – Leaders have to deal with a lot and this requires constantly replenishing and growing their own energy. We help leaders develop a range of practices to energize themselves (physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually).

Key takeaways for the Organization

The greatest benefit to organizations from investing in purpose driven leadership development is in equipping leaders to be able to respond to change. This is of high value, considering the turbulent times and the rapid rate of change that businesses are continuously exposed to.

The other organizational benefits are

A culture of learning getting embedded because of more open, authentic communication and information flows
Collaborative networks unleashed when leaders role model trust building and open communication

Methodology of our Leadership Development Programs