Leadership Coaching
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
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.
Testimonials
I was at a crossroads in my career and I needed to make a thoughtful choice about the kind of role I wanted to continue playing in my organization. I was on the verge of taking up significant additional responsibility which would allow me to have much more impact through my work. But this step had to be taken weighing against certain personal decisions and consequences of my taking up this role. This confusion was what made me participate in Urja - Kavyata's workshop for mid-career change. Urja helped me to develop comfort with the current ambiguities. I came to know about how working on certain behaviours could help me achieve more output for my role and take on more responsibility without being overwhelmed. Engaging with new people helped open up and experiment without fear of being judged. There was lot of noise and discomfort within me, during the initial phase of the workshop. Trying to find answers was difficult. Facilitators gave me confidence to stay connected with the process till the end and that helped me to overcome the discomfort and trust on the process and have patience. The answers started coming out very elegantly at the end of the workshop and that was a ‘Aha’ moment!
We are living and working in a rather rapidly evolving world that demands a creative, innovative approach for individual as well as organisation success! As I worked my way up the ladder, I have actively engaged in coaching with Kavyata, a couple of times and found both times the process helped me think and act differently by making me more aware of my own self and my environment. It helped me acquire a fluidity of perspectives, approaches and behaviours that helped me lead effectively through ambiguity. The need to own our (and our team's) outcomes is far higher in 2020 than a few years ago - a broader perspective and a creative, intrapreneurial approach is key to thrive in this brave new world we inhabit!
As I worked through my transition, the sessions with Kavita helped in several ways - holding the space and helping me understand that many of the emotions I was feeling were par for the course, helping me reflect and look at the issue in new and different ways that went around some of my own blocks, and also opening myself to new possibilities and breaking out of old patterns of behaviour. All of this was grounded in getting to know myself better through the sessions and through specific tools that Kavita brought to the work. Within a few sessions, I had far greater clarity on the path ahead.
The coaching helped me uncover a few hidden problems which were making my career transition complicated. I was able to see clearly where my interest lies and identify what I could do to pursue those interests. I also benefited from having a clear strategy to reach out to my mentors and ask for support. I am happy to say that the coaching process enabled me to make a shift in my career change process and move to a new role within 3 months.
I am a participant in the 1 year Business Leadership MBA program at IIM Kozhikode. Kavita had facilitated a very engaging, interactive workshop for us on Career Development in the Future of Work. There was a great mix of self-reflection activities, group exercises and assessments, which helped me to understanding myself and my goals, identify strengths and transferable skills. This was an excellent input for me in planning my overall career development and also learning what will drive career success for me in the long term.
I had a chance to attend Kavyata's session at IIM Kozhikode. During the session, I reflected on my personality and understood how do I behave in certain situations. I reflected on my strengths and weaknesses. I got a lot of useful learning about my areas of improvement and also about how to communicate in a better way during interviews and meetings in formal settings. What I liked especially was Kavita's easy and engaging style of conducting the workshops - there was plenty of opportunity to share our views, ask questions not only limited to the workshop content, learn from each other and think deeply. The reflections and learnings are going to stay with me for my future career development too.
The webinars and sessions facilitated by Kavita were extremely valuable - I got some great pieces of advice on how do I respond to the Covid19 situation in terms of my career preparation in the present, near term as well as the longer-term future. Kavita helped me to differentiate between short and long term career goals, which were otherwise confusing me and making it difficult to commit to steps to work on them. The learnings from the sessions reinforced some of my personal plans and also opened up some new avenues that I hadn't thought of earlier. The tips on resume building were brilliant and actionable, something that I implemented immediately. I would certainly recommend attending Kavyata's online sessions, for understanding how to draw up highly actionable career development plans.
I am thankful to you for the wonderful session you have given us, for patiently listening for all our questions no matter how trivial they were. The session was really an eye-opener. Thank you once again for that beautiful session.
Urja was the much needed pause which gave me the time to reflect and get clarity. I attended Kavyata's flagship program Urja in April 2019.The timing of the workshop was very apt given my own context of feeling the need to pause, examine, reflect and align. And living up to its name, Urja gave me the space to get in touch with my own energies and helped me reimagine and reorganise my personal and professional goals. The workshop was facilitated primarily by Kavita in a powerful yet gentle way. She drew on some insightful techniques of visualization, bodywork and deep reflection methodologies that made the experience memorable. I recommend this workshop for everyone who is feeling the need to reimagine and re energize, especially at mid-career.
I attended Urja in April 2019, at the time I was taking on a significantly larger leadership role in my organization. I must say it was a turning point in my leadership journey - I had grown organically as a leader till then and Urja gave me a chance to reflect on my approach to leadership. It completely transformed me and gave me a much better understanding of myself. Now I know where to focus on. I realised that self-awareness is so important. I liked the activities and experiences, especially the plotting the emotions on a timeline. The way the program was conducted made it easy to absorb what I needed the most - the beautiful, natural setting, the evening discussions over the bonfire and the treks all created a fantastic ambience for me to really take a pause and re-energize.
Urja is a unique process of gifting yourself a space where one can safely and deeply explore and observe one’s own experiences, behavior patterns and self-limiting / self-promoting thought processes that make the glasses through which we see ourselves, and our world. It is a space where everyone is equal – fellow participants and facilitators – all adding to each others’ experiential journey. No other training program (I have attended and facilitated quite a few) touches the depth of feelings and thoughts, the way this program does, leaving behind a strong sense of liberation and self-realization. So if you are someone having questions about your current situation and how you can change it, if you think you deserve better, if you feel adrift and uncomfortably out of control, if you feel a deeper understanding of your own needs and emotions would help you interact with the world around you better – this may just be the space you may want to gift yourself.
My experience with Urja has been incredible and way too worthwhile - with lot of ifs and but - why do I do need - do I actually need it and what not ? But once I stepped into the SPACE - the space uncovered so many aspects of my own self - SELF REALISATION of beauty with in you. We spend so much time and money on holiday and leisure and come back with just a relaxed body — but if any one needs to really rejuvenate the soul - URJA is one stop destination.