#014: Leadership, Self-Awareness, Group Coaching and Deliberate Practice
Hello from Bengaluru!
In case we haven’t met - my name is Narayan Kamath. I am an Executive and Leadership Coach, helping engineering/technology leaders evolve into inspiring and impactful business leaders by working on their inner and outer game.
What is the job of a leader?
A Leader's job is to create significant positive impact by working with and through others.
That's it.
I was reminded about this again, when working with around 75 leaders of a global energy major. This is a time of unprecedented change and great uncertainty and ambiguity for the energy industry. While the company in question has a very inspiring and empowering purpose (and strategies and plans to match), they realise that given the ambiguity and uncertainty it is important for each employee, and certainly those in leadership roles to have their own personal leadership purpose statement - one that would serve as their guiding star when navigating the unknown future.
What struck me, and my co-facilitator, as we guided these leaders through a process of setting their leadership purpose statement was how almost to a person, it was about making a difference - creating a significant positive impact in this world.
As part of the session, I also had an opportunity to have another look at, and share my personal purpose statement as a leadership coach:
”Helping leaders multiply their leadership impact and making this world a better place is what gives me a sense of purpose. My goal is to help leaders multiply their impact by working better with and through others. By living my purpose, I am confident that I will see positive changes that leave the world a better place, in my own lifetime.”
What is your personal leadership purpose statement?
Leadership and Self-Awareness
To scale the heights of leadership, you need to first plumb the depths of self-awareness.
A coach can take you deeper than you've ever been before.
Mindfulness meditation, Journaling, Feedback, Assessments are all essential and effective tools in your journey to learning more about yourself.
However, working with a Coach can help you get the most of each of these approaches, and take you much deeper than you could go just using any of these tools.
What makes a coach invaluable on your journey to greater self-awareness?
There are a number of reasons including:
👉 A coach can help you quickly choose the approach most suited to your temperament and level of awareness, saving you a whole lot of time and effort.
👉 A coach can help you use each of these approaches in a way that works best for you - maximizing the benefits and mitigating the limitations
👉 A coach can take you deeper than you would be able or willing to go on your own
You can accelerate your journey to Self-awareness and go farther than you could on your own by working with a coach.
However, this requires picking the right coach for yourself.
If you are someone who wishes to grow as a leader by working on your inner and outer game, let’s talk. Hit Reply.
Updates - Group Coaching
My plan for this is to do more of group coaching.
The main reason I want to do more group coaching is that due to some personal developments, I cannot devote as much time for coaching as I previously used to. SO this limits the clients I can work with individually. Coaching groups allows me to work with more clients than I would otherwise be able to.
The second reason is that participants in group coaching not only benefit from having their own questions, challenges and opportunities addressed, but also learn a lot from the issue raised by other participants and the resolutions they reach
The third reason is, done well, group coaching can be even more powerful in helping clients address their issues - not only are they getting coaching from the coach, they are also benefiting from the questions, observations , and feedback of other participants.
Of course, group coaching also tends to be more affordable than one-on-one coaching. So you can get access to coaching at a fraction of what it would otherwise cost you.
I am planning to start with group coaching for leaders, and have 3 groups initially. The idea is to create groups where participants have greatest affinity with each other - considering factors such as age, experience, leadership level etc.
If this is of interest to you, drop me an email - and I will send you details as soon as I open enrolment.
What I'm Currently Reading
I’m currently pursuing a certification in Coaching Supervision, and this requires so much of reading, that it is difficult to find the time or energy to the much additional reading. So, as I work down the list of recommended reading for the program, I am currently reading a book by Robin Shohet and Joan Shohet: In Love With Supervision
Robin and Joan are pioneers in the field of supervision - not just for coaching but also for other helping professions - such as counselling/therapy, mentoring, teaching, and even leadership.
The book is not only instructive - in that it covers a lot of important ideas and concepts relating to supervision, it is also informative and inspiring - as it offers a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at many of the tools and techniques we use in Supervision, and also share with us their own journey as supervisors.
Blast from the Past
If you are recently well read, and have an interest in personal development, you have most probably come across the 10000 hour rule.
While it was Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers that made this rule very widely known, the origins date back to research by Anders Ericsson who, together with colleagues published their findings on how deliberate practice was instrumental in the success of students learning to play the violin.
Since then, and largely due to Gladwell’s (over)simplification, deliberate practice has been claimed to be an important (if not the most important) factor in the pursuit of mastery in any domain.
However, does deliberate practice always lead to mastery? The more nuanced answer, as always, is "it depends."
What determines whether deliberate practice leads to superior performance?
Read more about this in When Deliberate Practice is Not the Answer
End Quote
To end this edition, here's a quote I've been pondering on this week:
“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” ― Andre Gide
Working with leaders, I see many of them wish to be more authentic - to show up as they truly are, to say what they really think and feel.
And the biggest obstacle in becoming more authentic is their desire to be liked by the people they lead.
This desire is entirely human, but unless leaders can rise above it, they will forever find a gap between how they show up as leaders, and who they wish to be.
That's all this week! Thanks for your time.
Narayan
PS: When you are ready, here are some ways we can work together to amplify your impact:
1. Grab a free copy of my Deliver Through Others Checklist - It’s a useful summary of the key principles to working better with and through others— Click Here
2. Work with me privately - If you are an Engineering/Technology leader aspiring to evolve into an inspiring and impactful Business Leader, let’s talk! Set up a no-obligation exploratory call with me - Click Here