Continuing "Coaching for Leadership"

This week I coached three persons using the Six Domains model at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. A very interesting experience to analyze the various responses received through the 360 degree assessments and then work with them to help them understand the messages that their raters provided.

We first analyzed the Personal and Relational domains, two of the three foundational domains (the third one is Contextual). These three domains are the foundation upon which the three other domains build. Your Personal Leadership impacts the Credibility that as a leader you have. Your Relational Leadership impacts the Trust that others have on you. And your Contextual Leadership impacts the sense of Community that your followers have.

Later in the week we moved on to Inspirational Leadership (High Aspiration), Supportive Leadership (Initiative), and finally Responsible Leadership (Stewardship). All of these domains interact and, typically, the lower ones impact the effectiveness of the upper ones.

In addition, the participants received verbal comments that clarified the raters' input on their leadership skills. Using these inputs, the participants developed both a plan to improve their leadership skills as well as a plan to use their leadership to implement a change in their organization.

The added value were the classes as well as the networks they developed with fellow participants. If you have a chance to do a program like this one, consider doing it.

Coaching for leadership

Back in September (http://leadership-topics.blogspot.com/2009/09/very-good-leadership-model.html) I discussed the six domain leadership model developed by professors Allan Lind and Sim Sitkins at Duke University's Fuqua school and described at http://deltaleadership.com/sixdomains.htm. Since then I've been coaching on this model and have dug some more into leadership.

A current book I'm reading is Leadership That Counts: Harnessing the Power of Leadership Coaching to Deliver Strategic Value by Dianna Anderson and Merrill Anderson. This book provides a different framework, broader in scope to some extent, as well as a good discussion on how to set up a leadership program, how to justify it, and how to assess its performance. If you are in coaching or interested in getting into coaching, this book should be in your library.

Another thing that it does is provide a time-face model of how persons being coached move through time. While the Delta Leadership model is to some extent time-specific (e.g., a leader is assessed today in six domains, puts plans in place on how to improve, and later on is re-assessed), Leadership that Counts helps a coach assess where a leader is in his/her leadership maturity and how to move him/her forward.

So, I recommend this book for your coaching library.

Side note: I used to provide links to Amazon for books. Due to new FTC rules for disclosure and changes in the Amazon Associates rules, I am no longer providing such links. If you are interested in buying a book I mention, please pick it up at your favorite merchant.