COACHING
Marketing, Coaching and Leadership
By Thrity Engineer-Mbuthia
The link between coaching and marketing is something I have always found to be fascinating. I see elements of similarity in both professions, and of course, one can use coaching skills in any profession, be it business, education, sports and possibly even politics.
Now the term coaching is usually synonymous with sports. A visual picture of a fellow standing on the sidelines of a football pitch, waving his hands in the air and seemingly yelling instructions to the players.
But ask anyone who has played a sport before, and they will tell you a coach does not always tell you what to do. He may point out things to you, to show you your strengths or your areas for development. He may align you in a particular direction and help bring out the best in you. Professional coaching is based on the same parameters, where a professional coach helps you find the right answers for yourself, unique to your circumstances.
A professional coach uses the power of questions and deep listening to hear what is being said and what is not being said. Sir John Whitmore who is often regarded as one of the pioneers in the field of executive coaching defines coaching as“ a process of unlocking someone’ s potential to maximize their performance.”
Any business loves the word performance especially when great people performance translates into great organizational performance. All stakeholders are thrilled to see a business succeed, but just as marketers know, strategy without execution is pretty useless and one key component for success is people.
As a marketing professional, having practiced marketing for close to 25 years, the area of leadership fascinates me. Lots of theories of leadership exist, are leaders born or are they made. What makes a good leader. What is the connection between leadership and power. When organizations succeed, is it really about the leaders?
Sir John Whitmore in his book Coaching for Performance depicts a strong connection between leadership and coaching. He puts coaching in the centre of organizational performance and
“ Any business loves the word performance especially when great people performance translates into great organizational performance. All stakeholders are thrilled to see a business succeed, but just as marketers know, strategy without execution is pretty useless and one key component for success is people” he calls his approach“ The Living System”. In this system leadership is surrounded by elements like People, Structure, Systems and Processes with a good dose of culture in the mix.
If you happen to be a student of Corporate Reputation and Communication, these elements will sound very familiar to you. And if you are a student of leadership, then you would want to know how these will impact the leadership of an organization and allow it to perform optimally. Change is probably one of the most difficult things an organization may have to go through yet as the saying goes,“ the only thing that is constant, is change.”
Now, leadership is meant to address the People side of things. Leadership styles may be diverse and have different impacts on teams within an organization. In order to drive change or transformation, a leader may need to adopt a coaching style of leadership that will allow the leader to bring out the best in each team member. The leader would then be at the forefront of equipping his team to do the same for their teams.
There are two aspects here that are important to highlight. A leader may use a coaching style of leadership. A leader may also need a coach to help him find his own feet, to find his voice and to find his style. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence comes into play here. Sometimes the leader doesn’ t know that he doesn’ t know. He may need help from a coach who can help bring out the best in him. A lot of moving parts here, that need to come together to drive overall transformation.
36
MAL 45 / 21 ISSUE