A Transformational Approach to Executive Coaching

Resent assessment of what is needed to produce good leadership has moved decidedly against the ‘great leader’ model – a model in which individuals are perceived, almost single-handedly, to drive organisations to success. In its place has emerged the ‘post-heroic’ model of leadership. This is particularly true at senior leadership levels, but how do you develop that post-heroic capability?

Whereas management is a way of doing, leadership is a ‘way of being’ and it is one’s ‘way of being’ that evolves through a transformational coaching approach, in which developing senior leadership has more to do with developing a new mind-set from which develops a new set of capacities, rather than acquiring new skills. Transformational refers to how we learn to see the world through new eyes, how we change our interpretations of experience and how we transform our views of reality. It describes increases in what we are aware of, or what we can pay attention to, and therefore what we can influence and impact as a leader.