INsight/ What Lucy Learned

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Manila, 20 January 2021 — How to be a leader in transition.

Story

It happened a year ago in 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Lucy, a manager in an international business in Asia (let’s call her by that name), wanted to prepare herself for an executive role and decided, with the support of her company, to invest in her development as a leader. She was keen to expand her modest communication skills and to overcome some unhelpful habits. 

Already trusted as a competent manager, Lucy had her sights on becoming known as a leader for change, which she felt would help her advance in her career. She didn’t quite know how to make that work, though. Also, in recognizing the global sustainability issues of our time, Lucy was keen to find ways for her company to contribute with solutions. She realized that doing so would probably require changes at many levels in her company, and also across the different generations in the workforce.

When she started working with me in the Leader in Transition coaching program, little did we know how challenging the year would be in the conditions brought by the pandemic!

Challenge

Different from all other kinds of helping relationships, coaching is powered by a unique combination of trust, challenge, and support. For Lucy’s story, we will just highlight some of the themes that she worked on and progressed as we worked together intensively for 3 months and then continued collaborating afterward to support her in the next steps.

What came up? Lucy learned a lot more about herself, including the drivers for her behaviors, and why these had sometimes conflicted to hold her back. She found out how to influence other people for change by becoming more versatile to engage in different styles according to each audience and situation. She also discovered how to build strong habits and what to do with the voices in her head that, at times, threatened to undermine her confidence and progress. In focusing on results from her leadership transition, what she found surprising and enjoyable was the importance of frequently celebrating her progress.

There is more. To help Lucy deal with the highs and lows caused by the pandemic (in herself and in her teams), she recognized the importance of a set of behaviors that we call leadership hygiene. Lucy worked on integrating these, together with monitoring and reflection, into her daily and weekly work and life routines. Finally, she also started developing her own unique leadership signature and presence in preparation for her new role.

Question

With most of Lucy’s Aha! moments and transformations coming from practicing what she had agreed to work on, she realized that leadership development is different from training. It felt more like stepping into a 24/7 laboratory for awareness and change, both in herself and in relation to her colleagues during work time, as well as with loved ones and friends in her personal life.

Chances are that your company or organization needs more leaders too. Leaders who, like Lucy, feel a calling to grow their abilities to influence change and to make an impact on sustainability. The question is if you will be one of them. From research, we know that this is quite impossible to do by yourself. With insight from the 70-20-10 rule of leadership development, you need to acquire and use relevant knowledge (10%: the easy part), take on a big challenge with others at work (70%: the hard part), and obtain frequent feedback and support from peers, mentors, and your coach (20%: the transforming part). 

So, what will you do to develop your leadership in 2021? I’m looking out to hearing that. You can set up a free strategy session with me here to discuss how you can grow your leadership this year, starting now.