INsight/ 15 Years Coaching

Photo by Wout Vanacker on Unsplash.

Manila, 5 May 2022 — What I learned in 15 years of leadership coaching.

Story

It happened in 2007. As a leading water specialist at the Asian Development Bank, I was getting more and more involved in helping colleagues and clients to improve their leadership and performance at work. ADB’s investments were already helping to increase water supply, irrigation service, wastewater treatment, river basin management, hydropower development, flood protection, and capacity building for water governance. However, faced with an emerging water crisis in Asia and the Pacific, we wanted to double the investments to meet the increasing needs for water security. That meant that we had to make lots of changes happen in our work.

Inevitably, water projects are complex and difficult to design and implement. That’s because clean water and resilient rivers are essential to our societies in social, economic, and environmental ways. Moreover, to be successful, the projects often require the involvement of local users, businesses, governments, as well as civil society, including researchers, students, and a variety of media. Getting these parties on board and letting them work together in alignment was already a big challenge for our project teams and our clients. Doubling the investments was putting extra strain on everyone, and it became clear that we would benefit from extra support to meet the new challenges. That’s when we introduced coaching into our workplace, which saw me transition into helping colleagues who asked for support. 

Meanwhile, we were also learning that many projects would only deliver their full benefits when women and men, from different generations and disciplines, would work together inclusively, and with space for youth and young professionals to help us in finding innovative and sustainable solutions. Taking all of this into account, it became clear that some of the project teams needed more work on developing interpersonal communication and leadership skills to solve the ‘people problems’ they encountered. And we learned to see the clients as leaders too, in order to create positive changes together. That led us to focus our coaching work on leadership development. For me, that meant shifting my career and upskilling in my spare time about leadership, psychology, communication, change management, and organizational development. 

Challenge

Fifteen years have now passed since I started coaching, with too many invaluable experiences to count and mention. I thank my teachers and mentors who have helped me become a professional leadership coach. In the meantime, my former colleagues have expanded their work to serve more clients in Asia and the Pacific with water security investments, which are needed more than ever to face the climate crisis and deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals in this decisive decade. Over time, I expanded what started as coaching for colleagues into a full-time practice for leadership coaching and training to help executives and water and sustainability professionals in the Asia-Pacific and beyond. Looking back and looking ahead, what are some of the most important challenges that I reflect on? There are three I’d like to share. 

Let me start with The World’s Largest Lesson which, according to emerging leader organizations like AIESEC and ADB’s Youth for Asia, is about understanding our world’s need for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Wherever you work, it’s very important to contribute to sustainability. I fully agree.  And I would like to take that largest lesson a step further by saying that The World’s Biggest Challenge is to learn, individually and together, how to make the positive changes happen to deliver on these Goals. By and large, we already know what our problems are, and what has to change. What we keep struggling with, however, is how to make these changes happen, both locally and globally. That’s where the need for leaders and leadership comes to the fore.

What I learned in 15 years of coaching is that many executives and professionals the world over are easily distracted by their drive to understand complex problems and find integrated solutions, which then get expressed in countless policies, visions, strategies, action plans, roadmaps, and project designs using the latest technologies and data. While highly competent and knowledgeable, many professionals are nonetheless at risk of becoming masters of objectifying problems and solutions in a way that removes any reference to the subjects — the people who have to make the changes happen. Hence, what I found to be lacking often in discussions and documents is how to support these change-makers, including the professionals themselves. It’s worth remembering that It takes people (subjects) to lead changes. In other words, how can we support experts to transition into leaders?

Question

This week, my question for you is inspired by what I learned from Seth Godin, a marketing guru and one of my mentors on the leadership journey. In our fast-moving world, he prompts leaders to always plan their next steps by considering carefully what has become abundant and what is becoming scarce. So I ask you, in moving forward with The World’s Largest Lesson and taking on The World’s Biggest Challenge, what has become abundant and what is becoming scarce in finding solutions to our world’s development problems?

Over the past 15 years, I would say that data, information, and knowledge on just about any topic have become abundant, even if we keep thirsting for more. And what has become scarce? Well, first there are the obvious scarcities that people in our world suffer in education, health, water, food, energy, biodiversity and all the other gaps that are illustrated by the Sustainable Development Goals. And what is scarce when it comes to The World’s Biggest Challenge of leadership to make positive changes happen?

While there is an abundance of leadership books, videos, and podcasts, I have seen in my 15 years of coaching that these will only get you so far. The real scarcity in leadership development lies in suitable opportunities for executives, experts, and professionals to transition into leaders with the support of coaches and colleagues they trust, and with safe spaces to practice and get feedback. To tackle our world’s most pressing problems, we are short of opportunities for professionals to transition into inclusive leaders as fast as possible. And we are pressed for time to make this happen so that our goals can become reality in this decade. That is what led me to choose The World’s Biggest Challenge as my purpose in life, and I welcome you to join me on the journey and make a difference together.