While the world continues to operate under COVID-19 restrictions, leaders in organisations are facing accelerated levels of disruption.
Disruption levels had already increased thanks to economic volatility, industry disruption, geopolitical concerns, the rapid shift to AI and automation and is now further enhanced by the impacts of COVID-19.
Leaders need new capabilities to continue to achieve their ever-changing business goals. They need to lead with agility. They need to influence through complexity and ambiguity to drive innovation. Leaders also need to be there to support their teams and continue to keep their organisation on the right track to achieve success
Leaders now have to lead at a higher speed, in addition to coaching, facilitating collaboration, and communicating across functions. These expectations are placed on leaders, while many of them have remote team members comprising of a mix of machine and humans.
A lot is being asked of leaders right now. It is, therefore, essential for us to show empathy to leaders as they too are facing professional and personal challenges.
As an executive business coach, I believe it is essential to support our leaders in business and industry now more than ever. An executive coach should focus on building a leaders skills and competencies that are needed to face the future with confidence.
Like most of us, leaders need to figure out how to combat the stress and increased pressure they are facing. They need to learn how to recharge.
As part of strengthening a leaders agility, an executive coach should challenge a leader to focus on getting ahead of the change. This process involves predicting change instead of merely reacting to it.
Just as leaders benefit from working with an executive coach, leaders need to develop their own coaching skills to help team members and their peers in these challenging times. By doing this and focusing on relationships leaders will improve engagement and deepen trust within their organisation.
In this disruptive time, a leader needs to identify each team’s purpose and goals clearly. The leader needs to ensure that not only they but the whole team knows the goals and their role in achieving them. Further to this, the leader should encourage cross-functional networks across the organisation.
An executive business coach should also encourage leaders to increase autonomy for their teams and help them to define what’s meaningful about their daily work.
Together, leaders and their teams can get through these trying times and come out the other end as robust and agile individuals.
Learn more about the benefits of working with an executive business coach.