As an executive coach, I have had many clients where the individual needing the coaching was not a good manager or a strong leader. A poor manager impacts the team negatively which often leads to lower productivity and inadequate results.
I have also coached great leaders, adored by their teams who accomplish amazing results but cannot get along with a terrible boss.
In both cases I wonder, what is a "good boss" and why does coaching work to make them more successful?
A recent New York Times article, March 13, 2011, described the process that Google, (the mega giant of information) used in ascertaining what is a productive, successful leader as measured by their teams. The Google HR folks looked at several years worth of data, massaging the information into numerous categories in order to discover what made a "good" leader. After the complex process was completed, Google's HR folks came up with 8 significant traits.
What was so interesting about the ranking of these 8 traits was that coming in dead last - remember this is Google, the king of technology, the master of information - was "technical expertise'!
The two most vital traits for successful leadership as a boss was having a clear vision for the team and connecting with the team members in more social terms. In other words, good bosses know where they are going and make consistent, quality time for the individuals needed to get to the goal. The individual team members willingly followed bosses they trusted with the team's success.
It turns out that even at Google, leadership is not about the hard skills, but rather about the soft ones. People leave companies when they have a bad boss. They thrive when they feel involved, valued, communicated with, and trust their leader.
I am not sure that hundreds of pages of data was needed to prove that the leaders and bosses at Google have the same traits as the leaders elsewhere. Research has shown the same results over and over again. Yet, when Google did their analysis, the results were similar.
Executive Coaching enhances the social soft skills and eliminates behaviors that get in the way of success. So what does Google do for their less than good leaders, you guessed it. They get the individual a coach!!
About Me
- Dr. Dina
- Dr. Lichtman is an executive and career coach, who has created behavioral, changes in the hundreds of leaders with whom she has worked. As a trained therapist, with a profit and loss business background, she has the added benefit of understanding the individual, and the interplay between emotional intelligence and success in the business environment. By building on positive attributes, Dr. Lichtman has been able to reduce the time needed to create sustainable changes.
