Our biggest challenges in community leadership require thought partners. Unfortunately, our hero culture encourages us to go it alone in leadership. A Leadership Coach walks with nonprofit leaders, community organizers, faith leaders, and people working for social transformation on a journey of growth in confidence, capacity, and integrity.
Here are 6 ways a Leadership Coach can amplify your work:
1) As a confidant outside your everyday relationships, a coach can offer perspective that often reframes challenges and provokes fresh thinking. A good coach will ask powerful questions in a safe space that allows a leader honest reflection on their relational realities and aspirations.
2) A good Leadership Coach offers resources, connections, networks, and personal experience to add dimension to a leader's own expertise. Over the course of a coaching relationship, the Leadership coach will determine with you what areas of your practice need toning and what areas need to be relied on further.
3) Leadership coaches are committed to the health and well being of the leader above other considerations. It's not that coaches are disinterested in the leader's specific work, it's that a good coach understands that a healthy leader whose creativity and integrity are being strengthened will be most effective in addressing the specific work the leader cares about.
4) As a source of a zoomed-out perspective, a good Leadership Coach acts as an interactive journal of sorts, helping keep track of one's goals, progress, successes, and growth. The 30,000 foot view is essential in community leadership and a coach helps you take such a view.
5) Confidence and self-awareness go hand-in-hand, which is key to gaining a sense of self-efficacy. Many leaders feel like they are a fraud about to be revealed at any moment. A Leadership Coach helps a leader gain a sense of grounded confidence that feels authentic, freeing the leader to take the required risks in their work.
6) A community leader needs space to "not know". A Leadership Coach provides a thought partner who will not lose confidence or trust in the leader simply for asking difficult questions of themselves. A good coach recognizes that the fear of "not knowing" the right answers, causes, or approaches to community challenges can paralyze a leader, causing defensiveness and sometimes isolation. Offering insights, wisdom, or simple silent presence in these moments can be just what the leader needs.
These are only a few of the ways that a Leadership Coach can help a leader be their most effective, confident, and healthy in their everyday life and work. If you'd like to talk about what a Leadership Coach would look like in your life, click here to ask a question or set up an informal conversation.