Perspectives of inspirational leadership coaching (1)

High achievement always takes place in a framework of high expectation” (John Kinder).

A lot is often spoken and written about the characteristics of good leaders and how those characteristics can be developed, enhanced and/or managed. Leadership coaching is hugely beneficial in this respect because it is a practical and sustainable means of building leadership capacity. It is also a process of personal inspiration and self-motivation required by leaders in order to continuously move in the right direction. Specifically, a successful leadership coaching engagement supports leaders to adapt their increased awareness and energy to improve their lifestyle and management style.

Coaching in this regard encourages leaders to access their inner wisdom (personal inspiration) and manifest leadership characteristics that would inspire their followers. Among the most important characteristics are personal virtues such as honesty, credibility, integrity and humility. These are some of the personal characters that a transformational leader must possess in order to be an authentic leader of people. Because a true leader is in every way a dealer in hope, the people must be able to associate him or her with plain honesty and truth.

That is what gives hope to people and assures them that their leader has a clear vision and direction. Without such inspired feelings of hope, a leader will hardly engage the hearts and minds of people and inspire them to believe in their own abilities to conceive and do great things. Therefore, as a leader, you must be truthful and honest about self, particularly with regard to personal awareness. This of course relates to an understanding of who you are, what you want, what you know, and what you can do. To be a successful leader, you must convince people that you are worthy of being followed.

This is still one of the problems of leadership all over the world, and is a special problem in Africa. True leadership has failed and continues to fail in most parts of Africa mainly because people generally lack confidence in their leaders. As a result, such people remain uninspired, and can hardly be expected to compel positive changes in their sphere of influence. This is because successful leadership is determined by the inspired actions of the followers, following from the inspired actions of the leader. In other words, an inspired leader inspires others by building their energy around his own energy.

That is the principal aspect of every leadership coaching engagement. It is all about how to create and sustain personal and team energy. Without the energy of the leader and the energy of the team, there would be little or no enthusiasm and passion to engage challenges and bring about compelling changes. It is leaders that can inspire these processes that are actually transformational leaders.

In December 2012 I was invited along with Mr. Tony Dovale, “South Africa’s number one energy coach” to facilitate a weeklong transformational leadership workshop in Abuja, Nigeria. After one of the sessions, Tony Dovale and myself were engaged in a very interesting discussion with a few of the workshop participants on the issue of leadership, especially challenges and prospects of emerging African leaders. Expectedly, there was the general feeling of frustration among the discussants about opportunities spurned by most African leaders to make positive and sustainable change.

The good thing is that everyone that was involved in our discussion on that day agreed that all hope was not lost. It was in fact the consensus that transformational leadership could and would actually make its impact in major African countries and across leadership spheres and societies. For instance, we all agreed that Africa cannot afford to be left behind in the global move to have true change agents as committed leaders.

Tony Dovale in this regard was quite prophetic in suggesting that Africa would produce outstanding world leaders in years to come. He was of course anchoring his personal optimism on the famed African renaissance spirit, which is all about mind renewal and transformed thinking of leaders and their followers. Such transformational positioning of people is what essentially effects long term attitudinal and behavioural change through mind frame shifts, which in turn encourage people to buy into the change message.

It is all about anchoring the change message upon a strong belief system, which is powerful enough to empower people to be true change agents in their sphere of influence. It is this power of influence that separates transformational leaders from mediocre leaders. The major difference between the two is that while transformational leaders embody the change that they inspire, mediocre leaders fleece people through manipulative and exploitative means. These are of course not true leaders. They can best be described as “greeders”. You can read more about the transformational power of coaching at www.ceedcoaching.com.

Emmanuel Imevbere