think we have it wrong as leadership coaches! It is becoming clearer that as I work with many leaders as their change coach, as well as assisting in building high-performing teams, the focus has been a top-down cultural change. That is only one piece of a three-pronged approach to organizational change. Step 1 is helping the senior leader change their role to “creating the future”, “nurturing identity” and being an “enabler”, not a “doer”. Step 2, while doing this, my role is to help them revise their primary leadership role by aligning their leadership team by commissioning to have their leaders to work through a novel process (to redefine their roles in the context of “managing the present”).
Step 3, most importantly to realize that there is a bottom-up group of change agents that they need to be aware of, support and not hinder. This “trialogue” requires senior leaders to be fully driven from a space of empathy, compassion and fully understand that the invisible organizational leadership networks are more powerful than the visible ones.
This takes a leader to a place where they begin to realize that leadership is not about their needs, their technical requests, etc., & more about the “other”. More to discuss about this as organizations may need to rethink their future.
