Typically, I work with two types of leaders:

Established Leaders – Most leaders are OK most of the time, but every now and then need to reboot – a new strategy, organisation change or new team - or just need a sounding board to bounce things off or help source solutions they are too time-poor to find.

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Emerging Leaders – Leaders who are at the top of your talent grid, and are preparing to take on, or have started a broader leadership role. Typically, the challenge of moving from functional to broad leadership starts on day 1 and it’s important that these leaders start strong – with a clear vision, right team, aligned organisation and strong persona and communication plan.

 
Usually with both, it starts off helping to work through a transition or strategy challenge, but often becomes an ongoing ‘pick up the phone when needed’ relationship.

 

A lot of the time it simply starts with leaders figuring out what’s important to them, how to keep their energy high or their life in balance or just to keep stress at bay. Leadership can be tough and it’s hard to lead an organisation successfully if you’re not energised, focussed and happy in yourself.

From there, the approach I typically take with leaders involves simply working through some of the questions below. As I said, it’s not rocket science, and it’s something you can easily do yourself if you’ve time and the motivation to do it but, with conflicting priorities and back to back meetings, most leaders don’t.

Usually there is an issue with one, or a few, of these areas: