Confessions of a Leadership Coach

Do we live in a professional world of magical thinking?

Consider this:

Our leaders reduce complex issues into sound bites and slogans.  We cheer and applaud as if something significant has occurred.  We anxiously execute change programs, performance improvements, training and development, coaching and other interventions with the highest of hopes and beliefs that we will develop better leaders and organizations.  And yet, nothing much changes, at least over the long-term.

We even offer transformational outcomes in our programs.  Wow could it get any better than that?

Raising Up Leaders?

As good professionals trying to deliver effective programs as organization and leadership developers and coaches, we continue believing we will make difference.  Our motives (for the most part) are honorable.  Our goals are noble.  Our efforts are sincere and the work is hard.  We’re motivated and dedicated professional helpers caught between the dog and the tree.

As survey after survey tells us that employees are miserable, cultures are unhealthy – even toxic, work environments are filled with fear, favoritism, abusive power and other types of dysfunctional leadership behaviors from incompetence to grossly unethical, greedy and self-serving behaviors.

There are criminals who are called great leaders before they are busted.  So while crime may not pay, it appears that slime does in many cases.

This begs the question for all of us who wear the developer/change agent brand;

• Do we really know what we are doing?
• Is leadership development some mythical idea that few of us have ever seen?
• Or, are we all part of the great game of collusion and false agreement where each of us gets something positive (from an ego perspective) for playing our role cheerfully and enthusiastically?

As Sheldon Kopp reminds:

“By learning to pretend, I became the character I was miscast to be.”

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Some Serious Questions

Is Kopp talking about us?

So will the real Leadership Development gurus please stand up?

Or, just sit down so the game within the game can continue.

What is leadership?

Is it just another dumbed-down word for the qualities of whoever is in charge?

Or, is there something meaningful and valuable here?

We have all had good bosses/clients and bad bosses/clients.

So what?  The organizations considered many of them leaders some maybe even excellent leaders.

Is leadership just us filtering (biases and all) personality and behaviors to see who makes the cut by our personal standards and learning experiences?

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Really?

In my experience much of what passes as development is rooted in behaviorism and by design is partial and reductionistic.  I fall back and you catch me and now I trust you.  Really?

I build on your strengths and not your weaknesses (a Drucker idea in case you skipped the classics) and now you are motivated and fully engaged.  Really?

We have a conflict and with help, we “confront it.”  Now there’s no disagreement and we’re buds.  Really?

I want to be an HR consultant, coach or an OD practitioner.  I read a book or several, attend a seminar or school, buy a credential.  Now, I’m an expert and ready to help executive leaders wake up and grow up.  Really?

Is there any wonder that executives are skeptical about our profession?  Look how long it took Jack Welch to wake up.  If my remarks sound critical, please know that I am firmly in the boat with you.  And, I don’t like it!  I know we all work hard, most of us are lifelong learners, and we all try to honor the “first do no harm” rule.  But where’s the depth?

A Higher Calling

So maybe all I am suggesting is that we work harder to “get over ourselves” so that marketing higher order outcomes ceases to be an ego need as we seriously take up the practice of our profession.  Putting the “helper in a box” tools away for good.

Or, maybe the operating question is one that we were taught to ask repeatedly in evaluating our effectiveness as HR and OD practitioners, “whose needs are being served by our behavior?”  Peter Block reminds:

“If there is no transformation inside each of us, all the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institutions.”

What say you?

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Doug Ramsey is Managing Director at Designed Management, LLC
He helps with performance improvement, change mgmt consulting & coaching
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