A group of senior managers in a major world publishing company have just completed a course of leadership coaching sessions. All of the managers rated the experience as “highly valuable”. Why?

Research continually shows that leaders are made and not born. We also must recognize that leadership is a highly individual capability. Chiefs lead in a variety of alternative ways and styles. This means that their own strengths and capabilities must be drawn out by an experienced leadership coach.

The more blunt tool of leadership training which tries to foist a one-style-fits-all leadership strategy onto all the course visitors has been shown to have minimal long-term effect. The reason behind this is easy, it is because the leader wants to develop in a style that is natural to them, a style that is congruent with their persona.

The armed forces, who’ve got to produce top quality leaders, train their officer corps over times of months and years. Yet industry and commerce still believe that they can produce good quality leaders by sending them on occasional short courses.

A talented and experienced leadership coach knows that he needs to spend several months working regularly with ambitious leaders. He knows that he has got to be there to help the aspiring leader discover ways to cope with the variations in work pressures and moods that invariably influence that leader’s performance.

Leading can be lonely occasionally. Tough choices need to be made. Troublesome jobs require to be undertaken. A leadership coach gives a handy sounding board and mentor to developing leaders to allow them to exercise good judgement, to reach good calls on their own, with a little direction.

Exceptional leaders know that to succeed they need good team executives supporting them. It makes sense to develop those team managers into the best possible performers. A leadership coach can develop leaders by helping them to work out answers to challenges at the exact moment when the challenge is at it’s most urgent point. There’s no substitute for such just-at-the-right-time support.

Leadership coaching has been a major focus of David Ferrers’s coaching work since 1995. The coaching testimonials of leading leaders in major firms like Dell, GM, J&J, P&O, RBI, The Cabinet Office, Defra and Yves St.Laurent demonstrate clearly what David’s skills can do for you.

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