By Jose Davis


Management, as everyone knows, is all about planning, organizing and controlling the scarce resources available to achieve certain goals. The resources are not just the material assets or money, the biggest challenge these days is managing an organization's human resource effectively. The job switching rates over the past few years has increased dramatically, and this has compelled HR professionals to think about leadership development and succession planning. Leadership strategist and coach are particularly important in the current dynamic business.

Essentially, a coach is strategist, confidant, mentor and devil's advocate, rolled into one. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, coaches don't give advice, because advice typically reflects the giver's ideal solution. Instead, coaches help people access their solutions. In fact, new research into brain functioning provides scientific validation for some coaching principles. Among them: focusing on solutions (instead of problems) and on-going reinforcement enables the brain to produce new insights and solves problems more efficiently.

The biggest challenge organizations face when they decide to implement succession planning is the lack of resources and expertise within the company. Organizations that are in the introductory phase should go for hiring consultants and coaches from outside. External assistance in this regard will have professionals and qualified individuals plus the resources of the organization that will not be wasted on experimentation and training HR managers.

What are the roles of an effective leader? Given the situation, good leaders perform a variety of roles. They can be tradesman, managers, designers, visionaries, and coaches. When a team is led well, the tradesman and manager roles are played by team members. In fact, good leadership is the ability to leave the technical work and the management of it exclusively to the team and develop skills that allow everyone to grow.

What did organizational guru Edward Deming mean when he said that leaders should work on systems, not in systems? Leaders add the most value when they are working on improving the team and not just doing day-to-day work, handling crises, solving all the problems, and managing relationships.

What is the greatest value leaders can add? Leaders and strategist help to focus more on the team than on the work. They are also engaged in making other people successful. They will help you be more resourceful through motivation, improving your self-esteem and providing tools necessary for working around obstacles.

Coaches and strategist also enhance a sharp decline in recruitment costs. It is costly when you hire someone from the outside for an executive post. By retaining and promoting someone from inside the organization, you save a lot of costs in the selection, recruitment, and training of a new individual. Most of the time workers from outside at executive posts ask for compensation greater than that of your current employee's package.

Get a huge return on your investment. Let's face it, if making the change was easy, you'd have done it on your own by now. In many companies, coaching is de rigueur for helping executives develop their leadership skills as well as manage their time, people, and resources more effectively.




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