Find Your Leadership Path by Walking It
Great Coaching Makes the Journey Easier
Paths to Leadership offers content and coaching for developing leaders. We partner with you to achieve business and personal goals while you grow your leadership capability. We can’t solve problems for you – that’s your job. Instead, we help you see the obstacles that stand in your way and the opportunity in new habits of thinking and action, then support your responsible efforts to transform the quality of your leadership.
Our work with you is tailored to your specific needs and preferences. We connect one on one, most often at a distance via online conference, phone and email so you get what you need wherever you are, whenever you need it, for a very reasonable investment. And we know what we’re doing. As coaches, trainers and consultants to leaders at all levels for almost 40 years, we have the talent, insights, and tools to help you find your own path to leadership, one step at a time.
Why Paths to Leadership?
Results matter. There is a lot to do. Timelines are tight. Execution is essential. In a challenging business environment, success depends on delivering results reliably.
People matter. An organization doesn't work unless people make it work. It won't change until people in it change. Without the best efforts of others, you can't succeed as leader.
People need leadership. Not all the time. But if things are changing, complex or ambiguous, they need the guidance of leaders who see what they don't and know the way.
Leaders Learn
By Leading
The best learn constantly. New leaders need capability beyond what worked as an individual contributor. Veteran leaders must keep up with evolving work and diverse followers.
Classroom training helps, but isn't enough. It is too generic, too passive, and too distant from the day to day realities of leading to truly activate new thinking and habits.
Every leaders is unique, each in a different situation, with their own set of strengths, weaknesses, and preferences, and will find what works for them through trial and error
Every Leader Needs a Coach
No matter how effective you were in other roles, how much technical skill you have, or how great your personality, stepping up to lead others will challenge you. For 35+ years, we have coached, trained, and consulted to leaders at all levels. We know what effective leadership development really takes and can help you...
- See yourself and situation more clearly, past limiting blind spots.
- Challenge your thinking, opening your eyes to new ideas and possibilities.
- Focus your efforts on things that matter to you and your followers.
- Develop new capability, fully supported and accountable throughout.
Invest in Execution, Not Education
It's time to take leadership development out of the classroom and put it where it matters - on the job. No need for expensive, time-consuming travel to distant locations for generic workshops offered on someone else's schedule. You can get the coaching every leader needs, to learn while you work...
- Anywhere - via online meeting, phone, and email;
- Anytime - you have a need and opportunity to learn;
- Appropriate - to your unique needs and ambitions; and,
- Active - offering tools, techniques and tips you can use now.
How Does Paths to Leadership Coaching Work?
You connect with us via online conference, phone, or email. Meet with your coach in regular, scheduled interactions to discuss what's happening, consider alternatives, develop plans for moving forward, then follow-up to reflect on your experience and renew your plans. Or, connect on an ad hoc basis, setting up a quick conversation simply to check your thinking on a situation, seek specific advice, or just talk through your plans with an objective, trusted partner.
These are the steps in a typical coaching process...
Engage
In depth, initial conversations help us understand your situation and check that our skills and style are well matched to help you succeed.
Assess
We may suggest you collect 360 feedback (from boss, peers, reports, others) or complete a behavioural profile to clarify your capability and needs.
Focus
Considering your ambitions, and the opportunities and threats you face, we build a strategy with you to focus our efforts together and support your development.
Coach
We connect regularly to discuss what's happening, facilitate problem-solving, and offer insights or tools you can put to work immediately.
Sustain
Real growth takes discipline and time. We check in regularly to consolidate your learning, celebrate successes, and resolve any breakdowns along the way.
Who Do We Help ?
Anyone can lead! Leading is not about the position you hold, the power you wield, or the strength of your personality. Great leaders know where they are going, and nurture influence with the followers who can help them get there.
In today's dynamic business environment, quality formal and informal leadership at all levels of an organization is key to success. If you intend to deliver results, and can't do what's needed on your own, you need to lead.
Veteran Leader Tune-Up
Work is complex and always changing. Results are demanded. Followers are diverse, with high expectations of those who lead. In this context, stuff happens that challenges the capability of even very experienced leaders.
Every leader can benefit from ready access to a coach, someone who listens carefully, challenges their thinking, offers useful insights and has practical suggestions to share. For 30+ years, we've delivered that kind of coaching for leaders from the front-lines to the executive boardroom.
New Leader Acceleration
A promotion doesn't make anyone a leader. The first 90 days in a formal leadership role can set a new manager, supervisor, or front-line leader on the right path to effective leadership, or set them back in ways difficult to repair.
We help new leaders closely examine their own capability, new team, and business challenges, then develop a strategy to lay the foundation for sustained success. As they put that strategy in play, we provide coaching to build on early wins and respond effectively to breakdowns.
Aspiring Leader Preparation
Aspiring formal leaders can and should begin preparing for the predictable challenges of a new role well before they are promoted, They will need skills and habits quite different from what has made them stand out as individual contributors.
And throughout every organization, a cadre of informal leaders without formal authority are expected to deliver results by working with and through others. Their technical knowledge and skill give them credibility. Developing leadership capability prepares them to be more influential.