Leadership Development
Executive und Team Coaching
Als Certified Coach by Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching(MGSCC), garantieren wir messbare Ergebnisse im Leadership Development.
Wir coachen wir ihre Teams und Leader basierend auf den Prinzipien des co-active coaching, evolutionary coaching von Richard Barrett, cultural transformation tools (CTT) von Barrett Values Centre und MGSCC.
„Ilker is an exceptional coach and mentor. He has the ability to make transformation and change happen which can lead to exceptional results for groups and individuals.“, Marcus Börner, Founder and CEO at OptioPay Group.
„Ilker has been supporting Swarm64 in our change process to an agile organization using the Scrum methodology.
Ilker’s friendly persistence in following the responsibility process and his resilience against challenges and setbacks have been instrumental to the success we are seeing. Thanks to Ilker’s contributions, we have been able to develop a shared leadership culture in which each team member accepts responsibility and takes initiative for our joint goals. Swarm64 became a much stronger organisation through working with him. I strongly recommend Ilker’s work.“, Dr. Karsten Rönner, CEO swarm64, Entrepreneur and Investor.
Stakeholder Centered Coaching
There is tale of a yogi, who had spent years in a Himalayan cave on retreat. He was meditating for a long time. One day a traveller came by and, seeing the yogi, asked him what he was doing. “I am meditating on patience,” the yogi said.
“In that case” replied the traveller, “you can go to hell!”
To which the yogi angrily retorted, “you can go to hell!”[1]
Coming back to Leadership Development, we can see similarity in the behaviour of the yogi and a leader.
Let us assume that during the leadership development process leader and coach identify an area to improve the leadership effectiveness, namely listening. Coach works with the leader. Coach and leader meet from time to time. Leader learns a lot of tools and techniques, increases awareness on what to do and what not to do to listen carefully.
Following the coaching sessions, when the leader interrupts the conversation partner during a meeting.
Leader will realize that she was not listening. Furthermore people working with her will say, “She still doesn’t know how to listen”.
In fact: leader did not improve her listening skills.
This is what people around the leader (Stakeholders) see and perceive.
Perception is reality.
As long as the leader is not able to demonstrate improved skills within the environmentwhere she is acting, there will be hardly a leadership growth.
Leader may believe that she has improved, but in reality she did not.
The leader changes behaviors and perceptions through execution on the job.
Why to involve stakeholders in coaching process?
How to involve stakeholders in coaching process?
The test of the real improvement in leadership effectiveness is the life, the real environment itself where the leader acts daily, not in isolated coaching sessions. This is done best when we involve stakeholders.
What do you think? As you learn from me, I learn from you.
„Leading Through Listening„ is the foundation based on which Ilker Demirel provides top executives and teams with effective business solutions and practical leadership applications that deliver measurable results for their specific organizational challenges. Ilker Demirel is an Executive Coach, Certified at Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching (MGSCC).
MGSCC profile
[1] I have taken this tale from the fantastic book about how meditation changes our body, mind and brain “Altering Traits” by Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson.
Leadership effectiveness: how to be aware of our perception lens
„Perception is edited observation“ David R. Hawkins
We demonstrate leadership in all our decisions, actions, and behavior. Our decisions are very much steered by the feelings we attach to our thoughts. The thoughts are generated by our assumptions, which are formed by beliefs, values. Whatever we see and perceive is the evidence of believes through behavior.
We filter out the behaviors or observed things on which we do not believe, wherefrom the statement, like „unbeliaveable“ may coming.
Our perception lenses are shaped by -among others- with family patterns, cultural values, environmental factors, religious trainings, all kind of conditioning, etc. Consequently everyone has its own perception lens.
Whatever is seen and observed is eventually relative. Human relationship is relative too. Also the communication is relative.
Everyone creates its own reality through its perception. So, perception is reality. Whether we like it or not.
The challenge is accepting/embracing the reality. That makes the difference for a leader.
In leadership development it is crucial to understand the components of our own perception lens and their impact on our behavior. Once we look at it have the clarity, we can take necessary action to work on changing the behavior or changing the believe.
Here is a small exercise you can make use of it as a leader for yourself or with your team. The idea is increasing the awareness…and having continuous dialog on it.
Beforehand: please create a trustful, respectful environment and ask for the permission of participants to run this personal, provoking exercise. People should feel safe.
I call this the ladder of perception. Here are the steps:
Now, invite yourself or your team to find a partner and share your findings.
What did you discover? What is determining your actions, behavior?
What can we do? How to deal with our perception lenses?
Have a dialog, dialog and the process is the key. That creates awareness, builds new culture.
If you liked it, give it a try; share it with your community.
Listening
Let us imagine that someone is coming to us with a problem.
And we are listening.
What may happen with us is to check in our database/thoughts (values, beliefs, experiences..) whether we had similar problem as she and what were the consequences of that problem in our case. Everything what she says is internally interpreted, evaluated by us.
With this information we get very much involved in the conversation and we sympathize with her.
This moment can be a good sign for not listening. Yes, this is not listening; it is the start of dealing with ourself, with our thoughts. If the problem is not fitting into our „list“ of „advices“ we get irritated. Irritation comes from fear and we feel out of control.
What is out of control?
…
So, what to do not to fall into the trap of „being out of control“?
What do we do when we listen?
We do this by letting go of the desire to stabilize, control the life, which is continuously changing.
This way of listening supports your colleague. She sees the problem with clarity, which gives her more confidence to solve it. She gains more trust towards you as a leader.
You as a leader have proven again your trust to your colleague, that she can solve problems and by listening you have learned a lot more about yourself as a leader.
You have extended your new areas to discover.
„Great leader have great teams“ is no more an illusion once your intention is stronger than your fear.