This month, Coaching Australia celebrates twenty-five years of helping leaders grow, teams thrive, and organisations build coaching cultures. To mark it, we asked our CEO Lisa Wandl for her biggest lessons and learnings from twenty-five years of coaching and leadership. Here is what she shared:
Lesson 1: Curiosity trumps judgment every time
Time and time again, I’ve witnessed that when there is a paradigm shift of leaders letting go of needing their own way of thinking to be the “right way”, and instead get genuinely curious about how their people think – that there are significant and consistently elevated outcomes – more innovation, greater ownership, and increased motivation across the team. Organisations, teams and individuals thrive!
Lesson 2: Stop being the solutions vending machine
So many leaders carry the belief that their role is to have every answer. When they let go of that, and shift their priority from getting things done to also developing their people, that is when I’ve seen the greatest success.
Lesson 3: A coaching approach transcends culture
People are people are people. I’ve seen it work across fourteen or fifteen different cultures, different sectors, industries and layers within organisations, and it has been embraced everywhere, because at its heart, it is about people and relationships.
Lesson 4: The critical trust factor
Neuroscience shows the brain performs at its best in a state of safety, not fight or flight. I’ve seen this over and over again, leaders who create that environment are far better able to leverage the potential of their teams.
Lesson 5: Go slow to go fast
I believe the only way to shift the cycle of overwhelm and endless responsibility is to slow down, take the time to be with and develop the capability within the team. Enabling the sharing of the load into the future, is the only way to break this endless cycle that is leading to mass burnout among leaders.
Over the last twenty-five years, we have had the privilege of working alongside leaders, teams and organisations, building coaching cultures together. None of this would have been possible without our wonderful community.
As we look ahead to the next chapter, our commitment and passion remain the same, to elevate humanity and potentiality in organisations.
If you are thinking about what coaching culture could look like in your organisation, we would love to talk.