Develop People
As leaders, developing people becomes a huge part of the job.
One definition of leadership we use a lot at WLI is Brené Brown’s, “A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes and has the courage to develop that potential. Leadership is not about titles or the corner office. It's about the willingness to step up, put yourself out there, and lean into courage.”
The key skill set Dr. Brown references here is the ability to find the potential in people (and processes) and to develop that potential. One thing we’ve learned the hard way over the years is that if we don’t invest in developing the potential of our people, there are some predictable consequences. One is that your workload never decreases. If getting things done well depends on you, your talent, your constant instruction, then you’ll be forever busy and unable to level up your own thinking and activities. Another is that in the absence of meaningful development your top talent will likely look elsewhere.
So, when it comes to development, we look at three related but distinct leadership capabilities: coaching, mentoring and sponsoring.
Developing People with Coaching
Coaching helps people define their professional and personal goals and then supports the achievement of those goals. The primary tools of coaching are asking questions and listening. It sounds way simpler than it is. Coaching has often been confused with advice-giving or mentoring, where you are the expert, and you’re guiding someone else based on your own experiences. That may be useful at times, but at the core of coaching is a belief in the resourcefulness of the person you’re coaching. That means you trust that if you ask them the right questions, they can and will arrive at answers that are the best fit for them.
Easier said that done, when we’ve been conditioned over most of our careers that in order to be helpful or add value, we need to have the answers ourselves, not just ask the questions. It takes time and practice to truly trust that questions and listening are enough, and in fact a coach approach is more empowering and engaging than any amount of advice because it gets the other person doing the thinking, idea generation and decision-making, with the coach in a supporting role.
One of the big challenges with coaching is the letting go of control that happens when we empower someone else to make decisions. Of course, we all have different scopes of decision-making based on our role and organizations, but there we tend to underestimate how much we can let go. We had a participant in our leader coach training program describe the sense of freedom she felt in leaving for vacation after spending four solid months really investing in coaching her people. In the past she would have been “on fire”, so busy and overwhelmed managing everything before she could leave and knowing she would come back to a huge backlog and workload. After investing in coaching her people, she was relaxed and trusted that her team would keep things moving while she was gone. That is the benefit of investing in coaching and trusting in the resourcefulness of your people.
Developing People with Mentorship
We hear a lot about mentorship programs these days, and that’s a great thing. Mentoring is really about sharing your experience, expertise and lessons learned with someone else. That can be invaluable and save people a lot of time and learning on the job. Imagine if someone shared with you all the potential pitfalls to watch out for before you start a project, or all the great resources that are available that you didn’t know existed. Mentoring makes our lives so much easier.
Some organizations have structured mentorship programs where they pair mentors and mentees, and those programs can work very well, assuming all parties are on board with the pairings and the commitment associated with mentoring. But even if you don’t have a formal program, you can seek out mentorship opportunities. A couple of key success factors are choosing someone who not only has the experience you want to learn from, but also is a good fit in terms of values, personality and expectations. Speaking of expectations, start your mentoring relationship by sharing expectations with one another. What do you each expect, what are you willing to commit to, how will you stay on track and ensure the relationship is working? Address those questions up front to set yourselves up for success.
Developing People with Sponsorship
Sponsorship is finally getting some attention these days as we start to acknowledge the importance of having others open doors and include us. Sponsorship is when someone advocates for your success, promotes you directly, uses their influence, power or network to connect you with opportunities, assignments, roles or access. This kind of direct and intentional support cannot be underestimated. It can be a direct line to success and reaching our potential.
Sponsorship has always happened, but when it’s unconscious it has favoured some groups over others. The “old boys club” is essentially one-dimensional sponsorship, where men would invite men into certain circles and provide access and relationships that women and others couldn’t reach. When thinking about sponsorship, one of your key challenges is to be aware of your own unconscious biases. Do you tend to sponsor people like you? Are you proactively sponsoring people who have been historically excluded from networks and opportunities? Sponsorship is a powerful tool, and applying it equitably is key to building inclusive teams and organizations.
A Great Leader Does All Three
If you’re reading this and trying to decide whether to coach, mentor or sponsor, the answer is yes. All three! Spend some time reflecting on who to coach, mentor and sponsor and what combinations of these three development skill sets would be best suited to each person and situation.
And coaching, mentoring and sponsoring is not only what you give to others, but it’s also something to seek out for yourself. Strong leaders are always working on their leadership skill sets and getting coaching, mentorship and sponsorship is a great way to do that. Think about who you would want to coach you, mentor you, sponsor you. Be bold and ask for support and be prepared to share what you know about each role so you can help them, help you.