Improving Health is session 4 in in our 6-part series Wellbeing at Work: A 6-Part Series for Alumni.

Health is an outcome, a state of being and a resource for living that allows people to function and participate in work and life. We focus on the awareness, motivation, values, and behaviors associated with optimal functioning for both body and mind. Enhanced efficiency, capacity for innovation, the ability to manage and leverage stress, navigate uncertainty, and effectively collaborate are all related to brain health.

This 90-minute session will help you define health in the context of work and practice leadership behaviors that encourage optimal functioning for both body and mind. Several activities will help you understand why health is important and how to promote healthy behaviors and mindsets with those around you. You’ll be provided a guided workbook for the session, and connect with smaller groups of 3-4 in breakout rooms.

What You’ll Learn

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Define health and explore implications for leadership
• Identify opportunities to strengthen your health and the health of those around you
• Reduce overwork, multitasking, false urgency, and toxic behaviors known to increase burnout symptoms
• Promote brain breaks, embrace energy peaks, and encourage strategic attention to help others thrive

Please note: To enhance program experience, attendance will be limited and is expected to fill quickly. If you find you can no longer attend, please be sure to cancel your registration to open a spot for others.

More on the series: In this complimentary 6-part series from October 2025 through March 2026, alumni will have the opportunity to experience our Wellbeing at Work Live Online modules, normally available for custom programming.  Join 1 or all, as these program sessions are designed to be experienced on their own or combined for a holistic wellbeing experience.

The post Improving Health: CCL Alumni Network Wellbeing Series appeared first on CCL.

In today’s increasingly interconnected and crisis-prone world — where challenges pile up faster than solutions — leaders like you face more barriers than ever. You’re called upon not just to manage individual problems but to steer your team through a constantly shifting terrain of interconnected issues or “polycrises”.

We know you are busy, which is why we designed this abbreviated learning experience just for you, our CCL Alumni Network.

It is designed to the spark relationships and breakthroughs leaders need now. Together with other local alumni, you will explore the leadership trends shaping our world.

This is a complimentary experience designed specifically for our valued alumni. With only 30 seats available, your registration is a commitment to invest in yourself and further your own leadership development journey.

*If your availability changes, please let us know by canceling your registration at least 7 days prior to the event to open up your seat to another leader.

What to Expect:

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• A custom-programmed learning experience exploring ways to manage a web of interconnected challenges amplifying each other’s effects
• Direct connection with CCL faculty AND one of our Senior Research Scientists
• The opportunity to connect with local leaders and expand your professional network
• Space to reflect and reconnect on your continued leadership journey
• Breakfast and lunch

The post From Polycrisis to Possibility: A CCL Alumni Network Experience in San Diego appeared first on CCL.

At least, that’s what they say. But for many of us, the holiday season can feel more like the season of stress, long lines, and countdowns. Whether we’re worried about meeting deadlines or in-laws, many of us muddle through the holidays and return to work wondering where the time went.

While some of the events to come over the next few weeks are inevitable, there’s a helpful technique you can use to help maximize your joy this holiday season — it’s called savoring.

Savoring is the scientific term for deliberately enhancing and prolonging your positive moods, experiences, and emotions.

You’ve probably done it before. Perhaps you closed your eyes to help you appreciate a moving symphony performance or stared in awe at your infant’s smile, trying to make sure you remembered every aspect of that moment. It’s important to note that savoring is not a mood or emotion itself, but rather a way of approaching positive emotions. For instance, you could savor feeling awe, interest, delight, love, pride, amusement, or contentment.

Why Savoring Is Linked to Happiness

Consciously savoring the good things in life is important because neuroscience research suggests that our brains have a negativity bias. Negative things tend to stand out in our minds, while positive things tend to be easily dismissed or forgotten. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, given that remembering mistakes and bad experiences (like eating a poisonous fruit or being attacked by a wildcat) was important for survival.

But now, constantly ruminating over what went wrong probably does more harm than good. According to our former board member and positivity expert Barbara Fredrickson, people who see more positive than negative things in their lives tend to be more happy and successful, as well as more resilient leaders.

Considering this, it’s perhaps not surprising that savoring — or being good at taking in good things — is linked to increased happiness, more life satisfaction, and lower levels of depression, and it even enables leaders to support employee wellbeing.

In fact, some research suggests that savoring may be the secret behind why money doesn’t often buy happiness: As people become wealthier, they stop savoring the little things, so while their wealth increases, their savoring doesn’t, and neither does their happiness.

Savoring is also uniquely tied to stress. People who are struggling with rumination, stress, and burnout tend to have a harder time savoring things. But when stress is lifted, savoring seems to automatically kick in. Think of how good it feels to enjoy a quiet morning after meeting a big deadline, or to arrive back in a quiet hotel room after a long, rough day of travel.

Neuroscience research shows that sustained activation of a region of your brain called the ventral striatum is related to both savoring and lower levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), suggesting the possibility that one might help suppress the other.

How Leaders Can Find Joy & Maximize Holidays

Ready to try this positivity booster yourself? Science suggests that these 4 savoring strategies can help you savor joy over the holidays and the last days of the year, or really, in any season:

4 Savoring Strategies

1. Bask in happy moments.

Be present in the moment. Unlike a mindfulness practice, which emphasizes detached observation, savoring involves actively seeking out and soaking in the positive emotions using your 5 senses.

This comes more easily when you set your intentions ahead of time regarding where, when, and what you’re going to savor. For instance, if you plan to savor your family holiday dinner, you might notice special smells of your favorite foods, the sound of laughter with your relatives, enabling you to feel more grateful for your time together and less perturbed by a snide comment or a dry turkey.

• Try it out: Try selecting a few specific moments or events over the next few weeks that you plan to savor. Maybe it’s watching loved ones unwrap gifts, savoring a tasty meal, or being fully present when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. Whatever the occasion, remember to take in the enjoyable sensory, emotional, and relational aspects of the experience and hold on to them for as long as you can.

2. Wear your joy on your sleeve.

Put a smile on your face. Really! Another way to elevate your positive experiences is through your non-verbal behaviors and expressions. We typically think of our physical reactions as simply the result of our emotions (for example, we smile because we feel happy). However, science suggests the chain reaction goes both ways — smiling actually makes us feel happier, while hunching our shoulders and crossing our arms can make us feel more upset.

• Try it out: This holiday season, try intentionally laughing, smiling, hugging, exchanging high fives, jumping for joy, and doing the happy dance to amplify your happy moments.

3. Engage in positive mental time travel.

Let your mind wander. Even if you aren’t experiencing something positive in the present moment, you can still practice savoring. We all have the ability to “time travel” within our minds to a more positive moment — whether it’s sometime in the past or in our anticipated future. Studies show that vividly reminiscing over positive experiences in the past and eagerly anticipating future joyful occasions can boost your happiness levels, both in the moment and over time.

• Try it out: Think about a time when you felt so happy, you thought you would burst. Remember how you felt in that moment (Giddy? Grateful? Excited?). Replay the event in your mind as if you were reliving it. Remember what you were thinking, seeing, doing. Recall who else was there and why that moment was so special.

Alternatively, you could take a moment to think about what aspect of the upcoming week you’re most excited about. Really immerse yourself in the vision of the positive things that could happen.

4. Share your gratitude with others.

Connect meaningfully. While the first 3 savoring strategies can be done solo, this last one requires connecting with other people. Research suggests that sharing positive events with others is a great way to further amplify and savor the good things in your life. This strategy works best when you share with someone you’re close to and when that someone is likely to mirror back your positive emotions.

This creates an upward spiral of positivity. In fact, some research suggests involving others in your savoring can not only increase the positive impact of events, but also boost your mental and physical resilience.

This is consistent with our findings about the importance of gratitude in the workplace, too.

• Try it out: Do some savoring with others this holiday season by taking the time to connect with people who are important to you. Get hot chocolate with a valued colleague, or put aside work to spend quality time with a family member you don’t get to see often. Use the opportunity to share what’s going well in your world, reminisce over a memory or experience you both shared, or let them know how grateful you are to have them in your life.

A Final Word on Finding Joy With Savoring Strategies

Of course, all new habits take some practice, so don’t let yourself get frustrated if you forget to use these savoring strategies or if you don’t find joy and feel positive results right away. Just keep them in mind and try them again later. With time and practice, savoring can help you be a happier person and more effective leader, bringing more joy to the world — and to yourself.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Let us help you be more intentional about cultivating positivity in your leadership through savoring strategies and other wellbeing tips. Stay updated on our latest insights by signing up for our newsletters.

The post How to Maximize Joy & Savor the Holidays appeared first on CCL.

Making Connection is session 3 in in our 6-part series Wellbeing at Work: A 6-Part Series for Alumni.

Connection involves forming and maintaining healthy and strong interpersonal relationships, which help to guard against burnout and create an environment in which all employees thrive. Connection is related to the level of trust within teams, the quality and strength in relationships, motivation, commitment and is deeply tied to a sense of belonging.

This 90-minute session will help you define connection and practice leadership behaviors that help those around you feel more connected and engaged at work. It involves several activities to help you understand why connection is important and how to build it. You’ll be provided a guided workbook for the session, and connect with smaller groups of 3-4 in breakout rooms.

What You’ll Learn

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Define connection and explore implications for leadership
• Identify opportunities to strengthen connections both in person and virtually
• Enhance others’ connection, belonging, and commitment inside of an organization

Please note: To enhance program experience, attendance will be limited and is expected to fill quickly. If you find you can no longer attend, please be sure to cancel your registration to open a spot for others.

More on the series: In this complimentary 6-part series from October 2025 through March 2026, alumni will have the opportunity to experience our Wellbeing at Work Live Online modules, normally available for custom programming.  Join 1 or all, as these program sessions are designed to be experienced on their own or combined for a holistic wellbeing experience.

The post Making Connection: CCL Alumni Network Wellbeing Series appeared first on CCL.

Dates: Wed., Oct 22, 2025 – Wed., Mar 11, 2026

Leading with wellbeing is associated with engagement, creativity, job satisfaction, and performance. Specifically, high levels of wellbeing have been shown to reduce employee burnout and enhance trust, innovation, and resiliency.

As an exclusive learning opportunity to the CCL Alumni Network, we are excited to offer a complimentary 6-part series, where alumni will have the opportunity to experience our Wellbeing at Work Live Online modules, normally available for custom programming. Join one session or all, as these program sessions are designed to be experienced on their own or combined for a holistic wellbeing experience.

We developed these modules to help participants explore the awareness, motivation, values, and behaviors for optimal functioning of both body and mind. In them, we focus on 6 components of leading with wellbeing that help leaders enhance their own leadership and wellbeing — as well as that of their colleagues and direct reports. The 6 keys to leading with wellbeing are:

1. Purpose
2. Growth
3. Health
4. Agency
5. Connection
6. Resilience

As you engage in the series, you will learn to:

• Identify 6 areas of leading wellbeing at work
• Practice wellbeing-related leadership behaviors and beliefs
• Create environments where others can thrive

By the end, you’ll be equipped with skills needed to foster environments where you and your teams can truly thrive.

Series Overview

Stay connected throughout the series as we explore all 6 dimensions of Leading Wellbeing. Each session builds new insight and practice to strengthen how you lead and live.

Session 1: Finding Purpose | Wednesday October 22, 2025

Clarify your core values, learn to align personal purpose with organizational goals, and practice ways to help others do the same.

Marin Burton, PhD

Session 2: Building Resilience | Wednesday November 12, 2025

Define resilience and practice leadership behaviors that help those around you positively adapt and grow in response to challenges.

Andi Williams, MAEd

Session 3: Making Connection | Wednesday December 10, 2025

Register Here

Identify opportunities to strengthen connections both in-person and virtually, and enhance others’ connection, belonging, and commitment inside of an organization.

Paige Graham, PhD

Session 4: Improving Health | Wednesday January 21, 2026

Register Here

Discover how leaders foster brain health, energy, and resilience for peak performance.

Peter Ronayne, PhD

Session 5: Recognizing Agency | Wednesday February 18, 2026

Register Here

Learn to boost autonomy, confidence, and motivation — key drivers of wellbeing and leadership.

Julie Neill, MSc

Session 6: Catalyzing Growth | Wednesday March 11, 2026

Register Here

Explore how a growth mindset and learning culture fuel individual and organizational success.

Dana Washington, MA

The post Wellbeing at Work: A 6-Part Series for Alumni appeared first on CCL.

You may be pretty familiar with the model of the external leadership coach. But what if you need to coach a subordinate or a peer within your organization?

One of the most powerful responsibilities of leadership is helping others grow. Yet many leaders hesitate when it comes to putting themselves in the role of a coach. It may feel like a challenging task to coach a colleague or direct report, and you may wonder: What do I ask? How do I guide without simply giving advice?

That’s where a proven coaching framework and knowing some key coaching principles for leaders can help.

At CCL, we know from experience that coaching doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right approach, leaders at any level can use coaching conversations to build trust, improve relationships, and strengthen performance. Our world-class executive leadership coaches use our proven coaching framework and principles to coach others.

By applying the same coaching model and tips in your own conversations, you’ll improve your skills, confidence, and impact. These are the essential coaching principles for leaders to master, and the foundational coaching model they’re built upon.

The Assessment – Challenge – Support Coaching Model: A Practical Tool

Assessment – Challenge – Support (ACS) is our simple, proven leadership coaching framework that provides a clear path for guiding coaching conversations. Instead of relying on a script or feeling pressured to have all the answers, ACS helps you spark self-awareness, stretch thinking, and encourage follow-through.

Here’s what using this coaching framework looks like in practice.

Step 1: Assess — Where Are They Now?

Every good coaching conversation begins with curiosity. The Assess phase is about understanding your coachee’s current reality and inviting them to reflect.

Rather than jumping in with solutions, you create space for them to surface their own insights. This step helps build trust and sets the stage for growth.

Sample questions you might ask:

• What’s working well for you in this situation?
• Where are you feeling stuck?
• How do you see your role in this challenge?

By encouraging them to slow down and assess, you help the other person feel heard and increase their self-awareness, and you gain a clearer picture of where to guide the coaching conversation.

Step 2: Challenge — What’s Possible?

Once you’ve listened, it’s time to stretch their thinking. A key principle of coaching is creating a safe, supportive, yet challenging environment. Challenge isn’t about criticism; it’s about encouraging people to reframe and explore new possibilities.

A well-placed challenge helps your coachee to recognize assumptions, uncover hidden biases, or consider bolder options. Often, this is where breakthrough insights happen.

You might ask:

• What assumptions might you be making here?
• What options haven’t you considered yet?
• If you weren’t afraid of failing, what would you try?

Challenge opens the door to growth and invites people to look beyond their comfort zones and step into new possibilities and different ways of thinking and acting.

Step 3: Support — What’s Next?

Coaching isn’t complete without encouragement and follow-through. The Support phase is about helping the person translate any insight into action.

Playing the role of coach, you provide accountability and reassurance, but the ownership stays with them. This is where momentum builds.

Questions to consider asking:

• What’s one action you can commit to this week?
• How can I support you as you move forward?
• Who else could help you succeed?

Support ensures the coaching conversation isn’t just talk. It becomes a catalyst for real change.

6 Core Principles of Effective Coaching for Leaders

While ACS gives you a practical model for everyday coaching conversations, effective leadership coaching is also grounded in broader foundational principles and strategies.

Whether you’re an external executive coach or a leader coaching others within your organization, what it takes to coach people is fairly similar, and these 6 coaching principles for leaders will help you succeed.

1. Create a safe and supportive, yet challenging environment.

Coaching is most effective when people feel both safe and stretched. Too much challenge without support erodes trust. Too much support without challenge leads to stagnation. Strive for balance. (ACS is built on this very foundation.)

You want to build trust and confidence, encourage honesty and candor, boost morale, and help your coachee feel psychologically safe at work. It’s up to you to create an environment where risk-taking feels rewarding, not risky, so keep your attitude as open and as nonjudgmental as possible, and let the coachee know you support and respect them, even as you test their knowledge and skills.

2. Work within the coachee’s agenda.

Coaching isn’t about your personal priorities. When holding a coaching conversation, let the coachee decide which goals to work on and even how to go about improving. If you need to address organizational needs, shift into a managerial role so that the coaching relationship remains collaborative. This is an important coaching principle that leaders should know to preserve trust and effectiveness.

3. Facilitate and collaborate.

The best coaches don’t give answers; they ask good questions. Focus on using active listening skills when coaching others. Really hear the coachee’s needs and avoid filling the lesson with your own life stories and theories. Active listening and collaboration ensure that the coachee owns their next steps. Action items rest with the coachee — with you acting as the facilitator and collaborator. Your role is to guide, not to lecture.

4. Advocate self-awareness.

You want your coachee to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses — a prerequisite skill for any good leader. In the same way, you should understand how your behaviors as a coach impact the people around you. Demonstrate a sense of awareness in yourself, and you’re more likely to foster a similar self-awareness in your coachee. You may also want to share some specific ways to boost self-awareness.

5. Promote learning from experience.

Most people can learn, grow, and change only if they have the right set of experiences and are open to learning from them. As a coach, you can help your coachee reflect on past events and analyze what went well (and what didn’t). Foster experiential learning and using experience to fuel development, and your coachee will continue to improve long after the end of your lessons.

6. Model what you coach.

Be a leader yourself.

This, the last of the 6 principles of coaching for leaders, may be the most difficult to embody — as it means putting into practice the leadership lessons you’ve been trying to communicate.

And remember, if you don’t feel you have the capacity to coach on a particular issue, refer your coachee to someone else who has experience in that area or a trusted executive coaching services provider.

Why Coaching Principles Matter

Coaching is no longer the domain of outside experts alone. Leaders at every level and in every industry are expected to support growth and development within their teams.

By combining our proven and practical ACS leadership coaching framework with these 6 coaching principles that leaders should know, you can transform everyday conversations into powerful opportunities for performance and growth.

The result? Your team feels safe, stretched, supported — and equipped to step into the future.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Improve your leadership and enhance your ability to coach others with our Better Conversations Every Day coaching & conversational skills training to gain practical coaching tips and strategies to be a more effective leader-coach.

The post The 6 Principles of Leadership Coaching, Based on Assessment – Challenge – Support appeared first on CCL.

You probably already know that 360 assessments can give you comprehensive feedback on your job performance by giving you a view of yourself from multiple perspectives — including your direct reports, peers, bosses, and superiors, as well as your own self-perception.

We pioneered using 360 assessments for development and believe 360s are a critical tool that can be used in a wide array of leadership development initiatives. Understanding your 360 results is essential for helping identify your strengths and development needs, and for improving your self-awareness around critical leadership competencies. These results can also give you specific direction for how to improve and take your leadership skills to the next level.

Your 360 Results Can Help Prevent (and Predict) Career Derailment

At CCL, we’ve conducted many studies on the use of assessments and 360 feedback results.

We’ve also examined how executives can keep their career on track instead of derailing. “Derailed” is a term that Morgan McCall and Mike Lombardo coined nearly 50 years ago to refer to the careers of high-performing employees identified as having the potential to move up in the organization and take on higher levels of leadership responsibility, but who don’t live up to that evaluation of their potential. They plateau below their expected level of achievement, or they reach higher levels only to fail miserably, resulting in being demoted or fired. For these managers, their careers have derailed from the track that their organization had expected them to stay on.

By studying the traits of those who have derailed and those who made it to higher levels of the organization, our researchers have identified the characteristics that indicate a leader is more or less likely to derail. These are helpful to keep in mind when interpreting 360 feedback results. Among our findings:

• Leaders with lower ratings in their 360 results on task and interpersonal aspects of leadership are at greater risk of derailing in their careers, as compared to leaders who have higher ratings of task and interpersonal leadership.
• Leaders’ self-ratings of their task and interpersonal leadership skills tend to be poor indicators of whether others perceive them to be at risk of career derailment.
• Peer, direct report, and supervisor ratings of task and interpersonal leadership in the 360 results report tend to be reasonably good indicators of whether a leader is perceived to be at risk of experiencing career derailment. Peer ratings tend to be the best predictor of whether a leader is at risk of derailing.
• When discrepancies exist in 360 results between self- and observer-ratings, over-raters (leaders whose self-ratings are higher than their observers’ ratings) tend to be perceived as being more at risk of career derailment than under-raters (leaders whose self-ratings are lower than their observers’ ratings).

How to Interpret Your 360 Assessment Results: 3 Takeaways

Based on these findings, here are the 3 key takeaways from our study:

1. Improving task and interpersonal leadership skills will reduce your risk of derailment.

In our research, task leadership includes the following work responsibilities:

• Delegating and organizing work;
• Setting a work team’s direction; and
• Taking charge or action when needed.

Interpersonal leadership includes the following:

• Praising direct reports for their hard work;
• Mentoring others;
• Coaching direct reports;
• Resolving a group’s interpersonal conflict; and
• Negotiating effectively with others.

Make a proactive plan to improve in both these areas based on your 360 results, and your leadership effectiveness will significantly increase.

2. All raters matter, but especially consider 360 feedback results from peers.

While it’s important to pay attention to feedback from your direct reports, supervisors, and others in your 360 results, you may want to give extra weight or attention to your peers’ ratings of your leadership skills, given how effective these ratings in particular have been found at predicting career derailment.

3. Self-ratings are especially useful for comparing self-perception vs. others.

Self-ratings help you see how you rate yourself on leadership skills — relative to your direct reports, peers, and supervisors. How you rate yourself in relation to your raters provides an indication of your perceived risk level of derailing in your career.

Specifically, if you receive higher leadership ratings in your 360 results and your self-ratings are in agreement with your raters’ ratings, you tend to be more self-aware and therefore aren’t very likely to derail in your career.

On the other hand, if you discover in your 360 results that you tend to score yourself higher than your raters do, this can indicate that you have a higher risk of career derailment. If you find yourself in this situation, consider taking active steps to work on increasing your self-awareness and seek out some coaching to improve your performance.

Reflecting On Your 360 Results

Setting goals and creating a development plan of action are just as important as measuring and assessing your current skill levels.

The best way to approach your 360 feedback results is to give yourself some time to think about the ratings. On your own — or with help from a trusted peer or mentor — you can reflect on the competencies and consider what you do well and not as well. Then, ask yourself these questions:

• What do I consider to be strengths, weaknesses, or mid-range skills?
• How might different people have different perspectives of my strengths and weaknesses?
• Which of my strengths are most important for continued success in my organization?
• Which of my development needs are most important for continued success in my organization?
• Which of my mid-range capabilities (not clearly a strength or development need) are most important for continued success in my organization?

Next, think about 1–2 development goals. You might:

• Identify one of your strengths to capitalize on, or choose a mid-range capability and work to make it stronger.
• Identify a weakness that you want to work on transforming into a mid-range strength.
• Compensate for a weakness by “owning it” and adopting strategies to work around it.

Regardless of which you choose, take a look at our tips for setting achievable goals. You may want to consider sharing with your raters 3 things you learned from your 360 results and 3 things you plan to do based on their feedback. You can also ask for their help in holding you accountable as you work toward your 3 new goals.

Finally, think about using your experiences to fuel your development and whether you could seek out developmental assignments or other experiences to help you learn to lead and bring you closer to your goals.

In summary, 360 feedback results can be valuable to both you, as an individual leader, and to your organization, playing a critical role in facilitating your growth and development over the course of their career.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Our world-class leadership coaches can help you get more actionable insights from your 360 results, and coaching on your 360 feedback is included in nearly all our core leadership training programs.

The post How to Get the Most From Your 360 Results appeared first on CCL.

No matter your background, industry, or where in the world you live, stepping into a leadership role brings challenges. The skills and knowledge that got you there may not be the same ones you need to thrive in your role.

Sometimes you simply want to perform better. Or your role requires a new mindset, skillset, or approach.

And sometimes, you’re facing a crisis or major transition and need support while preparing yourself for the future.

How Does Leadership Coaching for Performance Work?

Coaching for performance is a proven way to address these challenges and enhance skills that directly impact your effectiveness as a leader, elevating your performance and accelerating your growth.

It’s highly personalized, one-on-one professional development that gives you timely feedback on the issues most important to you.

Below, we’ll outline how coaching can improve your performance and how to get the most value from your relationship with a leadership coach.

How Coaching Improves Performance: 5 Indicators of Impact

Coaching for performance is often used to address specific performance gaps or to support the development of key skills needed for role success. A coach can provide clarity and help you work through current questions, decisions, or challenges you’re facing.

From our research with leaders who experienced coaching within a broader leadership development engagement, when evaluating the impact of coaching, particularly coaching for performance, look for these signs of improvement:

• Greater self-awareness: You see challenges in new ways and understand yourself better. You gain new insights into yourself as a leader within your organization.
• Increased perspective: You understand others more fully, including why they might think and act the way they do, as well as the larger context. You thoughtfully adjust your approach when necessary.
• Improved communication: You find ways to convey what’s important to you, to the business, and to others, and notice and leverage opportunities to have open, candid conversations with your team.
• Enhanced wellbeing: You feel able to grow from experiences and adversity and energized to persevere through challenges you’re facing.
• Action planning: You maximize value with your limited time and focus your efforts and energy where it matters most.

Tips for Getting Started With a Leadership Coach

What to Expect

A coaching engagement typically begins by pairing you with the right coach. Online platforms make connecting with a coach today more accessible than ever, so you can connect with someone who understands your industry, challenges, language, or focus area — no matter where you’re located.

You may gather feedback by taking assessments, like 360-degree assessments, conflict style inventories, or change-readiness profiles, to get insights into your strengths, tendencies, and blind spots. These tools can help guide your conversations with your coach and provide personalized direction.

Even without assessments, you’ll benefit from having a coach as a sounding board, helping you navigate current challenges while preparing for what’s next.

Together, you and your coach will define your goals, agree on how to measure success, and set expectations around confidentiality and communication. Then, over the course of several months, your coach will help you apply what you already know, discover new perspectives, and increase your self-awareness and resilience.

The goal: use coaching to improve your performance, help you face challenges more effectively, and grow your leadership effectiveness.

Common topics that come up in coaching for performance often include how to handle crises, resolve interpersonal conflicts, manage work-life balance and integration, and gain clarity on complex issues.

Your coach won’t hand you ready-made solutions. Instead, they’ll help you uncover assumptions, ask better questions, and reveal new leadership strategies through self-discovery.

Often, a coaching engagement wraps up with a reflection session where you and your coach review your progress, identify remaining challenges, and outline next steps to support your continued growth.

What to Consider

Finding the right coach isn’t just about credentials; it’s about fit. Coaching works best when there’s a strong match between you and your coach. A coach who was a great fit for someone else may not be the best choice for you.

Here’s what to keep in mind when starting a relationship with a coach to begin coaching to improve performance:

• Consider whether the coach has the experience and skills to support the goals and challenges you’re facing. Do they understand your industry or situation?
• Once you’re matched, you’ll likely begin with an in-person or virtual session to get to know one another and start building trust.
• From the beginning, work together to make your goals and expectations clear, so the partnership has a strong foundation.

4 Questions to Help You Get the Most From Your Coaching Engagement

A good coaching outcome requires a good coaching relationship. Asking the right questions in the beginning sets the tone for a strong coaching partnership.

To maximize the experience and set yourself up for success in coaching to improve performance, ask these 4 questions:

1. How will coaching sessions take place?

Consider whether you’d prefer in-person sessions, virtual coaching, or a combination of communication methods.

2. What kind of schedule will work best?

Think about session frequency, and whether your coach will be available between sessions to acknowledge progress or troubleshoot barriers.

3. How is confidentiality handled?

Coaching requires openness. It only works if you know confidentiality is protected.

4. How are fees and payments handled?

Clarify details like additional costs, cancellation policies, or what happens if you need to end the coaching relationship early.

Leverage Coaching to Enhance Your Performance

Remember, coaching is a 2-way relationship. While your coach will provide you with challenge and support, your role is to engage actively, be open to new perspectives, and try new approaches.

When you fully engage in the process, coaching helps you grow, both personally and professionally. It equips you to adapt, lead effectively, and contribute at your highest potential — no matter your role or context. It can help you prepare mentally, emotionally, and professionally to lead through challenges and navigate new opportunities. Leadership coaching improves performance and is a sound investment in yourself and your organization’s success.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Whether you want to continue your post-program coaching experience or start a new one, personalized coaching to improve performance can equip you to lead more effectively through your leadership challenges. Learn more about our high-impact leadership coaching services.

The post Coaching for Performance: Maximize Your Opportunity for Success appeared first on CCL.

In today’s times of uncertainty and change, leaders need to be more agile than ever. Adapting to new business strategies, working across cultures, dealing with virtual and hybrid teams, while facing industry and geopolitical disruptions — these all demand that leaders and their teams are flexible and agile. The willingness and ability to continue learning throughout your career is more important now than ever.

So, what do you do when you don’t know what to do?

To be a high-performer and increase your long-term career potential, you need a way to deal with the unknown — and fast.

We all need to learn to adapt and thrive in ambiguous or new situations, and as noted in our book, Learning Agility: Unlock the Lessons of Experience, when you don’t know what to do, learning agility is the key.

The ability to learn from experience is also a critical predictor of success as a leader, according to decades of our research. (Learn more about how to gauge if you’re an agile learner likely to have a long career.)

Learning agility is about knowing how to learn — knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do. It’s about learning from experience and applying it in new ways, adapting to new circumstances and opportunities.

It’s never too soon (or too late) to increase your learning agility.

So, if you want to increase your performance — and your long-term potential — you can boost your learning agility in several ways.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Build Your Learning Agility

Follow These 4 Tips for Improving Your Learning Agility

With improved learning agility, you’re able to make the most out of your experiences. As you build the habits that help you figure things out as you go, you’ll improve how you navigate new and difficult situations and increase your contribution to your organization.

To excel at learning from experience and to succeed in changing times, follow our 4 tips for learning agility:

1. Be a seeker.

Seek out new and diverse experiences. Memorable experiences impact the way in which you lead and manage, so seek out more and different experiences. Immerse yourself in situations that broaden your skills and perspective. Explore new pathways.

• Embrace the challenge of the unfamiliar; don’t just go through the motions. If you react to the new learning opportunity by staying close to your comfort zone, you minimize struggle and discomfort — and you also miss out on the corresponding rebound in growth and performance. The end result is that you’re pretty much the way you were before, and the full power of the new experience is lost. If you’re up for it, you may consider raising your hand for a tough assignment at work and asking for a heat experience to accelerate your learning.
• Take on a new challenge that scares you. Find something that is meaningful, but not so important that failure will have serious personal consequences. Most importantly, tell others what you’re doing, and ask for their help and support. Taking on new challenges allows you to develop new skills and perspectives that may become an important part of your repertoire in the future.
• Don’t get stuck on first solutions. We often choose the first solution to come to mind, rather than taking time to consider whether it’s truly the optimal course over the long term. By trying out new approaches, you can uncover ways of doing things that could save time and energy and surface new learning that may otherwise haven’t been considered. Look beyond the obvious or the easy. Bring in other points of view. Find another way to understand the problem. Approach it from a different angle. If you’re typically data-driven, seek out stories or go get some hands-on, action-driven insight. For each problem you face, challenge yourself to come up with new solutions, even if seemingly tried and trusted ones exist.
• Make it a habit to push for new ideas — the less traditional, the better. When faced with a challenge, ask yourself 2 questions: What’s holding me back from trying something new and different? If these constraints weren’t in place, how would I approach this situation differently?

2. Hone your sensemaking.

In today’s high-stakes, complex, ambiguous, and fast-moving situations, you don’t have the luxury of time. You need to dive in and start making things happen. This means you need to take an active approach to making sense of the new challenges you face. Be curious and willing to experiment. Ask “Why?” “How?” and “Why not?”

• Find another way to understand a problem. Utilize multiple techniques, engage different senses, and tap into your emotions to wrest understanding, insight, and meaning from the experience. Elevate your sensemaking and collective problem-solving skills.
• When you’re in a conversation with someone and find yourself feeling stressed or trying to respond quickly, pause. Don’t just say or do the first thing that comes to your head; instead, actively listen to understand what others are saying. Trust that you’ll have a response when they’ve finished talking, and resist the urge to impose your own solution — these are especially key when holding a coaching conversation with someone else. Take a moment to consider what’s really required in the moment.

3. Internalize experiences and lessons learned.

This process is needed to solidify insights and lessons learned for recall and application later. If you don’t process the learning, you may miss important clues to next steps. Lean on others for this if you need to. Learning-agile people recognize that others are essential to their learning and performance. They build ties and relationships that increase their access to people who can provide new experiences and opportunities to learn; they can collaborate while spanning boundaries.

• Ask for feedback and be open to criticism. Find someone who you trust to give you open and honest feedback. Show that you’re open to the process by only asking clarifying questions. Take time to think about what happened and what you’re learning. View feedback as a gift that someone’s giving you. You may not like it, and it may be uncomfortable, but there’s value in it nonetheless. Regardless of the other party’s motivations for giving you feedback, there’s always the opportunity to learn something about yourself.
• Don’t defend. Resist the temptation to explain your actions or make excuses. When you enter a mode of self-preservation and try to defend what is, you close yourself off to what could be. To practice non-defensiveness, always try to thank the other person. Consider the feedback carefully so you can see patterns (and changes) over time.
• Reflect, both alone and with others. Learning occurs when you take the time to reflect, to shift your thinking beyond merely what happened, to ask why things happened the way they did. Reflection helps to surface the intuitive and lock it in for future reference. So step back from the busyness and figure out what you’re learning from a project, from an interaction, from a new experience. Talk about what’s currently working well and what isn’t — or debrief what’s already happened. Conduct after-action reviews where you, and relevant others, reflect by asking questions: What happened? Why did it happen that way? What should we stop / start / continue doing in order to ensure success in the future? What changes in knowledge, skill level, attitudes, behavior, or values resulted from the experience?

4. Adapt and apply.

Through your experiences, you’ve had the opportunity for development and learning things. Over time, you get even better at applying those learnings to navigate new and challenging situations.

• Learn to rely on your intuition. Concentrate on principles and rules of thumb. People who rate high on learning agility tell us they operate largely on feel and flexibility. When faced with something new, look for similarities between the situation and things you’ve done in the past. Draw on these similarities to frame the new challenges.
• Don’t overthink. Under pressure, you probably feel the urge to get things done quickly. Ironically, consciously searching your mind for ideas and solutions closes us off to both the wisdom of others and our own experience. Inspiration often comes from the unconscious; being open to this can spark new ideas and strengthen performance. Be a flexible leader and don’t shy away from experimentation as you venture into new territory.

Our research has found that learning-agile superstars engage in these 4 behaviors at a significantly higher level of skill and commitment than everyone else — and get great results over and over again. (That’s why it’s often said that great leaders are great learners.)

Ultimately, your ability to continuously learn and adapt will determine the extent to which you thrive in today’s turbulent times — and succeed in the future.

If you follow our tips to improve your learning agility, you’ll make the most of your experiences. By seeking, sensemaking, internalizing, and applying, you’ll do more, learn more, and have a more satisfying career.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Share these tips for improving your learning agility with other leaders at your organization, and consider upskilling your team for leading through uncertainty. We offer curated learning journeys based on our research-based modules. Available leadership topics include Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Learning Agility, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety, and more.

The post Tips for Improving Your Learning Agility appeared first on CCL.

When somebody disappoints you, fails to deliver what you expected, or lets you down in some way, what do you do?

If you’re like most people, you make assumptions that are usually not positive: “That guy isn’t a team player… he’s lazy… doesn’t care… or just doesn’t get it.”

And then you take action: “I’ll just find a workaround… get somebody else to do the work… rethink responsibilities… initiate discipline.”

We often don’t even realize that we create stories about people in our heads, especially when they disappoint us. This happens all the time. We see a behavior, assume we know why the other person acted a certain way, and react based on those assumptions.

But many difficulties can be avoided by having a clarifying discussion. Though people usually intend to do the right thing, sometimes something gets scrambled or misinterpreted along the way, and the impact is far from what they intended.

The only way to know what someone intended is to ask them — and the only way to let a person know their impact is to tell them. These important conversations rarely happen, though, and we move through our days in a tangle of misperceptions and actions, based on incorrect assumptions.

So, how do you, as a leader, tackle difficult conversations to find out why a person chose to behave a certain way? We recommend using our research-based, widely-recognized method for delivering feedback, Situation-Behavior-Impact, or (SBI).

The benefits of using SBI to give feedback and explore impact vs. intent are clear: Using the SBI method helps both parties become more comfortable with the feedback process. Our research shows that SBI reduces anxiety around giving feedback, as well as the defensiveness of the recipient in hearing it. We also found that employees rate managers as more effective when they give feedback more frequently.

What Does Situation-Behavior-Impact Mean?

The Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) method for giving someone feedback is simple and direct. You simply:

1. Clarify the Situation,
2. Describe the specific Behaviors observed, and
3. Explain the Impact that behavior had on you.

How Can You Use Situation-Behavior-Impact With Team Members?

The SBI feedback model is helpful when holding talent conversations with employees or when giving different types of feedback, as in these examples:

1. Situation:

Describe the specific situation in which the behavior occurred. Avoid generalities, such as “last week,” as that can lead to confusion.

• Example: “This morning at the 11 am team meeting…”
  

2. Behavior:

Describe the actual, observable behavior. Keep to the facts. Don’t insert any opinions or judgements.

• Example: “You interrupted me while I was telling the team about the monthly budget,” instead of “You were rude.”

3. Impact:

Describe the results of the behavior. Because you’re describing exactly what happened and explaining your true feelings — not passing judgement — the listener is more likely to absorb what you’re saying. If the effect was positive, words like “happy” or “proud” help underscore the success of the behavior. If the effect of the behavior was negative and needs to stop, you can use words such as “troubled” or “worried.”

• Example: “I was impressed when you addressed that issue without being asked” or “I felt frustrated when you interrupted me because it broke my train of thought.”

The success of Situation-Behavior-Impact is enhanced when the feedback, which is one-way, is accompanied by an inquiry about intent, which makes the conversation two-way.

Providing feedback to others about their performance is a key developmental experience. Learn how to make the feedback you give even more effective so that others can benefit from your message.

Build Trust By Exploring Intent vs. Impact With SBII

Extend the SBI Method for Feedback to Include Inquiring About Intent

Extending the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) tool for delivering feedback to be Situation-Behavior-Impact-Intent (SBII) allows you to have a conversation to learn more about the intentions behind a person’s actions or behaviors. Inquiring about intent can demonstrate compassionate leadership and prevents veering off in the wrong direction based on faulty assumptions. To do this, simply add a final step to Situation-Behavior-Impact:

4. Intent:

Inquire about the person’s original intentions. Inviting them to share where they were coming from helps you understand more about the other person’s experience of the situation and explore the gap together between intentions vs. impact, building greater trust and understanding.

• Example: “What were you hoping to accomplish with that?” or “What was going on for you?”

Then actively listen to the other person as they share their perspective. Simple solutions usually follow.

Asking about intent is also where good coaching starts. When you inquire about intention, motivation, or what’s behind an action, you’re essentially engaging in a coaching conversation — one that can make a positive difference well before a performance review or disciplinary conversation.

So, the next time you need to give someone some feedback, rather than making assumptions, just have a conversation with them. And remember to use Situation-Behavior-Impact-Intent (SBII).

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Upskill your team’s ability to give difficult feedback holding candid conversations and using SBII with a customized learning journey for your leaders using our research-based modules. Available leadership topics include Conflict Resolution, Emotional Intelligence, Feedback That Works, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety, and more.

The post Use Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI)™ to Understand Intent appeared first on CCL.