The leadership paradox - when to lead and when to coach your people

Welcome to this edition of the How to be a Co-Creative Leader newsletter!

Do you ever find yourself wondering if you should speak your mind and offer some ideas or take a coaching posture and ask questions from your team members to let them figure things out? This dilemma is more common than you might think, and it's at the heart of what separates good leaders from truly great ones.

In the first two editions of the newsletter, I shared with you the origin story of co-creative leadership and also shared how walking like a lion can transform your leadership. In this edition, I want to share with you the five key skills of a co-creative leader. I also want to use this opportunity to share insights on how to apply them in real-life.

Why should this matter to you? Over my years of coaching, I witnessed the transformative power of co-creative leadership firsthand many times. Co-Creative Leadership is a journey towards more impactful, meaningful leadership that resonates deeply with me. 

As you read through this edition, I invite you to reflect on your own leadership journey. Where do you see opportunities for growth? How can the principles of co-creative leadership not only enhance your leadership style but also elevate the performance and satisfaction of your team?

Today, we tackle a challenge I often encounter with clients: choosing when to be the leader who provides guidance versus when to act as a coach for your employees. This edition aims to give you actionable insights and tools to navigate this complex and nuanced dance all leaders need to learn.

The five key skills of a co-creative leader

Co-creative leadership is a mindset for leaders to adopt. It is about harnessing the brainpower and knowledge of the people around you to create highly motivated and engaged teams. It comes from my experiences working with leaders in various companies over the past 12 years.

At a very high level, here are the five key skills of a co-creative leader:

1. Being a Voice Among Many in the Conversation: Co-creative leaders ensure their voice is one among many, inviting challenge and diverse perspectives, while also honing their ability to listen and recognize valuable ideas from others.
2. Unleashing the Leaders Around You: By identifying individuals with latent leadership potential, co-creative leaders create opportunities that encourage and nurture their growth into the leaders they are destined to be.
3. Building the Capacity of Your Team: Co-creative leaders are committed to their team's continuous development, enhancing their skills to forge a high-performing team capable of driving sustainable change.
4. Dancing with the System Around You: Understanding that teams and organizations are complex, adaptive systems, co-creative leaders adeptly respond to and influence the dynamic interplay within their environment.
5. Fostering a Culture of Learning by Doing: With a firm belief in action over discussion, co-creative leaders champion the practice of learning through small, iterative experiments that lead to meaningful insights and capabilities.

In a nutshell, these are the five key skills that co-creative leaders naturally apply and embody through their words and actions.

The Challenge: Being the leader or the coach?

Part of the big lie of leadership development in organizations is that leaders should be asking their employees questions instead of offering them solutions. While the idea behind this is noble, it creates a different set of issues:

• Leaders ask leading questions: One of the biggest issues is the quality of the questions leaders are asking their employees. Instead of asking open questions, what they ask tends to lead their employees towards their default or preferred solution. 

• Leaders run out of questions to ask: This may seem silly but it actually happens. In the training they get, leaders often get a set of canned questions to ask their employees. Once they go through these questions, they no longer know what to ask and freeze up.
• Leaders get frustrated: When leaders feel they need to hold back on giving solutions and ask questions instead, they can reach a point where they just feel frustrated by the process. They want to give a useful solution but they feel this is just not allowed.

At the core, the idea behind telling leaders to ask questions is good. The HR folks are looking to create more engagement and ownership in a world where leaders used to carry everything on their shoulders. The problem is there needs to be a balance because just asking questions is swinging the pendulum completely to the other side when your team may not be ready for this.

My version of this: Being the consultant or the coach?

I relate to this topic well because in my work, this dilemma exists in a slightly different flavor. When I work with clients, I often need to ask myself the question: which part of me does this person need right now, the consultant or the coach.

In my case, it is usually an ongoing choice. When I start working with clients, I tend to give them more of the consultant up front because I feel the need to bring value quickly. Once I settle in with them and we have built some trust, I can step back and start making the choice of which part of me they need the most right now.

It is a dance though and there are times where people would rather have the consultant and I give them the coach instead. When I do this, it’s usually because we’ve covered this topic before or it feels like the person has the potential to figure things out on their own with some help.

There are points where clients actually catch on to this and tell me directly which part of me they want to answer them. It usually sounds something like this:

• “Steffan, I really need the consultant right now to help me figure this out”
• “Steffan, no matter what I say, I really want the coach right now.” 

Whether we are talking about the leader, the consultant or the coach there is one very important thing to remember here: The idea is not that you have the right answer and the other person does not. For me as a consultant, I am bringing you an idea, you can use it or not and using it does not guarantee success.

A quick story to set the stage

A few years ago, I was working with a senior manager that was sharing with me some of their frustrations with their boss. At that moment, what stood out to me was when this person told me: “I’m getting really irritated with my boss right now. Every time I go see them for advice, they are always asking me what I think I should do instead. I know they know the answer, that is why I am asking.”

We had a discussion together around the intentions of their boss by doing this. Where we landed in the end is that we both agreed there is when leaders need to take time for coaching and a time where they need to actually offer an answer.

We also agreed this person had a responsibility to tell their boss when she felt a coaching conversation was not what they needed in certain situations.

Let’s explore this through the lens of co-creative leadership

Let’s look at this from the reverse perspective now. Imagine you and I are having a conversation together and we are talking about this topic. Here is an example of how we could look at this situation through the lens of some of the five key skills of a co-creative leader.

Keep in mind the five key skills often weave into one another in different ways. In this situation, you need to be able to express your ideas in a way that allows you to be a voice among many in the conversation. Often, leaders hold back giving their ideas because they don’t want people to do whatever they propose just because they said so.

Here are some examples on how you could be a voice among many in this situation:

• Be curious: Ask questions to better understand the situation, what the person tried up to now and what are the other potential solutions they are considering. 
• Build on their ideas: Once you understand the context, think about how you apply some of the solutions they are thinking about. What insights do you have to contribute?
• Offer them some of your ideas: If you feel they need help coming up with solutions, then start co-creating potential solutions together. Offer some of your ideas and get their input on how to implement or improve them.

Here are some examples of how you could unleash the leaders around you in this situation:

• Be curious: One again, same idea. Ask questions to better understand the context. What you want to listen for here are the possibilities they see and anything that is holding them back from taking action.
• Empower people: Many things may be holding them back from taking action. Some may be true, others may be stories the people are telling themselves or fears you can help them address. What support can you give them to help them move forward?
• Address limiting beliefs: This indirectly ties into empowering them, the distinction being that it is probably limiting beliefs that are holding them back. How can you address these beliefs in a way that gives them the courage to move forward?

Here are some examples of how you could dance with the system around you in this situation:

• Understand the system:  Does the person have the capacity to handle this on their own? Does the team have the capacity and willingness to follow and execute? What kind of help and support does the person need right now to do this? 
• Determine what the system needs right now? Why did this person come to you? What kind of help did they request? Are they looking for validation of their idea? Are they looking for new possibilities or solutions to explore? Are they looking for action from you to help them? Ask them if you are not sure.
• Inject something into the system: Should you fall into full coaching mode and ask them questions to help them think through the situation? Should you fall into full leader mode and tell them what to do? Should you do a bit of both and just have a discussion where you are both sharing ideas and building on them?

Back to the story…

A few days after my conversation with the senior manager, I was talking with their director and ironically enough, we ended up in a very similar discussion. The leader was sharing with me their preferred approach to use to coach their employees. 

In our discussion, we took the time to explore what was the impact of their coaching approach on their employees. This person could see there were actually times where they would have wanted to jump in and give ideas but held back. Instead, they asked leading questions for the person to be able to come up with that same idea themselves.

This single idea is one of my biggest pet peeves on this whole topic in general. I believe leaders are in the position they are for a reason. They have a lot of knowledge and experience to share with their teams and because of this, they should not be holding back all the time and asking questions instead.

The flip side of this is that leaders should not be doing this all the time either. It is not about making yourself the hero or knowing all the answers. The idea is for you to find the right balance to meet the needs of your team and help them grow.

There are times you will ask questions and there are other times where you can make suggestions too. The trick is really in how you approach it. 

Saying something like: “You should do this…” is very different from saying “have you considered doing this…” or “what do you think of this…” or “in the past, this is what I did in similar situations”. 

From any one of the suggestions above, you can see what the person thinks and move from there. Find ways to turn your suggestions into conversations with the people you are working with.

Conclusion: Finding the right balance

There is a delicate dance you need to learn as a people leader as to when you should lead and when you should be a coach who empowers those you lead. You need to strike the right balance between knowing when to step in with answers, and when to step back and encourage others to find their own solutions.

There is no perfect solution to this, the best way for you to learn is to practice and try things with the people you are speaking with as a leader. If you are always just asking questions, what happens? What does it create with your team members? You may find it useful to have a discussion with a few people to get some feedback.

If you find yourself giving solutions all the time, that is not either. Notice what it creates with your team members? Are you making yourself a bottleneck to the success of your organization without even realizing it.

The essence of co-creative leadership is its flexibility and responsiveness to the needs of your teams and the individuals within them. It's about being attuned to the moment, understanding the unique dynamics at play, and choosing the approach that will most effectively foster growth, innovation, and engagement.

Your Challenge for the Week:

This week, I encourage you to consciously notice how you approach the leader vs coach dilemma with your own team. What is the role that you tend to lean towards by default? Are you the leader that knows all the answers or the coach that can guide your team members with powerful questions?

I'd love to hear about your experiences and reflections. What works best for you? What challenges do you encounter? How did it feel to take up the role you are less comfortable with? Your stories are invaluable, not just to me, but to our growing community of co-creative leaders. Share your journey, and let's learn from each other.

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About Steffan Surdek

🌟 Are you ready to elevate your leadership to the next level?

With over a decade of experience in leadership coaching, I've dedicated my career to helping executives and management teams unlock their full potential. My approach is centered around the concept of Co-Creative Leadership, focusing on fostering a culture of collaboration and action-oriented learning.

If you're looking to transform your team's dynamics, enhance collaboration, or reduce conversational debt, I'm here to guide you.

If you are looking for a speaker for your next event, reach out, we can explore how to best serve your audience together with one of my talks.

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Let's embark on this journey together towards co-creative excellence.