The Baker’s Dozen of Coaching Leadership

By Bob Maksimchuk

1. Be Dedicated – to your client, your team, yourself. Commitment builds trust.
2. Be Curious – about your profession, your client, other fields. Learn continuously. If you think you know it all, you have limited your potential.
3. Be Humble       – no matter how successful, smart, or well-known. Arrogance destroys relationships.
4. Be Energetic    – Do you bring energy into the room or do you drain the life out of it?
5. Be Engaged      – Your client doesn’t value an aloof adviser who provides little value.
6. Be Perceptive   – See their gifts. Does your team have cheerleaders (encouragers), pragmatists (guides), jokers (morale builders), and dreamers (visionaries)? Leverage these soft abilities as much as hard skills.
7. Be Empathic    – See their needs. Be sure to serve their actual needs, not yours.
8. Be Resourceful – When your team has no answer and neither do you, take the initiative to go find a new option or approach for them that may be useful.
9. Be Uplifting     – Don’t criticize the doubtful, the non-believers. Encourage and uplift them.
10. Be Persistent  – when you hear “we’ve always done it this way”. You are a change agent. You can’t sail the seas when you are tied to the dock.
11. Be Resolute    – Reject rejection. Take the high road. Repay your critics with kindness, service, and understanding.
12. Be Fun            – Celebrate with your teams whenever they succeed, big or small.
13. Be Caring       – Remember, they are not assets or resources. They are real people. With real lives. Just like you.