Great leaders teach and great teachers lead.

As a CEO and Executive Leadership Coach I have learned that there are 3 key roles that every great leader plays:

1. Steward: Clarifying what you care about
2. Designer: Designing intentional conversations to support the things you care about and determining what to focus on to achieve your goals
3. Teacher: Designing impactful learning environments and learning experiences to support the things we care about

In the past, my mindset about being a quality teacher was about passing on my wisdom and expertise to my clients and staff; listen to me and follow me because I know what I am talking about.

Over the last year my Executive Leadership Coach has been challenging me to see myself in a new mindset; as a “Quality Teacher” with a focus on learning environments and learning experiences.

By designing impactful learning environments (a place conducive to collaboration and sharing) and learning experiences (situations and activities that will foster a group of people working together for a common purpose and goal to achieve a desired outcome), and engaging in Generative Conversations, I am really beginning to see breakthroughs with my clients and staff.

6 Generative Communication Skills of a Quality Teacher:

1. Deep Listening: Listen to connect and co-create
2. Dialogue Conversations: Listen to connect and co-create. Allow all ideas to be present in a conversation to leverage the collective intelligence of the whole group to build a shared understanding about the issue being discussed.
3. Holding Space to Allow Opposing Ideas and Conflicts to reveal new possibilities through conversation.
4. Asking Empowering Questions to Challenge Assumptions (yours and others) to create shared understanding of the topic being discussed.
5. Abundance Mindset: Being open to the possibilities of what we as a team can discover through our collective intelligence to resolve an issue.
6. Self-Awareness: Leveraging the “Power of a Pause” to stay present to the moment and allow listening to come from a place of connection and co-creation with others. Suspend judgement and assumption to support creating “shared understanding” of the topic being discussed.

By leveraging these Six Generative Communication skills, you will be able to harness the collective intelligence of the team to create Breakthrough Experiences that will allow your business to move forward.

Quality teaching is messy, painful, unexpected, and in the end, joyful. Everyone has a voice in the dialogue conversation and ideas are shared that may be disliked and opposed by some, but when everyone is committed to revealing their blind spots and building a shared understanding to support the success of the team, the results are brilliant!

Often people get emotionally triggered as they hear things they don’t like, however by allowing everyone a voice in the dialogue conversation new ideas and innovations emerge to create quality future possibilities for the team to move forward.

Leadership Challenge for this week:

Define one issue where you can be a Quality Teacher to your team by designing an innovative learning experience or learning environment through Generative Communication skills to create a breakthrough experience with your team.