The issues she faced when she requested to be coached were as follows:
- Understanding why she struggled to be an effective leader.
- Defining her leadership style.
- Determining how to communicate her vision to her employees.
- Identifying how her employees, mainly men, could accept her leadership since she was a woman.
- Overcoming cultural barriers between her and her employees as the cultural differences were truly a source of stress and frustration. This situation had a negative impact on business results.
- Achieving work life balance since she worked 12 hours a day and 7 days a week. Through coaching, I have been supporting my client in developing her leadership skills. So far, she has achieved the following results:
- She has developed greater self-awareness and knows the type of life she wants to live, both at the professional and personal levels.
- She established a career plan by clearly defining her goals.
- She has a better understanding of the cultural context in which she lives and the implications it has regarding being a woman leader.
- She set realistic goals by taking into account the realities of her work in the Senegalese context.
- She wrote an action plan for her business (prioritizing actions, maximizing productivity). By doing so, she defined a new vision for her business, more adapted to her current situation and the daily realities she faces.
- She identified the adequate leadership style to use--which enabled her to impose herself as a leader while developing an empowering relationship with her employees who, at first, had resisted her leadership.
- She revised her human resources policies, namely regarding recruitment, turn over, employee motivation, training, team building and staff development.
- She created a “dream team” locally which includes her coach and a mentor to support her in her role as a woman business owner/leader.
- She clearly defined her role as a leader and manager. In the process, she identified the responsibilities she could delegate to other employees. This decision enabled her to have a lighter workload and to achieve greater work-life balance.
- Her business productivity increased by 20%.
Conclusion
As demonstrated in this research paper, coaching is a powerful tool to empower clients to become effective leaders. However, it is crucial to note that leadership requires constant work on behalf of clients in order for them to remain great leaders. That explains why the greatest leaders in the world (i.e. CEOs, presidents, etc.) always services of coaches to support and empower them. However, leaders must be aware that there is no perfect leader and that they cannot control certain factors. The leadership style a leader adopts is most often influenced by his/her values, motivation, decision-making ability and his/her cultural, social, political and economic environment. In our history, we have examples of great leaders such as Bill Gates Chairman of Microsoft, Steve Jobs former CEO of Apple, Jacques Diouf former FAO Director, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Indira Ghandi, John Kennedy and Mother Theresa. They all had different leadership styles but they all possessed the ability to motivate, influence and inspire others. They also made profound changes in their respective fields.
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