Coaching, Leading and Going Forward Together with a Service Mind

“What is the most important thing you do to show up as a leader?”

That was the initial question asked to ICF Global Board Directors in a town hall conversation with Chapter Leaders at last month’s 2018 ICF Global Leadership Forum (GLF) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The idea that first crossed my mind was, “Partner with humility and vulnerability.” But, I readily acknowledged that I am not always strong enough to embody such traits….Hence, I responded with what my Board colleagues and I strive to consistently show up with: a service mind.

Ingraining a Service Mind in Our Foundation for Leadership

I explained that a service mind is crucially important to us because:

• We are elected to serve our fellow ICF Members and our profession. “Remember who we serve and why” is the first of our Global Board Promises and Agreements
• In high-performing teams, “The task is the master; there is no team leader and every team member serves the others,” according to leadership guru Peter Drucker (he expresses this idea at 1:25 in this video)

I also shared that I had just been touched by the great service mind of Elisa, my room attendant at our hotel. Elisa is so dedicated to her mission that she came back after her service hours to supply a Kleenex box she had forgotten to replace in my bathroom and to offer a toothpaste tube, as she had noticed mine was almost empty. She also left a handwritten note of apology. Elisa and the experience she creates are an inspiration to me. Elisa honors her country—the friendly Canada—and reminds me of the hotel maid who is one of four heroes in Robin Sharma’s book The Leader Who Had No Title.

Strikingly, all Chapters honored with the ICF Chapter Recognition Award and the ICF Foundation Gift of Coaching Awards at GLF also displayed an admirable sense of service to their communities alongside their work towards exceptional achievements. They are an inspiration to me, too! For example, ICF Germany coaches offered no less than 10,800 pro bono coaching hours to serve school teachers over the past 10 years. What a humbling contribution to the future of children and their country!

How can we—ICF coaches, volunteer leaders and staff—unleash our service mind further, to be more of an inspiration to those we meet and partner with?

Embedding a Collaborative and Agile Culture of “Partnership and Accountability” across ICF

A service mind is at the heart of the “Partnership and Accountability” work culture that ICF is embedding across its many parts. So are collaboration and agility. They will help us enhance the experience of our members and the vitality of our chapters.

At GLF, a Chapter Leader told me that he was concerned about his leadership team’s disengagement despite his repeated efforts to motivate them. Here are some of the ideas that emerged from our conversation:

• Consider the following from the Global Board Promises and Agreements that may be helpful in this situation: “Listen to learn, and express to explore, with an open heart, mind and gut”
• Reflect on: “Who am I being as a leader that my partners are not engaged?” and shift from thinking, “What’s wrong with them?” to “How can I change?”
• Redefine collectively “Who we want to be as a team” and “How we can best support each other to take our collaboration and agility to the next level in service of our community”

As food for further thought, here are a few traits of agile and collaborative leaders I identified during my corporate and executive coach careers. What other traits would you add?

How can we—ICF coaches, volunteer leaders and staff—become even more collaborative and agile, as we partner to enhance the experience of our clients and communities? And how can we hold ourselves accountable for progress?

At stake is finding a great way forward in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity where:

• The only constant is change
• No leader alone has a chance to figure out robust solutions to our upcoming challenges

But, together we can! It is with a service-minded attitude, in inclusive and accountable partnerships, with your ideas and your help, that we will together lead our progress going forward, as a community and as a profession, on our purposeful path toward making coaching an integral part of a thriving society.

P.S. To learn more about the thoughts on leadership shared by ICF Global Board Directors at GLF, I invite you to read a summary written by our colleague Glenn Taylor, MS, ACC. And, I invite you to share your own leadership takeaways and insights in the comments.