2019 – At last!

 

The day has dawned for “Love-Lead-Grow”, the new BW Coaching Leadership approach in a digital and agile world. Traditional approaches, such as leading by goals, are not reaching far enough. We need digital leaders that can lead their colleagues and the processes of change that they are driving, with meaningfulness, connections, communication and emotional agility.

 

2017 – Pioneers!

 

Already in 2017, we took up the theme of “Digital Leadership” for our book “Auf dem Weg – Erfahrungen mit Digital Leadership”. We stood out as pioneers, because we dared to write about our own experiences of leading in the digital and agile world, and we went out to the public in a three-day Book Sprint that featured eight authors. We emphasised, even then, how important the connection is between new leadership, agile methods and mindfulness!

 

Today – the Starting Line!

 

Today, we are introducing you to “Love-Lead-Grow”, the new BW Coaching Leadership Program, that has evolved for modern leaders in our modern digital and agile era.

Core Message of „Love-Lead-Grow“?

 

Reduced to a sentence, leadership means preserving the connection to the heart. But whoa! that sounds strange at first – what, we ask, does the heart have to do with the hard world of business?
This is where the first thought change happens. “Love-Lead-Grow” aims to unite emotions with focussed leadership, because this union makes both personal and economic growth possible. This union must have a centre, or inner focus, because this is what keeps the whole system alive. The heart stands as the symbol of this centre, just as it is the central organ that keeps the human being alive.
As the leaders, you are the heart of your team and the centre of its field of operation. Colleagues and teams are the heart of any enterprise. As a business leader, the success of your enterprise is lodged in your heart. The heart is the seat of our emotions, and changes are made possible when all are putting their whole hearts into it. If something goes wrong, they take it to heart. When the connection to the heart breaks, the system dies!

 

BW Coaching Programm “Love-Lead-Grow

Leaders must rethink

 

“Love”

It is no accident that the first sentence in the coaching model is “Love your inner self”. We are human beings with emotions, expectations and needs, and we cherish the desire to hold onto our inner focus. All beginnings stir inside ourselves – “Love”. As leaders, you need clarity as to who you are, what you represent, and where you are going to in your life, and in your job. Always reflect your own self. Instead of simply imitating new manners or modes of leadership, think about your inner self. Your inner focus is your anchor in the VUCA world – the world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Develop a respectful attitude within and towards your team and welcome the inevitable obstacles in the change processes. “Love the obstacles, Love the challenge”.

 

“Lead”

We yearn for a sense of belonging, in companies, in teams and in relationships. In the change processes, the job and the environment, which are revolutionising us, we need support and orientation from our managers. “Lead” is giving meaning – and meaning is what we want to find in our work and in our leaders. Hierarchical leading is a thing of the past; leaders have to revise their opinions. Digital leaders are expected to have answers about the meaningfulness of all their visions, tasks and decisions. Nowadays, leaders must have the skills needed to integrate people, to join them into communities and to show them visions that are expressed convincingly in words. “Lead with purpose, Lead with clarity“. Mere compliance is obsolete.

 

“Grow”

We are striving towards fulfilment in our lives, and in our working lives. This is true more than ever for the younger generations. In the rush hours of the day, we look for poles of rest; in times of crisis, we need an anchor; in moments of joy, we wish to sense the depths of our feelings – “Grow” describes these responses. Growth no longer means simply a promotion and more pay. Leaders must see growth as an inner attitude. It must be an attitude that they live out themselves, and then demand from their colleagues and from their teams. It must be an attitude that they expect to see shown back by their colleagues and by their teams. “Grow your values, Grow your people”.

How do you use “Love-Lead-Grow” in a way that is best for yourself?

 

The BW coaching program, “Love-Lead-Grow”, describes a total of nine subject areas, each of which has three core statements. You can read the whole program in whichever order, and the parts still connect easily with one another.
Reading from left to right, you will find in each case three subject areas: For Leaders, “Give leadership focus and purpose”. For Teams, “Happy team, happy customer”. And for the Change Process, “Make change happen”.
Simply see which of the subject areas best suits your current situation. Perhaps you need two subject areas from Team, combined with one for Change. Or perhaps you want to develop yourself today in only one of the nine subject areas, and you decide to further develop yourself with the Leader theme.
Everything is possible, because “Love-Lead-Grow” adapts itself to your leadership situation, and not the other way around. We will then work together to find the appropriate coaching processes, and the necessary support for change.

 

What do clients say, who already are working with ”Love-Lead-Grow”?

 

Using „Love-Lead-Grow“ as the basic principle, we have run a series of coaching sessions, and team workshops. We started our sessions with a guided heart-and-breathing exercise, and even these opening minutes showed how different our coaching methods are from those of classical business coaching.

“I never would have thought that connecting to myself could produce such a strong outwardly-directed force,” said a department manager who was taking part in our program.

The coaching questions arise out of the topics being discussed, and one is able quickly to see the reciprocal effect that the three core questions have on a subject area. For example, Grow your people, your results, your culture:

“I did not understand that I must also change the culture, if I want to increase my turnover.“ admitted an independent operator who wished to enlarge her portfolio.

Afterwards, she immediately set about putting her wish into practice.
The answers are derived during the coaching process, by means of exercising one‘s own inner focus and emotional agility. In this way, an important effect is achieved by combining analytical observation with emotional feedback.

“The coaching experience had a long-lasting carry-over effect,” said one lady in an Organisation Development group. “This was unexpected, because the coaching session was only an hour.”

 

New Leadership Behaviour in a Digital and Agile World

 

We are convinced that we will cause rethinking about leadership behaviour, and that we will change the thinking that now surrounds it, simply by applying „Love-Lead-Grow“. The focus begins, not with Numbers-Data-Facts, but with the single person. The more effective a leader is, the better his team will perform, and the happier his client will be. And it is the final effect that reveals all – the increased success of the enterprise!

 

For more about „Love-Lead-Grow“, and about the book, go to our website www.brigittawurnig.de.
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