Chris Simons

This paper summarises some of the findings from a Doctoral research project which profiled the personalities of successful leaders of change. The aim was to ascertain whether the personal attitudes of senior executives who are successful at leading change impact on change within their organisations through their leadership style and behaviour. The project looked at attitude formation and development within 11 successful leaders’ own psyche with regard to change through a qualitative in-depth case study approach. The main conclusion to be drawn from the project was that a high degree of self-knowledge is essential for successful leadership of change and one of the conclusions drawn from the project was that where coaching is a significant aspect of senior executives’ development, there may be a need for the coach to facilitate the coachee in recognising how the past is impacting on the present. This means that the coach would need to have an awareness of how introjects from the past may be brought to a conscious state of awareness and may well involve a need for coaches themselves to receive some kind of counselling training.

Keywords: leadership, change, counselling, coaching, behaviour, attachment, self-knowledge, coaching standards.

Full article: Volume 2, Issue 2 pages 22 - 25