The primary reason current leaders should be coaching and mentoring other is to elevate their team’s performance and build the resiliency that comes with a leadership pipeline.
The primary benefit for leaders to do this work is that it’s the best way for them to develop their skills and perspectives. Teachers learn more than their students because the process of teaching requires a person to absorb, understand, and articulate. New insights come this way.
I frequently talk with seasoned leaders who are in a “plateau” stretch of work – they have created some level of mastery, work is getting done, problems still take enormous energy, but they’re not growing. My two questions for them are:
- “Do you need to consider moving into another role or area of responsibility?”
- “Can you do more coaching and mentoring?”
Those are the two routes for moving from a plateau to a growth curve.
