Leaders who are aligned with this culture turn to coaches who value confrontation and equitable, enabling and empowering strategies that bring all stakeholders ‘to the table’. Susan Stracker has one client who is strongly oriented toward this culture. This client wants to know that Susan ‘s own value system is aligned with his commitment to broad-based participation in the decision-making processes of his institution. Leaders with an advocacy orientation tum to coaches who recognize the inevitable presence of (and need for) multiple constituencies with vested interests that are inherently in opposition. These leaders and coaches aligned with this culture believe that coaching is essential to this broad-based engagement. Both leader and coach worry about ways in which organizational coaching might be inequitably provided in an organization – producing even greater division between the “haves” and the “have nots”.
For a moment, let us assume that Susan Stacker is oriented toward this culture. Susan and other coaches and leaders associated with this culture are likely to embrace many untested assumptions about the ultimate role of power in the institution. Susan would frequently identify the need for outside mediation to deal with these power-based issues. She is likely to conceive of the coaching enterprise as the surfacing of existing (and often repressive) social attitudes and structures. As an advocate for social justice, Susan is likely to recommend, whenever possible and appropriate, the establishment of new and more liberating attitudes and structures in the institutions with which she coaches. As an advocate, Susan is clearly not “neutral” about her work or the men and women she coaches. She would not hide her own beliefs and is likely to be quite selective regarding the institutions and specific clients with whom she contracts.
The Virtual Culture
Leadership Values: Embracing the new technologies that allow for expanded network—resulting in more extensive sources of information and knowledge
Criteria of Leadership Success: Size of “catchment area” (customer base, knowledge base)
Coaching Orientation: Orientation to ways in which technology can be used to make coaching more effective and more relevant for the “new world” of leadership and management.
Nature of Coaching Clientele: Young entrepreneurs and Technologically Savvy Managers and Leaders
Criteria of Coaching Status: At the cutting edge of technology-aided coaching strategies
Nature of Coaching Impact: Helping mid-21st Century Managers and Leaders adapted to a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, turbulence and contradiction.
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