In a recent assignment, we were first asked to coach a senior minister in a high level government position. The brief was to give the minister the self-confidence and tools to both 'lead upwards' in achieving a set of concrete goals in the ministry, as well as to empower their team.

Our coaching focused not just on ideas of personal presence and communication skills, but more fundamental work on persuading and influencing others and leading not just teams but superiors in the achievement of the goal. There was a strong emphasis on the internal work needed by the leader to overcome any sense of limitation and fears associated with stepping into a larger level of leadership. The minister succeeding multiple times in getting buy-in for their projects due to the coaching and entered a different level of thinking about what her leadership represented for herself and her country.

“The first step is awareness….to be aware of the power of the words….the power of communication. I feel I notice now, how people notice and express their ideas.If I go to meetings, I notice how people tell their stories.

The power of presence. I am now more aware of how I sit, my breathing

I will no longer use Powerpoint....That served me for a period of my career, now I need to tell the story.

How to make leading.....practical, it’s being rather than doing. I now understand my boss differently. I now lead as a queen”

We were then invited to coach the minister’s senior team, particularly on helping them develop new and innovative products and services for the government. A strong emphasis was placed on developing the tools to think innovatively, and to ‘10X’ their thinking in what was possible. One of our coachees ended up developing a ground-breaking new initiative for the government:

“You’ve helped us not just as leaders, but as creative thinkers, on a personal level and on so many other levels.

These sessions create the kind of 10X thinking that we need. The ideas I’ve generated through this, for example, the idea of creating a new cinema industry, is such a big idea, and it came directly through the coaching sessions.

I can’t really put it into words what the coaching has done for me. It has been life-changing’

We also hosted ‘moonshot’ workshops using Frozen Pictures and other character-driven workshops that created ‘assets’ that could be used in the formation of new products and services and offered new models of thinking about idea generation and future-focused thinking, changing the paradigm of how the team thought about creativity and their own personal development as leaders charged with bringing new innovations to the country.

Additionally, we ran strategic planning initiatives that looked at strategy as a whole and the more system-changing interventions that would be needed to upskill the government for future-focused transformations across all government functions, including HR, youth leadership and economic transition.