The case for coaching circles

My colleagues and I were recently preparing to launch a number of coaching circles in a dynamic and rapidly growing international organization. In doing so, I was thinking about what would be an effective and pragmatic way of presenting the learning and development opportunities available to participants. Aside from the obvious benefit of having people work through some of the complex challenges and relationships they are facing as leaders, it occurred to me that because of the way coaching circles are designed, participants would be able to develop or strengthen a number of leadership skills critical to their long-term excellent performance. I’ve identified the following 5 areas and provided a few brief words of explanation: 

• Empathy (being able to see and include the other person’s world when speaking and listening)
• System agility (understanding our way of working and what supports/hinders our effectiveness)
• Complexity (building resilience to face emergent change and ambiguity)
• Self-observation and inquiry (seeing and taking responsibility for one’s own reactions)
• Coaching (supporting others’ development rather than telling them what to do) 

I would love to hear what you think of this initial list and what other leadership skills you see being nurtured from your own experience in leading coaching circles.