Noel Tichy
tichy@umich.edu

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Coaching for Leadership Development

Noel M. Tichy is perhaps the world's best known authority in helping organizations develop their entire leadership team. He is Director of the Global Leadership Partnership at the University of Michigan Business School. Among other books, Professor Tichy is the author of The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Organizations to Win, and the best-selling The Leadership Engine. Noel headed up the famous leadership development effort at General Electric.

Coaching Approach

Every leader needs to develop his or her own "teachable point of view" and cascade that throughout the line. When leaders coach leaders around that teachable point of view, learning and teaching are continuously exchanged in a Virtuous Teaching Cycle. This creates alignment and energy for the organization's values, vision and strategy, even as it generates the new leadership necessary for the future.

As a coach, Noel Tichy has developed a 90-day process to help the leader accomplish that important objective. In the first month, he works with the top leader to develop a teachable point of view that articulates the ideas, values, edge and energy that will make the organization successful. He then facilitates the top leader's greater discussion with the senior team. In the second month, Noel helps the senior team extend those conversations with the key people at the next leadership level. Finally, in the third month, leaders throughout the organization engage in coaching their reports, engaging dynamically with them in a Virtuous Teaching Cycle.

In successful organizations, Noel believes that coaching takes place leader to leader, level to level, up and down the line. Only then does the organization have the alignment, energy and smarts to win.