NLP article - Alpha Leadership A review of the NLP Alpha Leadership in Coaching course, February 2003-02-12
Having read the Alpha Leadership website but not the book and having read and heard about the work of Robert Dilts, I have to admit that I was very keen to see Dilts in action, but less clear about what Alpha Leadership was, is or will be. I think that this open minded approach actually helped because the course focussed more on coaching leaders than on the leadership model in itself.
Before I begin, you probably want to know more about Alpha Leadership itself. For the past 20 years or so, Robert Dilts has been studying, modelling and just hanging around with a whole range of outstanding people. One of the things that interested Dilts was the notion of "leadership" and specifically, what makes an outstanding leader. Robert Dilts then got together with Anne Deering and Julian Russell to turn this experience of leadership into a model, a book and a training course aimed at developing leadership potential. Actually, the main body of the course was aimed at people who develop people with leadership potential, as you'll see later.
So, Alpha Leadership is a model of leadership ability. It can be replicated by anyone who wants to develop themselves and it really lends itself well to developing leaders who are strong in one area of the model yet weak in another. Like any model, it's true without being accurate so you may or may not agree with any of the specific elements. Having said that, it strikes me as a neat model and one that's easy to understand, remember and apply - and that makes it practical and useful which is, for me, the most important thing.
The model breaks leadership into three areas; Anticipate, Align and Act. Clearly, if you want a detailed description of the model you should buy the book or visit www.alphaleaders.com to learn more. The names of the three broad areas are really self explanatory so I'll just add that within each area there are three further distinctions of the behavioural elements of great leadership.
Throughout the course, the three "trainers" used the practice of training horses as a metaphor for leadership. Essentially, authoritarian, dictatorial leadership was likened to the traditional practice of "horse breaking" where a horse is forced into submission. Horse breaking takes a few days to reach the first milestone in the training program. Recently, a controversial approach to horse training has appeared which, like all radical ideas, actually seems like a return to traditional methods. This new approach, called "Horse Whispering" involves the trainer understanding the horse, speaking it's non-verbal language and using techniques modelled from wild horses to bring the trainee horse to that same milestone in a much shorter time - in the video that we saw, just 11 minutes!
From this point on, horse breaking was used as a metaphor by trainer and audience for "old style, bad" leadership and horse whispering was used as a metaphor for "new style, good" leadership. My insatiable curiosity made me wonder about this, so at the end of the day I went to Robert Dilts and asked "We've talked about horse breaking as bad and horse whispering as good, what I want to know is - what's the flipside of horse whispering?" In answering this question, I found Dilts to be very accessible, open, honest and without any ego or point to prove. I liked him already! He said "Well, you know, a lot of people really get hung up on the metaphor, but actually it's just about training horses!" Then, he gave me a very straight and honest answer to my question, "I guess horse whispering has a tendency to create cults".
So, now I had all the information I needed to make up my own mind - and I hope you do too!
But what about the other two? Well, if you want to know what the presenters were like I would say: Dilts - thoughtful and insightful with a great clarity of explanation. Russell - empathic and supportive with a great enthusiasm for helping people achieve their best. Deering - upbeat and reflective with a great talent for drawing out learning.
Of course, those descriptions apply to all three of them, so these were just the characteristics that stood out to me. The three of them represented a spectrum of experience and style that worked well in a highly interactive, open environment.
Essentially, Alpha Leadership is a model which is used by great relationship builders, people who create great loyalty and commitment. They never seem to ask for anything directly but the people around them delight in taking action. These Alpha Leaders understand the ultimate goal or purpose and they align people and resources to achieve that purpose. A key characteristic is that they adopt a ready-fire-aim approach to new ideas. This does not mean that they act before they're ready, it means they act early and adapt and refine as they go, rather than waiting for an idea to be perfect. They are open to new ideas and information that other people miss and by doing this they often steal a lead on their competitors.
You can probably see how this style has both upsides and downsides and, for me, I can see how this approach would work well in some organisations and not in others. At this point, we're entering into a discussion on leadership effectiveness, not Alpha Leadership so I will end with my recommendation: If Dilts, Deering and Russell are back in town, go see for yourself, be entertained, informed and involved and then decide for yourself how to add Alpha Leadership to your armoury of coaching tools. And remember, being only one model, it's up to you to decide how to use it. It's just horses for courses, I guess!
Peter is a Director of the executive coaching network and can be contacted on 0870 1620802
Member of the SNLP
