5 Reasons Why Business Leaders Need a Sparring Partner
The cumulative impact of organisational cybercrime, of recessionary trends, the climate emergency, pandemics, and the politicisation of stakeholder groups demanding action (think ESG, DEI, or WFH) create unprecedented levels of pressure and uncertainty for decision-makers. Typical consequences often include inferior outcomes, inertia, or indeed a state of full paralysis.
Unprecedented can also take on a very personal meaning: Just think of an upcoming promotion to a manager, director, or C-level position which typically comes with a completely new set of challenging responsibilities leaving many feeling unprepared.
How do you become effective in these situations? That’s where ‘Business Sparring’ comes in.
Traditionally sparring refers to a specific type of training within martial arts where you fight as if you were in a real competition. With the one difference that rules are adjusted to prevent real injuries. That way fighters can improve their skills in a safe space.
The same idea applies to business sparring which essentially is a verbal sparring. Through conversations in a safe environment, sparring provides for a productive confrontation with challenging questions, ideas, and objections. Professional coaches take on the role of the sparring partner and assist in clarifying the path forward by taking you out of your comfort zone, identifying blind spots, and by helping you to formulate and evaluate options.
There are many situations where business sparring can be highly effective: When you need a second opinion on your chosen innovation, product, or funding strategy, defining a strategically sound composition of your board of directors or advisory board, or if you simply require access to fresh knowledge or want to practice a much-needed new skill.
So what are some of the specific benefits of sparring?
Main Benefits of Business Sparring
It doesn't need to be lonesome at the top - Working in a true senior managerial capacity is often coupled with a higher degree of loneliness. Many executives feel the impact of social isolation and the absence of genuine dialogue further exacerbated by the pandemic. Especially in difficult situations, when the stakes are high or when it is about major decisions, a sparring partner can deliver a more objective support than other parties such as your management or executive team, your board, or any internal or external (functional) specialist.
Become a transformational leader - For future-fit leaders, the ability to change themselves but also to manage individuals, teams, and organisations through change is of fundamental importance to creating lasting success. More specifically, an effective competence to work with a highly diverse set of people, stakeholders, and business models, to build trust and to “establish an agile, digital team culture” will be key. In such a context, leaders will need to engage differently with their environment and will need to become sparring partners and coaches themselves.
Personal growth: Sparring helps you propel forward at a much faster pace - There is a whole new set of drivers of corporate culture, productivity, and performance such as virtualisation, efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), or the new standards for company behaviour as defined by environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. Here, a sparring partner can provide critical feedback and a valuable outside perspective broadening your horizon and improving your decision-making and, therefore, business outcomes.
Newly appointed senior managers utilize sparring as part of their onboarding - A structured approach to onboarding will help ensure the success of newly appointed leaders. In concert with other measures, such as personal development plans, agreed targets, and transparent communication, sparring partners, free of any organisational politics, can offer a non-partisan, objective viewpoint at the important intersection of business and personal interests. That’s why sparring partners can be very effective in securing a successful start into the new role.
Sparring with a focus on a specific project or function e.g. communications - You need to inform your global staff about a strategy change or want to align members of your organisation’s ecosystem? No matter what your focus is, effectively informing, motivating, and activating others is critical to success. Simply put, to achieve results, business leaders need to be highly-skilled communicators within a broad variety of settings and that means pairing up technical expertise with great storytelling capabilities. You know your business and industry best and a sparring partner can, for example, help identify systematic patterns of influence as well as effective communications messaging and overarching narratives.
I have sparred quite a few business leaders over the last couple of years and found that effective verbal sparring - a mix of challenging questions, unexpected objections and surprising suggestions - provides for an excellent way to clarify the best approach. As an example, in my sparring work with a technology start-up CEO, we were able to not only identify and remove blind spots but also to develop and execute an effective strategic repositioning of the organisation resulting in a successful funding round.
If you want to improve your leadership skills, broaden your impact inside your organisation and beyond, or simply require an experienced outside partner, then please reach out to me today.
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If you want to improve your leadership skills, broaden your impact inside your organization and beyond, or simply require an experienced outside partner, then please book an initial, no obligation chat here.
