Leadership in Procurement

Due to the nature of procurement in cross functional collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and the importance of building rapport internally and externally, it is vital that we look at how the next generation of procurement professionals need to evolve.

Therefore, as pointed out by Kierney and Co., we need to strike the balance of left and right brain skills:

As a leader, having an adaptive approach to talent is achieved by emotional intelligence, empathy, and a coaching mindset.

Bringing a coaching mindset to leadership

It’s a common question as to why we need a coach. Why do the greatest sports stars in the world need coaches? How do professionals get better at what they do? How do they get great? Its not how good you are now, it’s how good you’re going to be that matters.

Coaching came into sports as a very American idea. In American rules football, in the 1800s, for the very first time Yale hired a head coach but Harvard didn’t, consequently only winning four times over the next 10 years. Not surprisingly, Harvard then hired a coach.

Dr. Atul Gawande, a respected surgeon in America gave a great example after speaking with Itzhak Perlman who became one of the greatest violinists of his generation. He was asked how he got to where he got when no violinists had coaches. His response was “I dunno but I’ve always had a coach”. His wife Toby and him had graduated together, she gave up her job as a concert violinist, to be sitting in the audience and giving feedback such as “in the middle you sounded a bit mechanical, what can you do differently next time?”. He stated that this was crucial to everything he became.

By trying to make it on our own we often don’t recognise issues, or necessarily know how to fix them. Somewhere along the way you stop improving. Coaches act as external eyes and ears providing a more accurate picture of your reality, recognising the fundamentals, breaking your actions down and building them back up again.

Coaches themselves need not be great practitioners, or apart from sports, even well versed in the subject matter. How many times have you seen an average ex-sports person make a great coach? Being a practitioner is one thing; coaching is another.

Here are some tools learnt through coaching training - give them a try!

Wheel of Life

At certain stages in our lives, imbalance is completely natural. There may be times where we prioritise different aspects of our lives. A new job may mean you are putting all your emphasis and energy into it initially to impress your employer, which means other areas of your life at this stage are not being given much emphasis – there is nothing wrong this.

A world championship event that you’re participating in may mean extra training, less time with loved ones, less focus on your romantic life, time off work – once again, this is perfectly normal.

It’s when this instability becomes constant where you feel you are missing out on certain aspects of life, or in life as a whole. This is where we can make certain adjustments and re-prioritise, or re-wire certain parts of our life so that we can achieve that feeling of true fulfillment.

By mapping your life, you will get a sense of direction, and this helps in goal setting.

We may feel as if a particular area of our life requires attention, that it is an area that is simply not flourishing, and this can be quite true. However, the underlying issue, or a related issue in another aspect of our lives could be a driver. A way to figure out this imbalance and impacting areas, try the “Wheel of Life”, with 10 being the highest and 0 being the lowest. How balanced is your life? Remember, not everything in our lives needs to be a perfect 10.