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Happy New Year! Here’s what we have for you this week:
How should your leadership style adapt when you move to a new country? In this week’s episode of The Everyday Leader, Chris Rumenda reflects on his transition as a manager in Kenya to leading a new team in Ethiopia.
Apply to join our peer coaching network. You’ll be matched monthly to other peer coaches (both new and experienced) to provide and receive coaching.
2022 is an opportunity for a fresh start. If you’re a professional coach looking to intentionally grow their impact, take on our 100 Day Challenge.
Read on for more details…
Identifying what stage of a business’s growth you thrive in, developing a sense of ownership in a role, and distinguishing your friendship style from your leadership style
Here are a few highlights from the conversation with Chris:
Distinguish your friendship style from your leadership style: When Chris first took on a team leadership role while at Jumia, he found himself directly supervising several team members that he already considered as close friends. In order to prevent bias and cause perceptions of favoritism, he listened closely for related feedback that came up in performance reviews and began taking more time to more clearly document important feedback early on with his team members. By providing all of his team members with frequent feedback, both positive and constructive, there was less room for the risk of misinterpretation and doubts.
Develop a sense of ownership to unlock innovative solutions: When we joined, Chris really wanted Jumia to succeed in Kenya, and was very candid in his feedback about the need to better include more local vendors, among other things. Because he was direct and specific with his feedback, leaders at the company were able to recognize his authenticity and embrace his contributions. As a result, he quickly grew within the company, earning promotions frequently, which is not always guaranteed even at a high-growth company.
Identify what stage of a business’s growth you thrive in: Over the years, Chris realized that as Jumia’s business in Kenya matured, the day-to-day became less exciting for him, despite the impact they were achieving at such a large scale. Upon reflection, he knew he deeply valued the experience he had and the managers who supported him, but also realized that he preferred the early days of building the country operations. He used this realization as motivation for pursuing his next role in Ethiopia to build the Shega marketplace there. He now views his current role as an opportunity to build other leaders around him. He says that he will be comfortable moving on from this role as soon as his presence is no longer vital to the survival of the business.
CoffeeChat Peer Coaching Network
CoffeeChat continues to provide affordable access to professional 1:1 executive coaching for more and more leaders across Africa. We’ve also introduced another option centered around Peer Coaching - which is perfect for managers and coaches alike. Participants undergo a self-paced online training to establish a set of shared peer coaching principles, then are matched with someone new each month for a peer coaching call. Facilitation questions empower participants to provide and receive coaching. The key benefits of Peer Coaching include:
High-Impact Networking: Engage with emerging leaders across Africa with experience at interesting companies.
New Perspectives: Discover new strategies for your key challenges from others in different industries and countries.
Discover Peer Coaching: Develop and practice coaching skills outside the scope of your current work.
An Interactive Support Program for Coaches
Marketing and business development have been identified as a consistent pain point for coaches. We all know that most coaches would rather be coaching than out there pitching for new clients, which is why we created the CoffeeChat platform to help connect professional coaches with companies and individuals.
But we also want to provide support for coaches to take things into their own hands and make their business growth efforts a lot more productive and meaningful. Our “100 Day Challenge” is a series of challenges over 100 days that includes tips, templates, links, and discussion questions to enable coaches to systematically review their coaching business strategies.