Coaching Reaches New Heights at PETRONAS
PETRONAS Leadership Centre (PLC) recently completed its inaugural Coaching Summit 2022 on 30 November, with 157 PETRONAS coaches & leaders attending the session. The Summit, which centres on the theme of ‘Creating a Pervasive Coaching Culture to Sustain Success’, was organised by PETRONAS’ own Coaching Academy and held at the newly built PLC campus.
The Summit’s highlight was the sessions led by the best-selling author, the world’s #1 authority on Intelligent Leadership – Dr John Mattone, one of the world’s most in-demand CEO coach and leadership speakers. Dr Mattone was also the coach for the late Steve Jobs of Apple Inc., and PETRONAS had the privilege of having him at PLC to share his expertise, experience and thoughts on Coaching.
The day started with a welcoming note from PLC’s CEO, Ruslan Islahudin. He mentioned how the development of coaches is essential in building leaders for the future to sustain PETRONAS’ business performance, acknowledging how the organisation has taken deliberate steps to embrace the coaching approach as a critical aspect of PETRONAS’ leadership development strategy–seeing PETRONAS’ investment commitment towards talent development as a whole.
The CEO then handed over the session to Dr Mattone, who led and delivered three main agendas for the Summit –his Keynote, the Coaching Experiential Learning and the Masterclass for Coaches.
In Dr Mattone’s Keynote, he shared three main points:
- The essence of Coaching is the opportunity to help others to create masterpieces. Therefore, it is vital for coaches to show a belief in the coachee’s potential that the coachee themselves could not see.
- The role of a coach is to ignite the coachee to have the courage to think differently through deeper conversations in a safe space. To do this, a coach needs to role model behaviours of authenticity, vulnerability and, most importantly, humility.
- Essentially, the inner core values and outer core behaviours are part of every leadership style. Those who make the absolute most of their strengths and behaviours as a leader while still recognising and understanding their weaknesses are generally the leaders that can be described as “authentic”.
Dr Mattone then led the Coaching Experiential Learning before he was put in the spotlight for a conversation with participants. During the learning session, he shared his 50 Laws of Intelligent Leadership, emphasising participants’ selected Top 3 laws and asking them to share their thoughts. One of the laws highlighted was Law #17: It’s not about the organisation you want to create; it’s about the organisation you must create.
As a coach, it is paramount that we guide coachees to develop their own masterpieces for the organisation but with a tone of urgency, and using the word “must do” instead of “should do” or “need to do” gives the urgency-to-action for the coachee to confidently take that courageous step forward.
The conversation was interesting as well. Dr Mattone received a kaleidoscope of questions which he eloquently answered. Participants didn’t hold back their need to tap into the man’s tacit insights, even asking for tips on how our nation’s leaders can leverage coaching methods to help sustain a better future for the country.
In the afternoon, the Summit continued with the Masterclass for Coaches, and Dr Mattone explained the Wheel of Intelligent Leadership, which comprises the self-concept and Elements of Character, which can be explained further through Thoughts, Beliefs and Reference.
He also enlightened the audience on Mattone’s Leadership Enneagram Inventory (MLEI), a coaching tool used to identify predominant leadership styles and individuals’ maturity levels. This tool is part of the pre-work for the coaches and was used as a reference in the masterclass discussion, which yielded interesting insights for individual coaches on their own traits and level of maturity. He also provided tips to become successful leaders by enhancing the three traits, i.e., focusing on the highest scoring traits, least maturity ratio and lowest scoring trait.
The Summit ended with a Coach Connect session led by PETRONAS’ own Innovation Coach Zulhilmi Ismail and Agile Coach Noraini Che Hamzah. The session emphasised the importance of coaching in the areas of Innovation and Agile, inviting coaches to join in, upskill themselves and ultimately become Innovation and/or Agile coaches for PETRONAS.
All and all, the first-ever PETRONAS Coaching Summit was a resounding success with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 72. The Summit proved that coaching is essential in driving lasting change and sustaining success in an organisation. Through PLC’s Coaching Academy, PETRONAS can make coaching culture pervasive so we can build more leaders to achieve not only the current organisational targets but also create our direction for the future.
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