Deepening Your Knowledge of the Leadership Practices Inventory®: The LPI® Coach Certificate Program
Until now, if you wanted to go beyond a beyond a simple “debrief” of the LPI®: Leadership Practices Inventory® with your clients, you needed years of experience coaching the LPI. There is no substitute for the knowledge you gain from talking to leader after leader about their LPI results and helping them create a plan for where they want their leadership path to go next. With practice, you gain an in-depth understanding of how The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® and the 30 LPI behaviors work together, and how to communicate that to the individual leader with their personal experience. For me, that took years of coaching and a wonderful mentor, Certified Master Jo Bell. A scientist-at-heart, Jo has always had a keen eye for noting patterns from the LPI and inspiring leaders to discover who they are—as leaders. I could never have learned the depth of the LPI without Jo’s time, attention, and passion for the tool.
Today, there is another way to begin to build your expertise with the LPI and all that it can offer. LPI Coach Training, created by Wiley and a handful of Certified Masters and Global Training Partners, shortens the LPI learning curve for those of us working in the field and helps both leaders and coaches develop a deeper knowledge of this powerful instrument. Offered since 2012, the program is delivered in two parts: a live online class and a one-day in-person workshop that serves as a primer on common patterns, analysis of an LPI, a demonstration of an LPI coaching session, and an afternoon of practice (using both anonymous samples as well as participants’ own LPIs).
Always a hit for those new to the LPI, as well as experienced coaches, some participants come in search of the intensive roll-playing practice. Others are also interested in boosting their credibility with clients with the Trained LPI® Coach credential they earn at the completion of the course. One participant in our program was preparing to launch the use of the LPI as the organization’s designated leadership development tool in the coming year; she wanted to know more about the LPI so that she could provide support from an executive point of view. Or as another attendee explained, she had been using the LPI for a number of years and knew there was so much more potential for insight and knowledge that she wasn’t tapping into. She came to discover what she might be missing from her coaching practice.
Whether a veteran in the coaching field or new to using the LPI in your coaching practice or as an educator, LPI Coach Training is one of the most powerful ways I know to gain a deeper understanding of all the various ways you can leverage the LPI reports and insight to help aspiring leaders plan for their leadership development and affect positive change.
If you liked this blog post and are interested in learning more about the LPI, I hope you will join me for an upcoming LPI Coach Training workshop. You can check out the schedule with our partner iLead here.
This article first appeared in The Leadership Challenge Newsletter at www.leadershipchallenge.com.
