The Novaconcept team comprises more than 50 experienced consultants with a range of expertise to guide you in developing your teams and leaders and in meeting your organization’s transformation challenges.
It’s always a great pleasure and honour for me to meet the consultants and coaches who have chosen to join the Novaconcept team. I like getting to know their world, vision, approach and what makes them different and unique, and then sharing these riches with my readers.
Nathalie Dubé’s approach particularly touched me since collaboration is the focus of both her practice and our exchange. Collaboration is what motivates her and what she strives for. It’s also what led her to join the Novaconcept team. As she tells me,
“At Novaconcept, ideas are always welcome and everyone’s skills are put to use when larger projects are undertaken. The culture is all about building the extraordinary together.”
However, what most caught my attention during our meeting was our discussion of the five generations that are all currently in the labour market. We talked about the changes that this reality is producing, and the way in which Nathalie, herself a boomer, works on these issues with her clients.
We are at a critical juncture. We can’t wait for the next generation of managers to transform our organizations and respond to the speed of the market and employees’ new expectations and values. The change has to happen now. The necessary move from expert managers to coaching managers represents an enormous paradigm shift. Today’s managers must be willing to be destabilized. They must be able to adapt and change without ever losing sight of their goal, which is itself always changing. They must be excellent communicators, have great empathy and, above all, be able to bring people together.
Managers need to be able to deal with the current labour market’s great generational, ethnic and cultural diversity. In 2023, our leaders need to be agile, strong and inspiring. The manager role has grown more complex. Caring and transparency are qualities that are at a premium. All this is a far cry from the expert manager, who was the knowledge holder and focused only on performance. To make sure that I understand the scope of the transformation required, Nathalie explains:
“Boomers, who were trained in the expert manager culture, are currently leading this diverse group of employees. People from that generation are rarely equipped to make the required changes.”
I find Nathalie’s analysis to be spot on, but at the same time it raises so many questions for me as a millennial.
I feel comfortable enough with Nathalie to ask her something that is on my mind: “How can you, as a boomer, guide other boomers through this kind of transformation?” She laughs and says, “I can’t show up with my ‘boomer’ values when I coach. I have to bring an open mind and a caring attitude.” Nathalie’s extensive experience has resulted in an approach towards effective coaching and facilitating that is based on working on herself. You can only take your clients as far as your own limits permit. Nathalie describes herself as a lifelong learner and, since the transformations needed to meet the demands of today’s market begin with the individual, she wants to help her clients to embark on a similar path. For her, a good coach, like a good leader, is first and foremost a person who works on themselves, who learns to recognize biases, beliefs and values in order to be able to go beyond them, to overcome limitations and to help members of their team to overcome their own limitations in turn. Working on yourself also means being willing to be destabilized, a skill of great importance for navigating a VUCA world where the cycles of change are getting faster and faster. When you are willing to be destabilized, it becomes possible to develop tools to find new directions and get back on track. It means learning to trust your team using a collaborative approach that allows everyone to be agile, creative and innovative.
I can see that Nathalie’s analysis and approach go far beyond the generational issue. It’s about making sure that there is consistency between an organization’s discourse, culture and the actions its managers take to ensure tangible transformation, accompanied by concrete results on a daily basis. It’s clear that she also does the work she asks her clients to do in order to overcome their biases and limitations. She stays flexible and open in order to keep herself anchored in her clients’ reality and needs. This then allows her to take them out of their comfort zone, to encourage them to develop and, most of all, to help them to adapt autonomously in the face of the unexpected.
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Did this interview with Nathalie Dubé touch on issues that you face in your daily life? Are you looking for a tangible way to transform your organization? Novaconcept and Nathalie Dubé are here to help you develop your managers.
