The work environment is no different than “real life”, and just like in real life, most of the time executives don’t really know what’s missing. They don’t seem to grasp what they could change, add, or remove from their lives, or themselves, to be better leaders.
Most of the time, executives tend to have a mistaken identity in the professional context. Their sense of self, that we can call identity, personality, or even ego, can be false. Most of the time, they have this image of what a good leader is, and they try to implement it in their own personalities, which is a mistake.
To change this, executives start working with facilitators, coaches that help them go through the different levels of maturity and change their ways, not only in the work environment, but in life in general.
The Five Steps That an Executive Goes Through When They Are Working With A Coach Or A Facilitator:
While working with a coach, executives experience many changes that we can summarize in five steps.
- First and foremost, executives will need to identify who they take themselves to be as leaders and as managers. This will help them know what they’re doing that’s working well, and why they need to improve.
- Secondly, executives will need to ask themselves one simple question: “What’s missing?” This is a profound question that isn’t asked by anyone. The average person will ask themselves “What else do I need? What else do I want? What else can I have? What else can I get?” but the enlightened leader will dig deeper. When they ask the “What’s missing?” question without it being context specific, they will start to undo the illusion and the construct of who they are and what they are.
- The third step is identifying its own “readiness”. They will need to know if they’re ready to become more successful, more significant, more invested in what they are. They will have to ask themselves some difficult questions about what their role is, their performance, what they do, and their value.
- After that is the fourth step, when the executives will need to find a more authentic capacity, so their role at work and their role at home will start to be aligned.
- In the final stage of, executives will start self-actualizing the potential of the self they’re recognizing themselves to be.
When Does An Executive Really Need The Help Of A Coach?
There are two core symptoms that will show somebody that they need the help of a coach:
- A lot of noise in the head: Most of the times, there are many voices talking in an executive’s head. And yes, at first, it doesn’t seem like much, because they’re used to it, but those voices are directing attention, energy and vitality to irrelevant scenarios. Some executives spend too much time “scenario planning”, rehearsing conversations they’re going to have with their staff, rehearsing conversations they’re going to have with their customers. And then, they go into these situations after spending a lot of time and sleepless nights imagining how it will turn out, and everything goes well! So they end up finding out that all the rehearsal they did was in vain because reality showed up in a completely different way than they imagined it to be.
- Not speaking up: Many executives have spent a lot of time “polishing” their image, making people like and respect them, and so, when difficult situations occur, when they need to say something disagreeable, when they need to make a difficult decision, they can’t, because they don’t want to compromise themselves. They don’t want to lose their likability, or the respect that their colleagues have for them. It’s like there’s this massive house being built, with an immense façade on it. Executives are spending their time not saying the things that need to be said or doing the things that have to be done just because they don’t want to lose face. And the more successful and the longer they’ve been doing that, the more true that tends to be.
The Things Executives Should Do In Order To Help Themselves:
If somebody recognizes themselves in the symptoms above, they should look at how they know that they’ve had enough with their way of being, their way of doing, their way of expressing and communicating, when they are tired from the energy that it takes to just maintain themselves.
Because, even though everything is going really well, and everybody thinks they’re great, and that business is going fine, they still know inside that they absolutely have had enough of the effort to maintain this façade.
One of the solutions for those executive is the one on one coaching, which is a personal exploration into their currents ways and their potential different way of being.
They can look at that from a coach’s perspective and then move to developmental coaching, which works on maturing the executives through their stages of meaning to the point where they can find their own actualization, their own meaning making.
Post that, they will have the opportunity to come in to a more spiritual, personal inquiry space, which truly looks to answer the question “who am I?” for them. This way, they can be a lot closer to the truth of themselves than they are with their previous way of being and doing, taking themselves to be a man or a woman that’s a leader in an organization that is successful.
