One very useful aspect of coaching is the chance to gain clarity on topics that are important but perhaps a bit…“foggy”.
Clients who maximize their coaching often use our coaching meetings to surface the niggling items that have been floating around in their minds, just below the level of their conscious awareness. These are the items they sense but aren’t sure if they are actually important. The client may not have articulated these thoughts out loud to anyone, or even themselves. But even attempting to voice them in the context of the situation usually starts to shine clear “sunshine” on their core issues. Then, when they get their coach’s thought-provoking questions and comments, it can intensify the “sunlight” shining on what might really be going on. THis is one of the ways in which coaching surfaces and clarifies what clients are picking up on from their environments, as well as helping them identify what they may next want to do about it.
Sometimes, these conversations are also incredibly timely. Let me give you two illustrative stories:
- Jaime* was a C-suite executive for a company with $70 billion revenue and over 50,000 employees. One afternoon, for the first time he mentioned two different things that had been troubling him. One was that he had noticed how, over the past few months, the CEO seemed to have shifted from Jaime filling a “trusted advisor” role to relying on someone else for that instead. A bit later, Jaime also mentioned that a senior peer, who assuredly would have known better, had “forgotten” to tell Jaime about an important agreement she had made directly with one of his employees, without involving Jaime.
On the surface, these two incidents would appear to be unrelated. However, Jaime raised them to me at about the same time because subconsciously, he knew they might both be indicators that “something funny was going on”. However, he wasn’t entirely sure if that was true, so he wanted to talk it through with me to check if indeed they were the warning signs he feared they might be.
He was right. They were. Jaime was fired the very next morning, the day after our call.
Unfortunately, his case was one of “too little, too late”. I believe that Jaime’s company initially meant well in engaging a coach for him, with sincere hopes that he would turn around the behaviors and perceptions that lead to Jaime’s distressing outcome. When Jaime dragged his feet throughout parts of the process, it meant that by the time he became truly aware of what he wanted to change, it was almost six months later. At that point, it was apparently already too late; his grace period had already expired.
I’d like to counterbalance this tale with a happier story, of how a client used what he “picked up” to ultimately improve his own position and that of his business unit for success:
- Charles* was a rising talent who had recently been promoted to a regional leadership role in a $5 billion, 8K-employee firm. Charles immediately took to coaching; from the beginning, he dove into using coaching to learn, which included surfacing any niggling concerns he had. By doing this, early on Charles realized that his newly elevated role had lead to his prior leader Bill no longer being as supportive and loyal as Charles had thought he was. In fact, Bill was now more of an internal competitor to Charles. This was a painful realization for Charles to have, since it violated some of his deeply held personal values. Once he “got it”, however, and began to absorb his new reality and make the needed perceptual shifts, he was able to work effectively with his new situation. Because of the new choices he was able to see in front of him, his and his region’s results significantly improved. He was able to plan for and manage negotiations with Bill and other senior leaders in a clear-eyed way, choosing strategies that soon lead to better financial and strategic results for his business unit.
Generally, for clients who willing to engage and trust the process, coaching (done well) offers a safe, supportive, reflective space that helps them diagnose, understand and productively use the subtle hints they are picking up from their “atmosphere”. Those willing to surface it when they feel like “something might be there”, even if they don’t yet know exactly what, can attain clarity and greater success surprisingly soon, for both themselves and their organizations.
*All identifying information has been changed to protect client confidentiality.
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To learn more about picking up the hints and executive coaching, reach out to Lilian for a consultation.