VIM Executive Coaching has a passion for supporting and nurturing executive leaders regardless of the industry, or indeed whether for profit or non-profit. Certainly, it is not all that unusual for executives to change tracks, as it were. The transition from profit to non-profit is not all that uncommon.
The issue is not the executive position per se, rather who is the person who has transitioned? Clearly, there have been amazing executive leaders we have coached who were as outstanding serving as the head of large industry trade groups as they were when in a corporate entity leadership position. However, we have unfortunately borne witness to executives who were as ill-prepared for leadership in one sphere as they were another. “Changing sides,” as it were, or even industries, is no guarantee that an ineffective leader in one area will suddenly blossom into an effective leader in another area.
The Philosopher King (or Queen)
We served as business coach to a perfectly wonderful person who had the dubious distinction of being terminated from both a major healthcare association and before that, a significant player in the same field. How can we call him “wonderful” you might ask? Because he was. When he put down the mask and was himself, his authentic self, he was delightful, engaging and even remarkably introspective. Unfortunately, he left that persona at home.
Our client fancied himself an expert on philosophy, and was clearly well-read on both Western and Eastern philosophical thought. He loved to quote everyone from Rilke to Camus to Lao Tsu, and would impress his executive team with his knowledge of worldly things. The problem was, in the middle of intense industry challenges or the need to address important human resources issues, no one wanted to hear his steady droning of how Socrates might have handled the situation. In other words, he often stone-walled the need to be authentic in the moment with the dribbles of an obscure philosopher no one could remember or relate to in the moment.
Worse, he gave the impression that he was presumably living the philosophy of the people he was quoting, when in fact, he was more like Nero – the king who reputedly fiddled while Rome was burning.
Reading the book, is not the same thing as living it. “Philosophy” has put many a college freshman to sleep. Yet, philosophers are real. The great philosophers often developed their philosophies as the result of intensely personal struggles. Right or wrong, they were deeply in the fight. Lao Tsu, for example, widely quoted for awhile by American business people, was a warrior who had seen the horrors of conflict. He saw struggle and favored negotiation and settlement of strife. He wasn’t a stick figure reduced to quotes in board rooms, but a very real person.
Be Authentic
Authenticity requires us to shed our masks and to be real in the moment. Such can only come from mindfulness. The executive we coached was mindful in his personal life, and in fact he was a loving person. However, he felt he had to assume the mantle of whatever the philosopher du jour he was quoting because to his mind it made him seem more important. It had the opposite effect.
In coaching the executive, we had the challenge of convincing him that the person he was, was more than good enough. The philosophical ramblings he brought into his meetings were in fact, no more different than if he had quoted Kim Kardashian or Terrel Davis. It wasn’t relevant. What was relevant was his willingness to understand that the most meaningful philosophy of all, was his.
His team wanted him, not Ayn Rand. His industry needed his compassion not the speculation about what Plato might have done in the moment. He went on to have good career – as himself. A good person, a mindful and authentic person, and he left the philosophers on the shelf of his home office.