VIM Executive Coaching is fascinated by human behavior as you might imagine. Whether the executive leaders who request business coaching are Chief Financial Officers in the world of healthcare, professional athletic executives or head up quality assurance for food manufacturing companies, we enjoy the diversity of perspectives that comprise our valued clients.
Business coaching is not about value judgments. We are focused on helping executives become more effective, more authentic and mindful. We want to nurture the good qualities in everyone we coach and always, to do so with the utmost of respect and compassion.
“Even with those who have made bad mistakes?” we are asked.
Especially those.
Then, the usual follow-up question: “What kind of mess-up is your biggest challenge?”
Our answer will surprise you.
I don’t have time for that nonsense
The biggest business coaching challenges VIM Executive Coaching faces with new clients are not in leading executive leaders toward greater mindfulness and understanding of leadership problems, but in creating an avenue for communication.
Generally speaking, the most difficult clients to assist on their leadership journeys are not those who realize they have committed a serious mistake or even a series of minor mistakes, but those who are closed to any correction; those who believe that they need no coaching and require no help. Of course, we could argue that being closed-minded is what may have gotten them into trouble in the first place, but we wouldn’t know that until they help us communicate.
By far, being closed to the possibility that they may be lacking, is one of the most somber challenges for any executive leader to admit. We understand it. Ego is a major stumbling block (“I made it to the top myself. I don’t need help.”) or more disparagingly, (“I’m the CEO of a $2 billion company, what do you have?).
Sometimes, we can’t break through that hard shell. In those cases, we allow the shareholders or board or media to eventually do the work for us. We do not take pleasure in seeing anyone’s fall; there is no “victory” is embracing someone’s failure.
Then too, this digital age offers a whole new set of roadblocks when it comes to working with the closed-off executive leader. They will list everything in their defense for not wanting to be coached from an obscure podcast, to YouTube to Ted videos they recently observed that, “covered all that stuff,” or they might claim they attended a self-guided executive management intensive group they attended in Paris or Cairo or Dubrovnik 20 years prior.
While we never disparage the materials of the digital world nor expensive seminars hosted at international trade shows (usually accompanied by food and libation), nothing compares to the inner journey of mindfulness and striving to create more authenticity.
Why the resistance?
Mindfulness and becoming more responsive and authentic are not always the easiest journeys for some executive leaders to take. Turning inward and gaining greater awareness are not quick fixes, but require work, honesty and the occasional admission of imperfection. We resist most often when we are faced with the light of truth.
The good news is that gaining mindful insights is powerful, career changing and is invaluable in the toolbox of executive skills.
Cases abound where executive leaders have been tripped up by their unwillingness to be more mindful where relatively few examples exist of mindful and authentic leaders failing. It is a distinction well worth considering.