A friend of VIM Executive Coaching stopped by the office last week complaining of a miserable high-ankle sprain.
We can’t help you, but there’s a great orthopedic surgeon about a half mile away!
Naturally such injuries always lead to a conversation as to the “how did it happen?” Our friend, the consummate fitness buff, complained that every time they used a certain piece of cardio equipment, they run a high risk of a sprain or strain.
This is not the first time we heard of the phenomenon, of people in great shape eventually abandoning pieces of cardiovascular equipment because such equipment hurt or injured them. As we have since learned (from folks who know), certain pieces of equipment are made for an “average body type” in terms of height, stride-length, etc. and injuries are not all that infrequent. The risky part, we were told, is when the athlete tries to push through the discomfort and is determined to inflict pain for the full amount of workout time. Sometimes, and to prove an obscure point, the athlete will keep returning to the machine, and again and again, inflicting pain. In an even worse reach, the athletes turn on themselves in self-judgment.
What lesson does that teach?
This is obviously not a sports and fitness post but addresses the domain of business coaching and executive leadership. Yet, to disregard this teachable moment to executive leaders would be a mistake.
We live in an age, unfortunately, where in a constant quest to be unique, there is tremendous conformity. We are aware of the conundrum, nevertheless, having successfully coached hundreds of executive leaders, we find it to be true.
The point is not so far-fetched; much of executive leadership feedback occurs in a remote and digital fashion. The “experts” many follow are recycled on the same cable-news channels and business podcasts. Even social media presents a rather bland and predictable version of leadership truth.
Mindfulness training represents the opposite of the current trends in business coaching and predictable leadership instruction.
Here is the biggest problem
A one-size-fits-all executive leadership style can’t and won’t succeed. It has been repeatedly shown. Unfortunately, leadership is far too often taught in a homogeneous fashion. We are all delightfully different. “We” are introverts, extroverts and all steps in-between. “We” all have different life experiences, likes and dislikes. “We” approach leadership with comfort or fear or uncertainty and trepidation. It’s all good if “we” celebrate “our” own authentic voices and understand individual journeys are all valid. To discount “ourselves” to ignore the great things “we” bring or can bring to the leadership experience is wrong.
VIM Executive Coaching bristles at so-called leadership courses that fail to recognize individual greatness and potential in order to substitute a virtual algorithm of how an executive leader should be, rather than celebrate what makes a leader truly effective.
Mindfulness training elevates authenticity, response over programmed reaction and encourages the use of strengths rather than a belief that everything a person does is weak. Injuring “ourselves” in a metaphorical way, on a piece of metaphorical equipment that has only hurt and never helped, is foolhardy.
The greatest executive leaders have risen to tremendous occasions not because they have followed the same path, but because they have embraced authenticity and recognized the authenticity and potential in others. Much like an athlete who injures themselves because they fail to understand that the pain from an exercise is real, and should be honored, so too, an executive who tries to be something that simply aren’t. Be yourself, a more mindful yourself perhaps, because everyone else really is taken.