The name of this blog comes from our mission at INFLUENCE: “To empower people with clarity and confidence.”
Our objective is to provide brief but meaningful topics (under 500 words) that inspire, educate and empower leaders through resources both inside and outside of INFLUENCE. This week’s edition is provided by David Salmons.
Last year a professional coach shared a story with us about working with one of his coaching clients, a leader in his early sixties. This leader, being successful in his career, had entered the coaching relationship focused on achieving a senior level position as the logical next step in his career progression.
But something unexpected happened. As the coach asked questions intended to bring personal values into focus, the client discovered that he instead wanted to spend more time with family, retire early and mentor others. And he did, joining in the “great resignation” still underway.
From the story as shared, this may have been the first time the leader involved had made a career decision based on internal values instead of existing momentum, having until then more-or-less gone with the flow.
The coach who worked with this individual, while happy for the clarity of his client, commented that he felt regret that neither the client nor his organization had previously asked the question: What do you want? Because of this, in the coach’s estimation, his client had not been playing to his strengths, his values, or his own sense of vision, which had produced a less than optimum result for both the leader and his organization.
We’d like to use this story to make a few important points, and the first one is personal.
As leaders, we will achieve the most when playing to our strengths and when in alignment with our personal mission, vision and values. That said, we must know what these intangibles are, which is a big deal and part of what a professional coach can help us define.
In other words, like the coach in the story above, a good coach can help someone clarify what they want so they can move forward intentionally instead of being moved along by circumstances or less informed choices.
The second point is that any leader can coach. That is, any leader can learn to ask powerful questions about what team-members value and want. To not do so may generate conversations that reduce employees to fit their roles, which produces less engaged employees. In contrast, intentionally having these coaching moments can help employees trust their leaders more and become more engaged, creating benefits both in terms of the relationships and the clarity that results.
The third point is that crisis sometimes produces clarity, proof of which is the more than 50 million workers who’ve made sharp realizations about what they want since the onset of the pandemic. Ultimately, they aren’t continuing with the flow.
Our conclusion is that individuals who clarify what they want sooner rather than later, and organizations that open these channels of conversation, are more likely to produce better results through employees who are engaged and productive. The common theme here is of course: coaching.
If you’d like to learn more about coaching or being coached, just let us know.