The Courage to Invest In Yourself

I recently spoke with an executive who believes strongly in the efficacy of coaching and offered individual coaching to all of his key leaders about six months ago. Let’s call him Bill.

In our conversation, Bill expressed disappointment in his team’s indifference to his investment in coaching: a majority never scheduled a single session and most of those who did stopped when they learned the coach had no experience in their field. He asked me if I’d seen this before with other clients and what they had done to get people to see the benefits of coaching.

It’s not that he was unable to understand his team’s resistance to coaching. Years ago, when Bill’s boss first suggested he get a coach, he quickly dismissed it. From Bill’s perspective, coaching was for the soft and the underperforming folk. In other words, for those who were on the bubble of termination and in need of remediation.

As a high performer throughout his career, spending the time with a coach made no sense to Bill. It took some time for him to realize that coaching was for those with the courage to invest in themselves and their team in pursuit of reaching their potential. He also understood that in an ever-changing world, creative adaption was mandatory for ongoing effectiveness—and coaching was particularly powerful during periods of rapid change.

Bill elaborated further on the situation:

“most of my team is quite talented—as a team, we have the potential to achieve great things. Unfortunately, most of them have issues that are getting in the way of their effectiveness. These issues are spilling over across the organization, causing morale issues and limiting the creative innovation we need to be successful.”

Bill remembered the transformation he experienced after working for six months with his first coach five years ago—it changed the trajectory of his career and helped him find more inner-balance. Even his wife and kids noticed the difference.

After a few moments of silence, I asked Bill how I could help. Bill explained that all the information he shared with his team about coaching was too clinical and difficult to relate to. Reflecting on his onboarding and our past conversation about coaching, he highlighted the challenge of dispelling misconceptions rooted in experiences with athletic coaches from our youth. Additionally, when questioned about his role in the current situation with his team, Bill acknowledged the need to share his personal coaching experiences more persuasively.

Not Your Father’s Ghostbuster

Work occupies a significant portion of your life, accounting for nearly 50% of your waking hours and exerting a profound influence on the remaining 50%. The more impact and success you see from your work—be it tangible results, your compensation, or the social status it confers to you—the greater your sense of fulfillment, satisfaction and contentment with the life you lead.

Your success at work is intricately woven into practically every dimension of your life. With that in mind, there is a fundamental question you ought to ask yourself periodically about your performance at work:

Am I the best that I can be at work?

While this question is a little amorphous, this second questions falls out that’s perhaps more tangible:

Am I doing everything possible to reach my potential at work?

Your initial reaction to these two questions may be

“well, no, but I can’t work 24/7, so given what I can work, yea, I’m pushing really hard to succeed,”

or

“no, but it’s not my fault, it’s the people around me,”

or

“no, I’d like to answer yes to both, but I’m not sure what to do.”

Whatever your response to these two questions, rest assured that coaching can bring you more success, if, and only if you are committed to the following:

1. Ownership: taking responsibility for the outcomes
2. Independence: controlling what you can control
3. Emotional courage: the strength to engage with discomfort
4. Sustainability: committing to the practice of new behaviors

Investing in You

When I speak with my clients about the drivers of their success in the workplace, two concepts generally emerge: hard work and politics. The general impression people seem to have is that the only way to advance in their career is to work more hours and cultivate relationships with people in powerful positions. And there are certainly some benefits from embracing these two behaviors.

However, when people are falling short of their potential at work and not meeting performance goals, they vaguely know what’s getting in the way. Behaviors such as these are good examples:

• Awkward communication, rubbing people the wrong way
• Resistance to important, difficult conversations
• Lack of clarity with direct reports
• An inability to influence strategic decisions
• Frustration pitching and embracing change

These, and other behaviors get in people’s way of the impact they aspire to make and limit performance: their’s and their organization’s

Coaching facilitates people’s learning of the changes —in mindset and behaviors— that will lead to enhancing their performance. By helping people transition from ineffective to effective behaviors, coaching is one of the most powerful and impactful investments you can make in yourself.

The rest of this article focuses on the case for coaching as a method for catalyzing individual and organizations growth, and as a result, finding more satisfaction, fulfillment and joy in life.

Why Coaching

So more specifically, what can coaching do for you?

In my experience as a coach, here are the changes and goals that I hear most, from people in sales, marketing, operations, IT, HR and even in the C-suite. As you peruse this list, ask yourself which of these resonate most when you think about how you feel about your job today:

• Achieving your ambitions and aspirationshow many of these are unfulfilled?
• Getting better at your jobare you aware of what’s holding you back and the cost?
• Adapting more effectively to changeis your resistance an impediment?
• More positively impacting those around youhow aware are you of your affect?
• Finding more inner-balance while pursuing growthhave you found the right formula for you?

How Coaching Works

There are a lot of misconceptions about coaching—and even confusion with consulting and therapy. Many people believe a coach’s job is to tell the coachee what to do. While at times, a coach will offer a coachee advice, that’s not at all how it works for very good reason: change in behavior is only sustainable when the thought and desire originates from the coachee.1

The purpose of coaching is to help people make the changes that lead to the outcomes they want. A coach is responsible for creating a process focused on the outcomes specified by the coachee. While there are multiple coaching methodologies, most approaches have these processes in common:

• Building the coachee’s awareness, of what is and how things could be different.
• Engaging with the coachee’s awareness of what is, and the exploration of new ways of looking at things and possible changes in behavior.
• Mobilizing, as awareness of something meaningful becomes sharper and interest in responding grows, the coachee considers other choices and explores possible courses of action.
• Planning and taking action, now that the coachee is fully aware of the possibility of making different choices to reach a goal and pursue positive change.
• The coachee taking action, by experimenting and practicing new behaviors that lead to the desired outcomes.

What Coaching Did For Julie

Julie became a coaching client when she was selected to participate in her company’s Future Leaders cohort. As a strong performer, she led a team of seven customer success account leads at a global technology company. She viewed this coaching opportunity as recognition of her potential and a sign that her company wanted to invest in her.

At the start of the engagement, Julie expressed an interest in broadening her reputation in the company and having more influence on strategic decisions. After the first couple of sessions, however, Julie chose to focus on her difficulty with a peer manager. She wondered what she could do to improve the relationship, particularly because it was affecting the morale of the entire team, including her’s. She was frustrated, couldn’t understand why her peer appeared angry with her and was concerned about how this was affecting client satisfaction.

After several sessions, Julie became aware that the tension with her peer manager and between the two teams was related to a reorganization a year ago. This organizational change was made to better align with the needs of clients. Clients wanted the two teams to work more closely together. Unfortunately, neither team had fully embraced the new paradigm and as a result, few members of either team were partnering well.

With a greater awareness of the issue, Julie mobilized quickly and developed a straw man plan. Her first step was reaching out to the other manager to listen to their perspective on the situation. It turned out, all of her peers were noticing the same issue and welcomed an open discussion to explore the issues and potential changes. This led to a powerful meeting, facilitated by Julie, where specific actions were agreed upon for 2024. They jointly presented the recommendations to their bosses, who quickly signed off and congratulated the team for the excellent work.

About David Ehrenthal

After a 25+ year career as a marketing executive and CEO, in the US and Europe, David created Mach10 Career & Leadership Coaching in 2021. He now coaches many clients interested in growing their leadership effectiveness and advancing their careers.

Please email David at [email protected] or give him a ring at 617-529-8795 if you want to talk.