Next Level Mentoring
Hi friends!
I hope you’re well and staying safe in these strange times. Sustainability. Reality. Quality. Authenticity. Ability. Stability. Productivity. Curiosity. Rationality. Emotionality. Resiliency. Dignity. Integrity. Humanity.
These are just a few examples of meanings that we can all relate to. This is especially true if you work as a coach or mentor on a daily basis. Executive mentoring is a holistic effort that is supported by heart and soul, mind and body, and focuses on the desired results of an executive. It necessitates that our leaders embark on the difficult journey of redesigning their current boundaries and redefining the limits of their lives. This type of work is both uncomfortable and encouraging, liberating and grounding. The work has the effect of bringing the leaders back to a person they know well - themselves. A large part of mentoring leaders is to help them remember their best version of "self" and the version of "self" they aspire to. We call this authenticity, and we need more of it from our leaders.
There appear to be two ways to describe "spiritual mentoring": First, mentoring models that make explicit and unapologetically use the language of spirituality in their methodology and practice, and do not apologize for referring to their work as "spiritual mentoring," and second, professional mentoring models that use methods, theories, and practices from perennial wisdom traditions and spiritual orientation, participate in a discourse on spirituality that cries out for clarification. Or as Ken Wilber says, a path of growing up and awakening.
Many mentors would agree that their work contains an element of spirituality, but few are willing to label it as such. "I have been saying for years that mentors and coaches are secular clergy," says Frank Ball, former co-director of the Leadership Coaching Certificate Program at Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies. And, according to Dearlove and Crainer, "often the executive coach is a corporate confessor" (Dearlove and Crainer 2003). The coaches were even dubbed "the new high priests" (Conlin 2002). Ken Wilbers prefers to combine the various methods, which he refers to as an integral life.
Despite evidence of a spirituality discourse in the business world, spirituality is frequently a taboo subject. Coaching, in my opinion, is a "Trojan horse" that serves to bring spirituality into organizations without calling it spirituality. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (Loehr and Schwartz 2001) describe a high performance pyramid that ranges from the base of physical capacity to the peak of spiritual capacity in an article for the Harvard Business Review. "Most executives are understandably cautious about addressing the spiritual level of the performance pyramid in the business world," they write.The term "spiritual" elicits conflicting emotions and does not appear to be directly related to high performance. So, to be clear, spiritual capacity simply refers to the energy released by tapping into one's deepest values and defining a strong sense of purpose. This ability, we've discovered, serves as a source of motivation, concentration, determination, and resilience in the face of adversity. An explicit discourse on spirituality in professional mentoring would help us understand what spirituality is, how it functions within a coaching engagement, and how it influences how coaches work. As with emotions, which we are hesitant to discuss and frequently leave out of our conversations, I believe spirituality exists in coaching engagements, whether or not it is acknowledged. A spiritual discourse would enable coaches to name their work and see themselves as "spiritual consultants" capable of tapping into a dynamic process that has been shown to be a source of motivation, concentration, determination, and resilience.
Furthermore, mentoring emphasizes learning and development over pure performance, the future over the past, strengths over weaknesses, action over inaction, and questions and reflection over advice or problem solving. Furthermore, coaching is tailored to the individual rather than a methodology or a theoretical standpoint, and its main tools are questions rather than answers.
One of the fundamental principles of professional mentoring is that mentoring helps clients see things from a different perspective. Every client has a story about why and how he or she does what he or she does. The primary skill used and developed by professional coaches, which goes beyond existing clinical or advisory frameworks and applications, is the ability to use a few well-placed questions to get the client to focus on variables that are critical to his or her success and to bring clarity to his or her story, even in areas where they have little or no experience. Changing the lens through which the story is viewed can frequently have a significant impact on the options for action and, as a result, the outcome.