While consultants certainly have a place in business, generally they are brought in based on a specific problem within the organization. They offer advice or a potential solution, but most often they don't delve into why the problem exists or how to avoid future issues, particularly when it comes to problems created by a lack of leadership since the leaders are who hire them.

 

An effective coach prompts, instructs, encourages and intensively trains an individual or team to elicit the most conducive behaviors for achieving the desired goal. That is what I do. And that is what I have done for more than 20 years while leading individuals, teams, and serving as a strategic advisor to CEOs and other executives. I am a human who believes in and brings out the best in other humans. And when your organization has more human leaders, they will in turn believe in and bring out the best in the humans who report to them.

 

Through coaching, I help uncover underlying issues and work with clients to resolve them. While many people, including me, believed my professional persona kept out all personal challenges, I learned that the subconscious mind doesn't differentiate between personal and professional behaviors. While I may have had less fear in professional relationships, similar issues surfaced to some degree in both areas of my life. For instance, I managed conflict better professionally than personally, but I still didn't manage it as effectively as I could have to function optimally as a leader. I had more confidence in my professional persona than I did personally, but at my core, I still felt inadequate—never quite enough of anything or always too much of something.

 

Figuring out why I felt the way I did about myself has allowed me to become the optimal version of myself as a person and a leader. Here's an example...I can remember thinking and even saying to myself, "Why would/wouldn't an employee do/say that? It's common sense." Once I began to question what I said, did, thought, and believed, I asked myself if that statement about common sense was true. And it isn't. "Common sense" is something we say, think, and believe to justify judging people with different backgrounds, experiences, or education. There is no such thing as common sense because we don't all share a common history. 

 

The reality is that I wasn't always as proactive and direct in providing feedback to employees about their behavior as I needed to be, especially if I created the story that my feedback would be offensive because I had determined it was common sense. Here's a scenario. An employee didn't consistently greet customers with a welcoming tone of voice and a smile. Early in my career, I was uncomfortable providing feedback because I was uncomfortable receiving feedback. Subconsciously I believed I had to be perfect in order to be loved, so any feedback, personal or professional, created uncomfortable feelings in my body and fearful thoughts in my mind. What we cannot graciously give, we cannot graciously receive whether that is feedback at work or love at home. The same feelings in our bodies and fears in our subconscious persist until we learn how to change the automatic thoughts in our brains. I provided enough feedback to be effective enough in my role, but I can see now how my hesitancy to proactively coach employees prevented them from growing and developing to their full potential. I couldn't hold them accountable for what they didn't know. 

 

Or to summarize this concept very consisely...

A manager's unhealed pain says, "That's common sense." A healing leader asks, "How can I explain this so it's understood?"

 

And that's how I can help you and your leaders function optimally professionally and as a byproduct they'll have the opportunity to function optimally in their personal lives as well. And who wouldn't be loyal to an organization that invested in both their professional and personal well-being? When leaders understand why they think, believe, and behave as they do, they no longer fear their inner selves and gain the ability to lead their human teams to serve the organization's human customers with care and concern. When humans are allowed to be human while striving for business excellence, an organization's culture can transform into one where every human interaction matters. And when every human interaction matters, employee engagement, employee retention, customer satisfaction, and profits improve. 

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