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Executive Leadership Coaching – Busting the Myths

Posted 22 January, 2013 by Jennifer

Over the last fortnight, in the process of building an ‘extension’ onto my present business activities, I’ve met an extraordinary range of diverse leaders – some corporate, some entrepreneurial, most a bit of both. Here’s what’s been interesting to me – they have each been successful in their own way, achieving well (from my limited exposure to their work & home lives) and motivated – but not a single one of them had considered engaging an executive coach, a mentor, or an independent leadership partner to speed up the process of living their vision?

Here’s what I also noticed, when given the opportunity to talk one-to-one, every single one of them – after 30 minutes of me listening, asking some key questions and feeding back to them what I’d heard – said they felt clearer, more motivated and more confident in their ability to achieve the vision they’d been holding in their minds. They all said that they’d invest in regular coaching conversations if they were sure to achieve ‘twice the success in half the time’. That means that the expectations they might been holding for 4 years are achieved in one. Imagine the reality of what that means for work life, home life, family, fitness, finances … it’s got to be worth exploring.

Here’re the 5 questions I get asked most when a new executive leader is working out the value of coaching:

1. What if I don’t have any issues to talk to you about

Great, because I don’t work with clients who have issues, I work with clients who have unreleased potential. They’re already successful at what they do. What they want from me is perspective, clarity and someone to hold them accountable as they stretch their abilities beyond what they’d do alone.

2. How can you teach me if you haven’t done what I’m doing

I’m not a teacher or a consultant – I don’t have your answers. I’m a coach, I have the questions – you’ve got your answers. It’s a huge myth – perpetuated by trainers, consultants and mentors (none of whom are coach trained) – that executive coaches will offer up solutions. We won’t. I equip you to explore, get clear and expand. Your executive coach should be executive coach trained and preferably have 1000s of hours worth of relevant experience and quality client testimonials.

3. How can you help me get ahead in medicine (or construction, media, IT, retail, oil & gas) if you’re not a medic

Great leadership is about developing the courage and skill set to know yourself deeply. You can only engage, inspire and stretch your teams and collaborators to the point at which you’ve experienced that engagement, inspiration and stretching yourself.

4. Most of the directors and CEOs I know don’t use a coach

Don’t be too sure about that. And ask yourself, of the leaders I have access to, are most of them true innovators, creatives and ground breakers? Because if they are, you can be sure they’re smart enough to be investing in all the development available to them to be clear of their motives, to multiply their skill set and to drive their business forward at speed. You’d be surprised at how many stand-out leaders are quietly partnering with a great executive coach.

5. How do I know it’s going to be worth the investment

You don’t. But here’s the thing – if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to get the results you’ve always had. Expanding your thinking and your skill set is the quickest way possible to start to play a bigger game. To stretch your vision, your action taking, your confidence, your influence and your overall results. Do what you do with a new restaurant, a new sport, a new relationship – book in a date and have the experience.

Jennifer Broadley is one of the UK's leading executive coaches. She works with corporate leaders, business directors and successful entrepreneurs. She specialises in CEO coaching, prosperity coaching and providing the most cutting-edge and intuitive leadership and personal success programs in the UK. Jennifer is passionate about the ongoing self improvement of the world's future business leaders – the way-showers for our precious next generation. She coaches, speaks, writes and runs workshops on 'The 7 Steps to Personal & Professional Freedom'®. You can buy her book of the same name from www.Amazon.co.uk You can call, email or message Jennifer from www.JenniferBroadley.com.

Successful leadership – genuinely be yourself

Posted 14 September, 2012 by Jennifer

‘What does it take to be successful in top leadership?’, I’m asked by a client about to step up to an MD-on-the-board role. And I found my usual coach approach of ‘empower the client to discover’ went right out the window. ‘If you really want to lead with style’, I said, ‘then genuinely be yourself’.

My experience has often been that by the time you, as a senior executive, are invited to be part of the elite leadership team that make up the board of a large corporate, it’s your character, experience and intuitive creativity that are really being called on.

You’ve done the journeying; the one that starts in the first years learning the formulas for acceptance which allow you to integrate into the company structure. As a team member you had to learn how to get on with colleagues, how to keep time, meet deadlines, produce results and communicate clearly, respectfully and using the language of the organisation.

Then you moved up to management; you learned the skills that allowed you to communicate clear goals, to motivate, to listen well, to spot your team member’s strengths and to influence their thinking as well as that of peers, directors and clients. You met deadlines and achieved results.

As a director, you felt the pressure and responded. You developed to know how to champion your business sector within the overall company vision. You inspired those around you to think more creatively, you knew which were the quick wins and which opportunities were best played out over a longer, more strategic time period. You worked out that to consciously invest in your own development at this point meant you could work less (yet smarter) and earn more. You hired teams knowledgeably and inspired with wisdom.

So now you’ve done your time, you’re ready for board level and your role from here is to oversee the business of a whole country or the negotiating of billion-pound contracts.

You’re part of a leadership team that together steers a healthy course of growth for products, services, customers and employees alike. What’s different from here is that there’s less instead of more structure because the market isn’t defined by past results it’s created by honoring the future. It’s time to downplay some of the rigidity that got you there and up-play some of the true you.

Successful leaders, over time, learn how to trust their intellect, their emotional intelligence and their intuition. The investment of time and personal & professional development has been focussed for the boardroom for a decade or more. From here your ability to create and to influence from a place of integrity and uniquely you-ness is massively leveraged. Competitors, customers and the rest of the company are watching and learning from your style. You may not know it yet, but in your part of the corporate world … you’re already a super-star!

Keeping it simple

Posted 17 August, 2012 by Jennifer

As an executive coach, I’m sometimes called on when a leader, manager or company has too much going no – people, projects, development, deadlines, decisions – and they’ve passed the tipping point of working to full effectiveness. It’s not a weakness to have said ‘yes’ to so many things (or, more likely, for additional responsibilities to have been given to you because there was no one else to take them on) but too much complexity never delivers effective business results.

A call for your executive coach is a call to streamline and to simplify.

Earlier this week I had a conversation with a writer and film director. There were about 8 projects he could easily invest time in – networking, event organising, putting together his next creative team – there’s always so much going on. I asked him – why do you do what you do? He said ‘I love to write. And I love to create.’ I asked him – knowing that, what are your priorities today? He said ‘To finish this script. To get the movie made.’ And even simpler than that? … ‘To finish this script’.

Sometimes there’s a really obvious right next move; often it’s one that only you can do. That’s why it’s on your list and no-one else’s.Everything else you’re investing time in is a distraction, or a subconscious procrastination because it knows that the things only you can do will create the biggest ripple effects – and that in turn will change your world.

There’s a classic story (which is worth repeating …) about a professor who held up to his students an empty glass jar. Into it he placed some large rocks up to the rim. He then help up the jar and said ‘is it full?’. The students nodded ‘yes’. Next the professor took out a bag of pebbles and poured them into the jar. The pebbles found their way in around the spaces of the large rocks. ‘Is it full now?’ he asked. The students nodded ‘yes’. The professor then took out a bag of sand. He poured the sand into the jar and it filled in the spaces around the pebbles. He held up the jar, ‘Is it full now?’. The students nodded ‘yes’. The professor took out a beaker of water, he slowly poured it into the glass jar. The water meandered its way around the spaces of the rocks, the pebbles and the sand until it reached the rim of the jar. ‘Ok, so now it’s full’, said the professor, ‘So, what’s the lesson’?

One student raised her hand and said ‘Is it that we can achieve more than we think – but sometimes have to find new ways to do so?’. ‘A good answer, anyone else?’ said the professor. Another student put up his hand, ‘Could it be that if we assume a question means ‘more of the same’ we’re missing an opportunity?’. ‘Another good answer’ said the professor, ‘And here’s the lesson I want you to take away from today: I could only put as much into this glass jar if I started with the big stuff. In any other order, this quantity of rocks, pebbles, sand and water could not be contained. Prioritise the big things into your life – health, fitness, a vision, connection – and all the rest will fall into place around it’.

As an executive coach, I couldn’t have put it better myself!

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci

Leadership Success: clarity, passion, teamwork

Posted 30 April, 2012 by Jennifer

The great thing about coaching leadership success is that it naturally has a positive ripple effect throughout the rest of the company. Directors get clear, they speak with expectation and inspiration to their managers and in turn those managers create a culture of unlimited possibilities within their teams – a win for productivity, for the organisation and for its customers.

So what does it take for a business leader to motivate a team to operate at peak potential? Clarity, enthusiasm and motivation all contribute – that takes body, mind and heart know-how. The ‘x-factor’ for limitless results is always the same … add soul to the equation. Here’s some of what I know about that:

Energy organises around what is most articulate in your system. When your predominant resonance is one of expectation, you attract excitement, when it’s one of progress you attract action, one of confusion you attract mixed messages, one of conflict you attract aggression, one of expansion you attract opportunities.

It’s important to equip yourself with a colourful vocabulary around the subject you’re passionate about. Practice speaking out how great it’s going to be to achieve that promotion, build that team, launch that new product line, expand into that region or sell that millionth unit. Everything is achieved with less effort when your predominant vibration is one of already having achieved the result you’re dreaming of.

As a leader:

Everything you do influences others: your words, your attitude, your humour, your discipline.
Be clear (and if you’re not, get a coach and get clear) – because directors and managers will model your message. There’s got to be a sense that a team know how their contribution fits into the big picture, and how that’s valued overall by the organisation. Clarity will cut through timelines like nothing else in business.
Get to know the human capital available to you. You may have an Einstein on your payroll; she may know how to deliver a process or a product that’s unlike anything anyone’s see before. If that’s the case you really want to have access to that genius.

Coaching leadership success is all about placing the success of a leader’s results squarely in the realms of their own responsibility. The more you invest in yourself the more limitless the possibilities you create for yourself and for those around you – personally and professionally!

Coaching conscious leaders

Posted 1 March, 2012 by Jennifer

It takes an aware and bold leader to continue to step into areas of discomfort as they stretch themselves in the name of personal & professional development. They know already the link between self development and higher results – and they make conscious decisions to commit the time and effort to the ongoing refinement of thoughts, words, actions, skills.

Most leaders I’ve worked with are:

Clear thinkers – the conversations they’re having in the moment have a ‘how is this contributing to the biggest future’ slant on them
Resilient – they don’t take knock-backs personally. They learn, adjust, get up and approach again from a different angle
Risk takers – the next steps are calculated and when the key people are in the position they’re going

Beyond this awareness are servant leaders who in addition:

Engage their heart – they consider the individuals, they go beyond ‘biggest future’ to ‘legacy’
Emit authenticity – they’re healthy, disciplined, inspired and conscious that ‘all of it’ (people, attitude, ethos, standards, respect …) contributes to ultimate success and results
Live accountably – there’s no blaming; just the highest personal standards of clarity, impeccable speech & motivation and they ‘be the change they want to see’

In a recent conversation I heard this: ‘most of the adults I work with use the same emotional strategies they were using in their teens’. Thankfully that’s not my own experience with my clients, but I get what he meant in saying that.

If you take 100% responsibility for evolving into the sort of person who can be, do, have and achieve the things you dream about, you can experience the freedom that goes with it; because then everything’s something you can do something about.

Coaching conscious leadership is tough head, heart & soul work. Persistence in strengthening those skill-sets though brings with it unparalleled results, extraordinary rewards and individuals who literally become beacons in their lifetime.

Say it like it is … the ‘whole’ truth

Posted 21 February, 2012 by Jennifer

I can talk about leadership development and companies can hire me as an executive coach to encourage more advanced and successful leadership but I may as well be a lorry driver (a secret fantasy of mine since the Yorkie advert era) and they may as well torch their people-investment spend if we can’t talk about the truth. The WHOLE truth. Here’s some of what I’ve been processing with various executives this week:

We’re definitely committed to your part in the company’s succession planning – but we are making a round of redundancies and it’s unconfirmed as to who’s in that mix
We value your experience and your results are unparalleled – however, we can’t invest further in your team to free you up to do what only you can do
It’s just the culture of the company – the systems are established and can’t be changed. It’s too big a conversation over too long a period to take advantage of the opportunity that’s presenting itself right in this moment

Here’s why change takes SO long to put in place in some large corporates … because even the finest leaders find it challenging to support a concept that may result in them losing their job!

I’m not saying that leaders, MDs, board members and directors don’t have exceptionally valuable experience to offer to the corporate mix … in the majority of cases, of course they do! But if you keep telling the story that ‘the next stage of how this company can serve its clients (readers, listeners, customers, patients, subscribers) has to be designed to keep me in the picture’ you may be limiting your service to the company, making decisions from a place of fear and lack as opposed to freedom and abundance.

The truth will set you free means that:

when you sense something is right and purposeful – trust that you will be respected and rewarded by speaking it out and boldly enabling the most enlightened solutions to come to pass
you may have to learn to communicate at a much higher level – and trust that chaos and ‘pruning’ are part of the process of developing a healthier, more flexible, transparent and authentic way of doing future business
you stand up and take action with 100% integrity – even when speaking out the tough parts requires humility – and by doing so, in today’s world of corporate leadership you will set yourself apart

I leave you with some word from one of the biggest rule breakers and new thinkers of our recent corporate business heritage, Steve Jobs:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

‘I Wanted to Design; Now I Lead’ …

Posted 11 January, 2012 by Jennifer

What happens when the thing you loved doing the most – the reason you stepped up for your chosen career – is no longer present in your job?

I’ve spoken to directors who were designers, managers who were mechanics, and leaders who were lifeguards – all of whom have progressed far enough in their careers that the activity that made them stand out in the first place has been downsized to almost zero and replaced with leadership responsibilities primarily comprising of strategy and motivating others.

It’s not entirely a bad thing. And it could easily be called ‘natural career progression’. If it describes you then know this; stepping forward into leadership is best when:

you’re still involved with people who are doing the thing you loved – and you can inspire them
the knowledge you acquired developing the skill-set of your passion can continue to be shared
by doing so, you discover something more about yourself that you couldn’t have aspired to at the outset of your career journey

I don’t know any career newbees who when asked ‘what would you like to be’, they answer ‘A leader’, ‘A CEO’, or ‘A board director’. Instead they aspire to be architects, clothes designers, marine engineers, environmental scientist, flower importers – you know? Things that directly link them to the product or service they want to offer to others.

My question is this: if leadership is naturally what we all progress towards then how come we don’t:

talk about it to our students and new starts to prepare them for going beyond their ‘first stage’ career
equip our directors with a full leadership skill set in as much detail as we would a doctor
support leaders constantly so that in their rising to the top of our organisations, they continue to exude the creativity and innovation that we know they inherently own because we saw it displayed in their ‘stage 1′ passion

When a company’s leaders are disciplined and successful, but not 100% passionate about the role they’ve progressed to, not only does the organisation lose their return on investment in that person, they also haemorrhage possibility, opportunity and competitive edge.

No one would drive a car with a leak in the petrol tank – it limits the speed and potential of you getting from A to B. So why do we accept a reduced performance in our most valued and invested-in employees?

To get way out in front in 2012, here’s where I believe the treasure lies:

FOCUS on your key 10-20 performers and, especially if they’re outstanding, invest further in them (coaching, mentoring, enabling)
CREATE (or access) a platform which brings together leaders from different, non-competitive disciplines and companies to share stories that inspire and prompt radical, new thinking and stimulating possibilities (the TED.com theory: ideas worth sharing)
TALK! If you’re an HR Director or Talent Manager, get out there and do the rounds with your board members and fellow directors – find out the development they’d most value.
TALK! If you’re a director or leader in your business, go and find your Learning & Development contact and ask them what the possibilities are for you to actively evolve yourself and your results this year
TALK! If you’re from an organisation where you know there’s a valuable conversation to be had with a counterpart in a non-competitive organisations, pick up the phone, call him/her and get the revolution started.

The CEO and Business Leaders’ Solutions to Simplify

Posted 4 October, 2011 by Jennifer

When conducting seminars and workshops for leaders of medium and large companies, occasionally I’ll meet a“revealer.” These are the people who will speak out about their success process without being nervous of disclosing techniques.

It’s a positive trait, and one where I can take the opportunity to further explore a leader’s strategies: “How did you do it?”, “What were your biggest challenges”, “what kept you motivated”.

For some it was the right timing, for others they brought the right team around them, and for others still they acted ‘consciously’ as much as possible, constantly refining their vision and leadership until the point of breakthrough. Without exception though every successful leader I speak to hasdeveloped methods of belief and persistence and they’ve invested time… A LOT of time.

Some talk about the early days when 16 to 20 hour days were required just to meet their objectives for the month! We’ve all touched on a bit of that madness, but sustaining this sort of time commitment is a catalyst for a breakdown. So …

How do we create sustainable success? How do we accomplish growth over short and long periodswith the least effort possible? How do we use our unique talents in the most effective way to lead and to inspire increase?

The secret … simplify!

Here’s what the “revealers”, and the more reserved leaders, say about cultivating simplicity:

Develop deep intuition:
Don’t be guided by your impulses or by a range of opinions from others who aren’t fully invested in the vision or the outcome. Relax, sit down, and ask yourself, “how does this process / decision contribute to the big picture”, “what other choices and resources do I have available”, “Is this the most efficient& effective way to proceed?”

Delegate efficiently:
Micro-managing is limiting. You can pioneer a new process … but then source someone who’s gifted in that area to do subsequent repetitions – a designer, administrator, presenter, team-builder or technical genius. They needn’t be in-house. Train them, empower them and trust them to do what they do best. And you? You move forward and do what you do best.

Embrace technology:
Banking, accounting, communicating, sharing, updating, planning, storing, processing — there are some awesome technologies out there (and more cost effective and innovative than in-house teams sometimes)that aren’t taken advantage of by the biggest companies. Embracing technology may take some investment but when it streamlines your business and reduces your long-term costs – you’ll be glad you were smart and brave ‘back then’ to make the shift.

Honour deadlines:
Put a limit on how much time you spend on marketing, financing, recruiting, innovating, delivering and conducting meetings. The goal here is to keep to a flow of innovation, development, launching, feedback and refinement. The ‘pressure’ of a deadline can expose extraordinary creativity. And I’ve seen inspired leaders ‘un-develop’ their perfectionist tendencies and create rapid growth using the mantra ‘good is good enough’.

Collaborate:
The best strategic partnerships will shortcut the amount of time you spend looking for new customers, suppliers, vendors, networks and systems. The future of successful business is becoming less about secrecy and competition and shifting more towards rich customer relationship, service, sharing, collaborating, empathetic joint ventures and transparentshared knowledge.

When enough’s enough: business leaders going AWOL!

Posted 1 September, 2011 by Jennifer

Absent Without Leave (AWOL) is a military term used when a soldier is absent from where he/she should be but without intent to desert.

I started this week with a list of ‘must do’s’ deadlined for the end of this month. Program development, video re-records, radio show interviews, updates from my team … all this amongst doing the one thing I love most in my business - executive coaching with my amazing leadership, business owner and professionals clients!

I looked at the list on Monday morning, looked at the spaces in my schedule this week and you know what I did? – I scrumpled the list up tightly and binned it. ’I’m only going to do what I love this week’ I said.

So, in the gaps on Monday I finished reading ‘The Bond’ by Lynne McTaggart. In the gaps on Tuesday I started reading my first Marshall Goldsmith book (hmmm – me likey!). Wednesday followed pattern and was rounded off with an hours drive south to have supper with an inspiring friend I hadn’t seen in nearly a year.

On my drive back north through the Fife fields & farmland I just had this massive sense of gratefulness. The sun was shining on the half-harvested barley fields, I was tapping back into a sense of creativity that’s been the catalyst for up-levelling my business on more than one occasion over the past decade, and my calmness quotient was overflowing because I CAN go AWOL once in a while and everything won’t come crashing down around me.

But what if you don’t work for yourself and you’re not the boss? What if you’re in a corporate role, directing a team, with projects to complete and accountable for meeting targets and the company depends on your results? Is AWOL an option?

It’s a tough one to answer. In my 10 years of coaching executives I haven’t met a single professional who hasn’t at some point considered jumping ship or initiating an ‘extreme career change’. Some, have been on the edge of quitting, are disillusioned, or just down-right exhausted from a no-respite, limited-appreciation corporate culture.

Question is … where does the responsibility lie for the intellectual, emotional and spiritual health of a workforce? Is it with a business to ensure all it’s leaders remain engaged and motivated? Or with the individual to manage their ongoing career goals within their overall life expectations? A bit of both, however, my experience would encourage the latter – it can only be YOU who decides what works best for you and only you can know fully the elements of your life that impact your decision to stay, go or re-design your position.

Here’s what I also know to be true:

Getting clear about what you want – hours, pay, projects, team make up, opportunities to progress, increase or decrease in responsibilities, reporting lines, work-life balance – is the key to being able to communicate that over time to your business. If you don’t know, they can’t help you.
Negotiating regular professional changes inside your company – preferably while you’re calm enough to be factual and highlight the benefits on all sides – keeps you and your company fresh and constantly looking for a collaborative and positive future.
Extending flexibility as individually required within your team enhances their motivation to work and, by extension, your satisfaction because more is achieved in less time.

The lesson here: AWOL in corporate cultures is for extreme cases only. And WAY before you reach that stage … get thinking, get talking, get feeling; take responsibility, and take action … and get an independent professional involved. Executive coaches are here to support leaders each step until they’re entirely living their Personal & Professional Freedom!

Successful Leadership – Get Plugged In!

Posted 21 June, 2011 by Jennifer

I’ve often heard when working with a corporate leadership client – ‘well I haven’t told anyone I’m working with you – I don’t want them to know there’s a problem’. And I have to ask myself ‘where has this message come from’ because I certainly don’t work with clients because there’s a problem (nor do any of my associate executive coaches) – I work with clients who are whole, capable, already successful AND have unreleased potential.

And here’s the thing – everyone I know has unreleased potential, even the highest fliers in their field – JK Rowling, Bill Gates, Paul Polman (CEO Unilever), Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Founders, Google), Roger Federer – whether sport, business or creative arts there never comes a point when you can say, ‘I know all I could ever know’ or ‘I have contributed all I’m able to contribute’.

The shift I work with my clients on is to become conscious of their infinite power to create and contribute. You see 99.9% of people on our planet don’t yet know that with every thought they think, they create something – thoughts are things. So we meander through life with unchecked thinking - what will I write in that proposal, I wish I had a different boss, wouldn’t it be great to win the lottery, who would I date if I could choose anyone at all, what shall I have for dinner tonight, oh, yes, that proposal – having no idea that these thoughts are creating an attraction to the outcome as we think them.

Also, about 97% of the thoughts that occur in our mind happen at a subconscious level. Anything that has to happen frequently – movement, driving, assessing a persons status, choosing the words we speak out, our emotional response to seeing lovers kissing – is predominantly in the domain of the automated part of ourselves. To actively manage what we’re creating, we have to override some of that automation (where there are limited beliefs) with some new likelihoods.

Infinite possibilities come from our ability to tap into our soul – the design of who we are in connection to all that is. It’s like a toaster plugging into the electricity supply – it can only do what it’s designed to do by having this network of power run through it. And that electricity is always there – just waiting. It doesn’t care if it’s powering a kettle, an iMac, a hairdryer or a mobile phone. It just gives out the essence of what it is to allow a product to be of service.

Same thing applies with Infinite Possibility (or universal potential) – our soul’s the plug by which we get consciously connected to it. And the ‘flow’ we connect to doesn’t make choices around worthiness, status or level to which we aspire; it’s just fully available to everyone - man, woman, rich, poor, clear, confused, young, old – all cultures, all abilities, all visions.

So when you’re considering what it takes for you to be even more of a successful leader that you already are, ask your executive ‘electrician’ about how to connect your soul to unlimited Source energy. Infinite Possibility is what dynamic, fluent, innovative leadership is all about. Make the shift from unconscious to conscious business leadership; from ambition to meaning; and from seeing problems to acknowledging unreleased potential.