She collapsed on the weekends, exhausted from back-to-back billable client work and fitting in being a manager whenever she could. She always felt behind. She would go on vacation but feel like she was letting down her team and then feel dread of what she would arrive back to. She was providing good service to clients and hitting business metrics, but she wasn’t thriving, and she worried that her team wasn’t either. This wasn’t a desirable situation, and likely not sustainable.
That was the starting point for our leadership coaching sessions. Here’s that client’s journey:
We talked through role models she had met along her career and what choices and defaults might be driving her approach to managing her calendar, her energy, and her staff. Our goal was to leverage a common vocabulary for navigating boundaries and priorities, and engage with consistent sources of energy enhancing activities.
This goal was important to her because she wants to be a leader who is accessible and responsive, and who develops high performing teams people want to be a part of. She also wants to be out hiking and skiing on the weekends, and be an available, reliable friend.
Through coaching she learned two key things about herself.
- Her image of a competent manager was someone with deep expertise and strong decision-making, so she felt that compromising and asking questions were risky – people would take advantage or question her authority. This helped her build her portfolio to this point, but she didn’t realize how much this image was limiting her toolkit for leading her team in more than a transactional way.
- She has been in building-mode ever since setting a business goal a few years ago, and hasn’t looked up to see the new bigger picture and perhaps adapt some of the structures she set in place, to move into the next phase for the business, and for herself.
Together we framed an image of a new way for defining success and teamwork, and we created three specific competencies needed to reach that image. In every session, we created a detailed exercise to practice and develop those competencies in her regular workday, and we would explore her observations and reflections.
She started to breathe again. She leaned into different forms of power besides power of authority to motivate her team, and herself. She reset some priorities and boundaries, adapted some roles and responsibilities, and expanded what she delegated (and what she dropped.) And she happily goes on multiple vacations a year.
She noticed her symptoms, didn’t dismiss them as “this is just the nature of this business”, identified that coaching was a solution, and made an investment – in herself.
I wish I had learned much earlier in my career journey about ways to show curiosity without fear of losing authority or respect for expertise, and about adapting through energy draining and energy enhancing activities. So as a coach, these are some of the tools I offer so my clients can thrive.
If you see yourself in this story, with similar symptoms and important goals, and you’ve been trying training programs, podcasts, and books, but haven’t felt momentum, yet alone a transformation, perhaps the solution you’re seeking is – coaching.
Hop on my calendar for a chat to learn more.
