"How we think" & not "What" Determines our Success

In one of my early executive coaching assignments, I had the opportunity to work with and support my coachee on a health related goal which was one of the three goals identified by him. The coaching engagement was for a period of 3 months. When the coachee reflected on his health area and focused, his goal read out like this.

“Celebrations on reaching a BP level of 135 / 90”.

When we started the coaching conversation his Blood Pressure was fluctuating at 145-155 / 95-105. I myself had a BP scare just 12 months before this assignment.  I share this because in our relationship with our coachee, we have to steer clear of our own agenda. It could spell disaster for the coachee & his transformational coaching journey. I feared that I might end up pushing my agenda with him to control his BP. As Coaches, our agenda is only “Coachee”. Fully aware that I must as Coach, stay clear and remain focused on coachee, we began our journey.

When we began the coaching sessions, working on the strategies in this goal area, coachee was quite confident & courageous. It was quite evident that coachee was quite keen to reach goal and sustain it. He had “awareness” about his situation. He was also amply clear on the outcome / goal and that is the key to success.

I would not like to go into details of how this journey of 12 weeks was for us. Suffice it to say, he recorded a BP level of 138 /90 in 11th week of our coaching i.e. close to 3 months.

During the journey, coachee kept thinking of & executing actions each week. These actions & their impact in his life and health generated new insights & learning’s for him. He created new activities, threw out some. He experimented, he succeeded. He knew importance of support. Helped by his own insights, he created partnerships and dependencies towards his cause of health.  It was amazing that within first 4-5 weeks, he was sticking to his commitments and schedule agreed and continued till end of engagement. He created new habits. Habits stick.

Some would still wonder as to how an executive coach can help in health goals. THINK.

Well Coaching is about thinking on “how we think”. Coaches help you observe yourself “ thinking”. The change happens there. Coaching is creating a positive change, new thinking, new Wiring facilitated by coach & powered by coachee. 

Give yourself credit

We all tend to be hard on ourselves. We create results, we accomplish. Yet we believe there was nothing exemplary about it. The less we reward ourselves, the more stress we create on accomplishing something different, something dramatic. The stress impacts our ability to think, unless we learn to handle it creatively. Most of us are not at our best creatively with new ideas, when we are under stress.

In coaching assignments, as we work towards the goals, actions agreed are reviewed with the coachee. In doing so we seek from coachee the feelings and learning’s these actions throw up.

In one of my coaching assignment, I observed that there was not enough energy & excitement with my coachee, a young man in mid 20s. (Son of the promoter of company). As a coach I brought up my observation, with his permission, and sought his feedback. He surprised me. He told me that he suffers from low self-esteem. I must add here that a coach builds trust with his coachee which makes him comfortable to share almost everything. I asked him to tell me about the time or event which made him feel proud, something he had accomplished.

At first he thought hard but could not come up with anything. I kept pushing & persuading him. He almost apologetically shared that he had few years back lost 5 kgs through a disciplined fitness regime. He enquired whether it could be considered an accomplishment. “Yes! That’s quite an accomplishment.”

He had a surprise look on his face. He never thought of it that way. No one ever told him that. He never thought that it was actually a big deal. He said “ I just decided one day that I must get into this “Diesel” brand of Jeans. So for that purpose I started walk and gym and shed these extra kilos which helped me reduce around my waist to fit into my jeans”. He did mention, at home, no one really noticed it as an accomplishment. He was reminded of a remark by his father that this weight loss was something due to his eating habits & it was more a correction.

As his coach I again reminded him that it was the effort, the action & the discipline which was exemplary. It made him smile. I appreciated him and asked him to go and ask  people who struggle with their weight and even knowing what to do are not able to get into a regime and correct their weight / fitness.

My Coachee smiled & shared few more examples of what he has done so far. Believe you me all his examples were accomplishment and needed appreciation and reward. He perhaps never bothered to share with anyone close for fear of it being seen as bragging. Perhaps he shared and was told it is no big deal. Perhaps he was told you have done well, but we expected more.

Well you can imagine when we met next and reviewed his actions, his energy levels were infectious. He was smiling all through. Thinking freely. He was committing more, he was stretching more. I felt great for him. That’s where a coachee should be to accomplish his goals

We can address such issues quite early in life as parents for our kids. We as parents could be hard on our teenage kids. We all are good intentioned parents, we want them to do better. As parents we must celebrate and reward the efforts of our kids. It helps build their self-esteem which transforms their thinking and their ability to work out things in mind and then execute. The key is to find them doing things that they feel good about, and give them credit.

What each of us do has value. Do not forget to give yourself credit too. Don’t be hard on yourself. Reward & Celebrate.

Why do we need executive coaches ?

When I embarked on my journey as an Executive Coach in 2009-10, I was asked a question “what do the coaches do”. My response was that coach’s help people do better and achieve more than what they are doing currently or hope to achieve with existing plan, actions & thinking.

Some other asked me why anyone would pay for a Coach. My response continues to be, even star athletes & sportsperson pay for their coaches even though they are at their peak performance. To sustain their success and continue to excel is their motto & here the coach helps them do that.

People, who engage coaches, experience a renewed power to think. They go through insightful moments with their coach, where they observe themselves on “how they think” which is quite distinct from just plain thinking.

There is some perception out there that a coach is only for when things are going wrong or there is some problem to be solved or goal to be attained. Many people consider coaching when faced with an obstacle or challenge which seems apparent. However by the time they finish coaching, they are much more firmly rooted in there Being. They truly realise few things.

The first realization a coach helps people make is to identify the areas and goals that truly matter. Most people when they approach the coach carry a dilemma or a challenge which they can’t define effectively. They tend to be either too simplistic or overly complex. Coach helps them resolve through a series of thinking and vision questions which help coachee think clearly and respond. This is the first insight a coachee has, he knew it all along somehow he did not see it the way he now understands his challenge. It is here a coachee starts to observe himself. He initiates his thinking about “how he thinks”.

The second realization is that to move forward we must stay focussed on future & solutions. Rather than asking questions “ why “ am I here or what did I do wrong to be here , they start asking themselves “ what do I do to create the outcomes that I have to & How do I do it”. Actions become the focus.

The third realization is related to our way of thinking especially people in corporate. They almost suffer from the challenge of doing root-cause of every single failure. Have you heard a manager ask his team “Why did you not take actions to….?”. We feel the need to understand reasons for failure. We don’t need to do that all the time. In same situation a Manager may ask, like a coach. “what do we do now ?” or how do we move forward to correct the situation”. We must learn to curtail our instinct to ask these unnecessary questions which evoke thoughts of failure, defence, denials and threats.

There are many more realization’s a coachee has in this transformational journey, which I will talk about in my next blog.

So let me go back to questions being asked to me and other fellow coaches. Why do people need coaches & why do we need to pay for them. Let me attempt a strong case for both these questions.

Coach helps people stretch themselves through improved thinking. The heartbeat of a coach’s work is to take the ordinary world and make it sacred for the coachee he works with.

MDs/CEOs/Promoters & very senior professionals know the areas in their life that they have to improve. Yet they don’t know where and to whom should they approach to get their resolutions. There are no training programs for these complex issues and challenges. They do not have trusted advisors or people with whom they can share. Coaches are useful who act as sounding boards apart from helping them think and align their learning’s to their pace and style in the confidential environment needed. Successful people deserve to reward themselves with a coach, as sportsperson does. This way he stays at top of the game always. To give comfort, let me share that even Jack Welch had Ram Charan. 

So , If you value exploring your own life and your own mind, if you value understanding how you work and where you get stuck, if you want to clarify what’s important to you and gain fresh perspective, and if you want a champion in your life, then you would want to engage a coach. The same as you might pay for a personal trainer if you wanted to take your fitness to the next level or pay for a holiday if you wanted relaxation. Coaching creates results in business (Revenue, sales. profits etc.), personal (relationships, social etc.) and skills ( listening , team , conflict management , time etc.).

This is generally how I answer the question now, about why professionals need to invest in themselves by investing in a coach.

Marshall Goldsmith book is apt. “What got you here, won’t get you there”. So to move ahead and higher we must invest in ourselves and in our thinking. New thinking. Coaching isn't just about fixing problems, it’s an idea, a type of conversation one has with one’s self and with the world, and your coach facilitates that conversation.

The coaching relationship can last a lifetime, and it only gets richer and deeper with time.