A Peek into the Coaching Experience, Part 1: Personal Leadership

Coaching is_____.

Every once in a while, I come back to this piece I wrote on LinkedIn three years ago when I was still training as an executive coach. 

It reminds me of those first moments of surprise that coaching is not about telling leaders how to tackle their challenges and goals. Instead, it’s about guiding them to develop self-consciousness that we then translate into values, frameworks, and tools for that leader to live and lead by.

In my own experience with being coached, developing, and evolving that personal leadership foundation has been immensely helpful in deciding how I want to show up in a given moment.

I don’t always meet the moment, but the foundation is like a lighthouse: a reliable signal for the direction I want to go.

Perhaps it’s the unfolding details about the killing of Tyre Nichols that is bringing me back to one of these moments from three years ago:

Like others, I was angry, grieving, and tired following the death of George Floyd. I was particularly upset with a few leaders senior to me at work for staying silent on the topic. It felt unconscionable to go about our projects as we would any other day. Long-standing injustice and violence had been laid bare in such a visceral way. 

While I am not Black, I had my own past experiences with othering. Anxiety was mixed in with my present exasperation. I knew I had to speak up. At the same time, I yearned for someone else to take the mic. The inner tension was palpable, yet I couldn’t excuse myself.

Here I was, not sharing my disappointment about the situation. Here I was, being as silent as the people I wanted to hear speak. 

What pushed me out of my impasse was a pillar in my own leadership framework. I had identified that empathy, fairness, and transparency were key values for me. So I had to ask myself: which of my values am I going to grab onto, to push away from everything that’s holding me back? What’s important enough to me here that I will take a stand for it?

I chose ‘transparency’ and had the conversations. It led to one of the leaders opening up about their own vulnerabilities, hosting a team discussion, and people feeling supported. It led to ideation on how to address systemic injustice through our work.

Not every conversation led to an immediate shift. But every conversation achieved a baseline of awareness that is necessary to initiate change. Every conversation was one point in favor of transparency.

Sometimes people think of executive and leadership coaching in terms of desired business and career outcomes: sales you’ll close, employees you’ll retain, and promotions you’ll secure. Those are important perspectives. The lens I’m here to add is that coaching is about learning how to ground yourself in the moment. It is about facing your fears and biases, knowing your vision and ideals, and translating the best of you into action at any given time. That’s how you build lasting behavior change and confidence. That’s what can lead to the outcomes.

It is once we make this effort – to understand our mindsets and habits, to get grounded in what makes us who we are, and to decide who we want to be – that we notice our world expand, and we grow our leadership in it.