The Keep-Getting-Better-Focus N° 2

Executive
Coaching.

A definition, and a provocative one: Executive Coaching, if good, helps executives to stop being executives. Is it overly outspoken to say something like that? Even bad for (the consultants’) business? Maybe yes – but then: No. We think: It’s the business outright of good consultants and coaches – not to say what the client loves to hear. Not to say what helps the consultants’ business thrive. But to say what is right, important, helpful, true. Else: No chance, wrong approach.

What were we talking about? Ah, yes – Executive Coaching: Executives tend to be a pretty accomplished crowd, if we may put it that way. However, what most of them fail to be able to do is: Not being able to do. From our experience, this is exactly what even the most accomplished executives have to address when it comes to personal learning, improvement and change. Not to build their own statues (prematurely so). Not to follow the expectations of others. Not to succumb to how it’s usually done, the executive business. In a way: To »unlearn what they have learned« during their formation years – and their careers.

This is what it’s all about for most executives – and for the most accomplished executives, too: To be different. Unexecutive. To think different of what they are. Of what they are supposed to be. To constantly re-invent the executive. To keep asking (themselves and others): What can it be, today, tomorrow, in a year – this strange task, role, responsibility, person, position, picture, image, idea – of the executive.

Shouldn’t be bad for business after all, now that we’ve said this, should it?

Two more sentences:

// For me it's important that those who come to me should come to themselves. //

Wolfgang Rihm
Composer

// As soon as you know what you want it becomes pretty easy to find out what the next steps will be. //

Babette Nilshon
Business Consultant and Executive Coach