In the old days…

When I first began coaching members of the C-suite nearly 30 years ago senior leaders had no real interest in working with executive coaches. Back then, coaching was rare and those who were labeled as coaches were frequently called productivity improvement consultants. These clinical or industrial psychologists were brought in to communicate performance expectations on behalf of the boss, usually in a last ditch attempt to get a derailed key leader back on track. Although top leaders occasionally tapped into the expertise of leadership experts they did so in secret and their new abilities were almost always developed serendipitously versus strategically.

Shift gears to today…

A 2013 Executive Coaching Survey conducted by the Stanford Business School with The Miles Group concluded that nearly one-third of CEOs have worked with an executive coach and/or participated in some sort of intensive leadership development experience. Almost half of senior executives in general have participated in coaching. Interestingly, all the leaders surveyed (100 percent) said they would welcome coaching to enhance their development.

Today’s top leaders recognize that senior level roles by design are isolated, complex and fraught with both political and psychological dynamics that are difficult and exhausting to sort out alone. Many times, these leaders experienced the collateral damage associated with bosses who led inappropriately because they were not sufficiently self-aware, vulnerable or emotionally intelligent. Choosing to achieve results where both people and work are aligned, these leaders are eager to get another perspective and gain new skills in areas that were once labeled as “soft” or low priority.  The newest breed of top leaders have benefitted from coaching that helps them increase their self-awareness, make honest assessments about how their personality impacts business decisions, reflect on their ego/motives and clarify the values that will carry them through turbulent times. The consequences of the absence of these capabilities played out in front of these leaders early in their careers. They saw leaders flame out or destroy promising futures because they were not interested in their own growth and development as a top leader.

Self-awareness is crucial to leadership and it can be heightened through coaching. Stephen Miles, CEO of the Miles Group, that partnered with Stanford on the coaching study, stated that to many older CEOs, “coaching is somehow remedial” as opposed to something that enhances high performance, similar to how an elite athlete uses a coach. Moreover, the same study indicated that current CEOs are most interested in such skills as conflict management and effective interpersonal communication.

Fortunately, today’s CEOs (and the members of their leadership teams) recognize that effective coaching improves the processes that are inherent to their roles such as clarifying and keeping the vision, aligning leadership around strategic priorities and ensuring people are engaged and deployed to achieve goals. They know that the fastest path to organization effectiveness is to gain a deep understanding of one’s strengths, motives, values, and personality traits, in essence developing self-awareness. The new breed of top leader seeks out coaches that will keep them focused on their own contributions to organizational dysfunction. They value being held accountable and are not comfortable with coaches that let them off the hook.

They have learned from their own coaching as well as through the observance of effective and ineffective leaders who were their managers as they moved up in the organization that the higher up you go in companies, the more you’re dealing with psychological and relational issues. Successful top leadership requires astuteness about others: their emotional and strategic personal drivers; their self-interest, overt and covert. These relationship competencies rest on a foundation of self-knowledge, self-awareness. Truly great leaders know you can’t know the truth about another without knowing it about yourself.

Self-knowledge and the relational competencies they’re linked to are central to a senior leader’s ability to formulate, articulate and lead a strategic vision for a motivated, energized organization. Self-knowledge builds clarity about objectives; it fine-tunes one’s understanding of the perspectives, values, aims and personality traits of others. When that’s lacking, you often see discord and conflict among members of a senior top team; or between some of its members and the CEO. And what happens at the top trickles down and throughout the organization.

Understanding Power and Empathy

Being able to see, understand and deal effectively with others’ perspectives is key to successful leadership. That capacity, which is a part of self-awareness, is empathy. A number of scholarly studies indicate that increased power reduces empathy.

One study, conducted by Adam D. Galinsky and colleagues at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, posited that increased power tends to make one more self-centered and self-assured, but not in a good way. The researchers found that power makes one “prone to dismiss or, at the very least, misunderstand the viewpoints of those who lack authority.” High-power individuals “anchor too heavily on their own perspectives and demonstrate a diminished ability to correctly perceive others’ perspectives… as power increases, power-holders are more likely to assume that others’ insights match their own.”

Another study conducted by Canadian researchers, found the same thing by looking at brain activity when people have power. In this case they discovered that increased power diminishes the ability to be empathic and compassionate because power appears to affect the “mirror system” of the brain, through which one is “wired” to experience what another person is experiencing. Researchers found that even the smallest bit of power shuts down that part of the brain and the ability to empathize with others.

These are highly important findings, because empathy, compassion and overall self-awareness are qualities of a developed, mature mind. A mind that is resilient to stress, able to manage internal conflicts, experiences interconnection with others and maintains a sense of self worth. These psychological capabilities act together to stimulate broad perspectives for understanding the problems and unpredictable challenges facing top leaders.

Stanford medical school’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education reported that such capacities are essential personal strengths; certainly important to effective senior leadership. It helps that we now know that these “soft” skills are not strictly genetic but can be grown with conscious effort. The emotionally detached, un-empathic person, unaware of his or her personal motives or truths is not going to be very effective as a member of the C-suite.

Building Self-Awareness

Self-awareness builds from honest self-appraisal about emotional strengths and vulnerabilities, your values and attitudes, personality traits and unresolved conflicts. You’re a total person, not just a set of skills performing a role.

One of Google’s earliest executives developed a program that helps build such qualities. It has successfully demonstrated positive benefits for success and well-being by developing self-awareness and empathy. Scott Keller, a director at McKinsey & Company, described the importance of overcoming self-interest and delusion in an HBR article. He emphasized the need for openness to personal growth and development, because “deep down, (leaders) do not believe that it is they who need to change…” and that “the real bottleneck…is knowing what to change at a personal level.”

Coaching can provide several ways to enhance self-awareness. Here are a few I’ve found helpful to C-level and other senior executives.

Learn From Personal Highs/Lows Time-Line: The leader describes key turning points in both career and personal life, with an eye to what shaped personal values, attitudes and behavior, as well as how career decisions and experiences affected personal development. The coach helps the leader identify the consequences, both positive and negative. What does this knowledge point towards, in terms of reclaiming and growing dormant or neglected parts of self?

The Capacities-Gap Exercise: The leader lists what he/she believes are his/her most positive personal strengths, qualities and personality capacities. He/she describes how each one has become stunted, blocked or deformed in its expression, in daily life. For each gap, the leader is coached to describe what steps he/she could commit to taking, to enlarge those capacities and reduce the gaps in his/her role as a leader as well as in his/her overall life.

Identify Personal Vulnerabilities: All of us tend to develop a “cover story” along the course of our lives – what I sometimes call the professional, branded self in discussions with leaders – beneath which is our “secret plot” – the real story, including our emotional blind spots, fears and pockets of dysfunctional behavior that can become hidden drivers of our lives. How can the leader rectify and grow through these?

Needless to say, effective leadership must also include necessary skills, vision and perspectives. For example, sustainable practices for long-term success and the movement towards joining business success with addressing social needs (see Coaching for Corporate Social Responsibility, written by Mayra Hernandez and myself in the Talent Management Handbook) where “taking care of people and the planet are at the very core of all businesses everywhere in the world.”

What an exciting time to be an executive coach in that today’s leaders are comfortable fine-tuning their ability to be self-aware and confident. They understand that personal growth and development are essential for their organizations to succeed over time.