In this blog I explore how I work, being a confidante to CEOs, business owners and Managing Directors.
This came about by accident. A client of mine was clearly struggling with his ambition and finding the people and the structures to make it a reality.
“It’s all going round and round in my head!”
He was full of great ideas. He was also bursting with frustration. My poor client was so busy being the kingpin in his business, he felt he had no “headspace” time to work through his opportunities. One specific issue was that he felt his own role was unclear (he had a pretty acute case of Chief Cook and Bottle Washer Syndrome). He also felt lonely in his position. Not in a personal way, but in terms of the business. There was no one to chew over ideas with. No one to tell about his dreams. No one to listen to him and really hear him.
That’s where I came in. Executive Coaching is not simply working with people at the top of the tree. It is a separate strand of coaching practice, in my view, with being a confidante at its heart. It requires the coach to have strategic insight and awareness. The process also requires a deep understanding of how a business needs to run, and how its leadership needs to behave. It is holding up the mirror to the leader, even if that mirror is unpalatable.
This approach takes courage, on the part of both coach and coachee. There is a strong bond of mutual honesty and transparency between coach and coachee, and particularly so at this level. In a study a few years ago, 98% of the top earners in Harvard Business School’s alumni had coaches. They had coaches to help their focus, maintain their clarity of purpose, and to help keep them honest to themselves, their values and their ambition.
So, I said, trying to sound casual, “I can help with that”. The look of surprise on my client’s face was priceless – a mix of surprise (although I am not entirely sure why it would be a surprise given our coaching – a topic for another blog I suspect!), relief and delight.
Being a confidante
We set aside a whole morning, which in and of itself was a big deal for my client. He had to delegate, turn off his phone, postpone prospecting meetings …he forced himself to prioritise his own needs for once.
We started off with a brain dump – getting all the relevant thoughts out of his head and onto sticky notes. I know this wasn’t very sustainable, but it was effective and these days I use online alternatives anyhow … this is a tale from the “old normal”.
Once he cleared his head of the thoughts and associated noise, it was as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. After a break, he returned to looking at all his thoughts laid out in front of him, and he smiled. In fact, he beamed.
He then proceeded to draft out a structure for his company and place the thoughts-stickies around the structure. Most importantly, he created a role for himself. That was when the smile became triumphant.
“That’s it!”
In this simple exercise, of listening, asking questions to prompt thoughts and answers, and challenging any assumptions that reared their heads, I had been able to help him find the clarity that had been eluding him. He now had his CEO’s Confidante.
And most importantly of all, he knew he was no longer alone in his role. Whenever he has a strategic knot to untangle, he gets in touch, we speak, he solves his challenge. No fancy programme, no retreats, no intensives. Just the occasional check-in and coaching conversation, based on trust and understanding.
If you can identify with my client’s situation, and your head is full of thoughts and noise that you want to clear, I can indeed help with that. Please get in touch and let’s set up an initial online “meeting” to chat over what’s bothering you … and see where that leads.
You will be so pleased you did.