I recently returned from a Coaches Retreat I led in the South of France. This impressive group of leaders who attended my retreat included coaches who’ve worked with people from the Mayo Clinic to Google X to CEOs in top organizations across Europe.
Even though our combined experience of working with thousands of diverse clients over tens of thousands of coaching sessions proved vast, there were common key themes that bubbled up that applied to all our clients as well as for ourselves.
The heart of coaching is more about who you need to be rather than what you need to do. A skilled, powerful coach is a mirror who reflects back what you are not seeing, or choose not to see. From that place of deeper self-awareness and self-discovery, solutions and next action steps naturally become more clear and aligned with your values and who you are.
The biggest leadership insight that I learned from my retreat in France:
Your problem is not the problem.
Whether you’re running a multi-billion dollar tech company or a partner in a law firm looking to create your next level of personal and professional success, what you think is the problem in front of you is not really the problem.
Clients bring a “presenting agenda” to their coach, which is the problem or challenge that they think is the problem. From our retreat, the coaches have heard “presenting agendas” such as how to motivate their team when numbers are down to not knowing what to do after retirement to feeling stuck where they are in their business.
At the heart of your problem is a “deeper agenda” that needs to be unlocked. It is uncovering and working through your “deeper agenda” that will truly help you understand what the real obstacle is that’s holding you back.
Examples of deeper agendas we’ve uncovered include CEOs avoiding vulnerability and not viewing empathy as a skill set that needs to be deliberately practiced to entrepreneurs realizing that they must let go of their fear of judgment from their family and friends if they want more success in their business.
With 2024 around the corner, I’m sure that you have personal and professional goals.
With that, I’m sure that you have many “presenting agendas”.
What if you took a step deeper?
What is this really about?
What is your deeper agenda?
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