Flashlights & Mirrors—The Essence of Coaching Leaders
I was recently at a charitable golf outing, and after a very mediocre to bad round—pretty much the norm for me—I was at the social event mingling with the other participants. It’s the part of the day that the extraverts in the crowd love more than anything, and the introverts, like me, are kind of dreading. At this recent outing, a genuinely interested gentleman posed the typical “what do you do?” I proclaimed proudly that I was an executive coach but he asked a quick follow up, “what does that actually mean?” After five minutes of rambling, I knew he did not really have a better understanding of what an executive coach is and I had work to do to tighten up my answer of what I do and why. In the ensuing days and weeks, I’ve landed on the following:
I am an executive coach. I help leaders actualize their potential and achieve personal and organizational goals.
I choose to do this because I believe great leadership is the single most important factor in creating high performing teams and that we can all learn to be the leader that we would want leading us, or leading our children.
To answer the question, “what does that actually mean?” it’s important to dive into the how. In a metaphorical way, I help leaders seek the truth by using flashlights and mirrors. Essentially this means I fulfill two roles. First, I hold up a mirror so they can see what they are like. Second, I help leaders turn on their flashlight so they can see the hidden obstacles in their path and navigate around them.
Now some of you may be saying, that didn’t tell me anything! For others, the phrase flashlights and mirrors may conjure up ideas of “smoke and mirrors,” tools magicians use to bend light and obscure reality to make their illusion seem real. In the context of executive coaching, flashlights and mirrors are a simple metaphor that help us understand how we discover the truth about ourselves and our organizations.
When we look in the mirror, we generally see an accurate reflection of what we look like. My use of mirroring involves the coach actively reflecting to the client and reminding them of what they are like. It includes discovery of the client’s protection goals and triggers that are getting in the way of achieving. It means unveiling their blind spots so they can see what they previously could not.
By holding up this mirror, the client becomes more aware of how they act and interact in particular contexts. So just like when we look in the mirror in the morning and we know what needs to be done with our hair, this increased awareness allows clients to make deliberate choices about how to best shape their context to successfully accomplish goals.
Recently one of my clients and I uncovered that she had very high protection goals around influence; her influence around decision making created a sense of belonging. Within her organization, however, she felt like her influence had recently been diminished by unclear decision making and responsibilities. Her expectations weren’t meeting reality and this led naturally to frustration and confusion. When I held up the metaphorical mirror for her, and reminded her of her inherent need for influence, she was able to more clearly see how she was and what she was doing in the context. From a position of increased awareness, she knew how to adjust her behavior and create a new management design around decision making that better accounted for both her needs and helped accomplish productive goals for the organization she leads.
At LionPoint, our entire approach is grounded in holding up a mirror, investigating narratives, and identifying blind spots. Once the client sees themselves in the mirror, they then need to do something with that awareness, and that’s where flashlights come in!
Have you ever walked in a familiar piece of dark woods at night without the benefit of any sort of light? If you have, then in your mind you probably knew the route to take to get where you wanted to go. What you likely experienced, however, was that it was much harder to follow that path in the dark. Distances seemed longer and landmarks were harder to identify. At a minimum, even if you found your path, you inevitably ended up tripping over rocks, and other obstacles that were in your way.
When I coach executives, I often find it is very much like they are walking in the dark without a light. They know what path they are on, know that it is the correct path that will lead to achieving the strategic vision of the organization, but sometimes are failing to achieve organizational goals because they keep tripping on obstacles they can’t see. Those obstacles may be centered on a number of things including leadership issues, challenges with effectively designing management systems, or alignment of the organization’s culture. As a coach, I operate from the fundamental assumption that the client has the answer to their challenges within them. My job, or any coach’s job for that matter, is to help draw those solutions out through questions that probe assumptions, question rationale, and challenge perspectives. Essentially the questions help clients power on their flashlights and illuminate the obstacles in their path.
My colleague and LionPoint Founder, Doug Pardo says it like this, “I do not tell clients how to manage their organizations; that is not my job. Instead, I am committed to helping leaders build the context and gain the awareness that gives them the highest impact possible. We work as a team, diagnosing problems and making sense of failures. We take on this task together, partnering to actualize the full scope of our potential.” Said another way, Doug is helping them turn their light on and then walking with them on the path of goal achievement.
As leaders, we are rarely able to consistently see ourselves well or illuminate the rocks in our path all on our own. We all can benefit from having someone help us with that. If you’re an executive level leader and you don’t have that someone, you should consider finding a coach. If they’re good at what they do, you won’t find any “smoke and mirrors” that are creating illusions that hide reality, rather what you will find is a genuinely curious person with a mirror in one hand and a flashlight in the other who is ready to help you discover the truth about you and your team.