I met with a potential client recently who was looking for some coaching. I couldn't help but think about what that really meant. I've been reading a lot of Otto Scharmer's work on Presencing and Theory U stuff. Theory U presents a way to shift from reactive responses and quick fixes to generative responses and long-term root cause solutions. When I start to work with a client I either assume that the thought process has happened; they had an ah ha or someone else got fed-up with their behavior and that's why I'm there. And somehow I can facilitate the thought process so that it happens in our session. And to an extent that is true - that's what I'm being paid for.
However, I want to challenge my own assumption here and yours too of course. The assumption is that the leaders of today are thinking. Now, don't get me wrong, I believe leaders do an awful lot of analyzing and strategizing, which could be mistaken for thinking. Kudos to coaches as they often provide powerful opportunities for thinking. And yes, that inner work can lead to extraordinary insight. But, I'm also coming to the belief that unless our leaders intentionaly make time to build this capacity everything else will be "been there, done that" (Otto would agree). But with the pace of today's environment, I believe most leaders would need a great amount of courage (or other appendiges) to slow things down so that people could spend time "thinking".
The kind of thinking I'm talking about is pausing for a moment, or moments, to look so deeply within oneself that you reveal yourself to yourself. Knowing more about the inner space from which we operate reveals a sort of inside-out knowledge. Having access to that inside-out source gives people the opportunity to change a point of view or shift a mindset. That's when real change happens because change comes from the source of our thoughts - not the thought itself - which is were most organizations operate. The down side is this takes time and requires inspection from a quiet space.
Okay, so here's what I mean...a client I was coaching sometime back, was struggling with the way she was treating her direct reports. She worked very hard on developing the right atmosphere and the right skills to communicate in a way that left the individual's self-esteem in tact. We ended on a good note - happy client, satisfied coach. About six months later she called me and said that even though our work helped emensly, what really helped her was that she began to carve out about 15 minutes a day to tap into her inner knowledge about herself. During that time she acknowledged herself to be a curious person - you know, the one who asked a lot of questions, the one in the classroom always asking "why". And she acknowledged that working over the past however many years she assumed that she was being curious, but on further inspection, she realized was simply reacting. See, here is what I think is so wonderfully powerful, she did nothing in those 15 minutes but think. She "stood still" long enough to look more carefully at herself. She was able to see her character, to think about why things were happening, and where she lost herself along the way. It was in that moment she said everything became clear - that she had lost her curiosity. She said she didn't need fancy skills, although they helped, all she needed to know was that she came from a place of curiosity! Bingo!
All she had to do was to be curious. From that point forward, all of her relationships began to take on a prisim like quality, in that, she could see people and conversations from many different angles because she was just "operating from a place of curiosity". Her decisions were more powerful and her ability to get her direct reports to see the bigger picture improved. She admitted that she had tried hard in the past to measure up to the organizational standards of decision making and problem solving. She worked real hard to leave the curiousity behind and bring the certainty forward, "After all, that's what they hired me for". Now you may be thinking she and I would have gotten there eventually, especially in a safe relationship like coaching. However, I believe it was only when she "sat with herself" with no questions or direction from me, that she was able to get in touch with her inner knowing. I think Otto is on to something here when he says, "Go to the inner place of stillness, where knowing comes to the surface and attend to what emerges."
I think we should learn more about this ability and advocate for leaders to go to that inner place of knowing more often.
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