CARLOS FOXBETTER LEADERS - BETTER LIVES

At one my executive coaching sessions last week I worked with a leader who was really stuck on how to move a strategic initiative forward and I was reminded of a personal experience of mine which always helps me get “unstuck”.

A few years ago I was part of the leadership executive team at Sun Microsystems in Palo Alto California. As part of an executive development and retention strategy, Sun hired the then coach to the US Olympic Ski Team and a local psychologist/organizational development expert to lead about twenty selected Directors & VPs on an experiential leadership program designed to help us understand our leadership styles and work on overcoming some of our challenges.

Part of the program involved climbing a face of a mountain at 8000 feet near Lake Tahoe California. So there I was, half way up, hugging the rocks, my feet struggling to get a footing, my hands bleeding from trying so hard to hang on. For what seemed like an eternity, I was not moving, stuck with no clear options for a next step and started to panic. The person holding on to my safety rope has never done this before. Below me on the ground and above me at the top of the climb, were many of my colleagues, all giving me advice as to what to do. Go left, put your right foot up a few inches, push up, find a crevice etc. etc. All I am sure very accurate but to me it was all useless at the time, just could not get going. I was hugging that rock face so hard, breathing very shallow rapidly and suddenly, the Ski Coach got my attention. He asked me to take a DEEP BREATH, TRUST the person with the rope and then to PULL AWAY from the rock as far as I can. Suddenly, I saw many options to how I could get up the climb and did it. So here are the lessons for me:

- Many competent and well intended people sometimes can be very accurate and totally ineffective in giving advice. The power of coaching when the right question is asked can be life changing.

- FEAR reduces your ability to think clearly; Taking a BIG BREATH helps to centre you and think better.

- It is wise to step back whenever we are stuck..for a minute..for an hour …for a day…Sometimes it is very wise to SLOW DOWN to GO FAST!

It is amazing to me how that experiential moment has single handedly enhanced my life. Whenever I get stuck now on business or personal matters, I have this instinct to stop and pull away to see the big picture and then I am able to come up with a way forward.

Are you stuck? Pull away from the rock and see what happens!