28/40 - Dream Smaller?

The most important thing I have to remember now as an Executive Coach is to,

"Coach the person, not the problem."

As a lifelong learner, game player, and entrepreneur, solving riddles and complex challenges is my favorite thing to do. The biggest difference between a consultant and a coach is that a consultant gets paid to have really good answers and a coach gets paid to have really good questions.  I only work with my coaching clients every other week for an hour. That means the work we do in those sixty minutes has to resonate for 13 days and 23 hours before we come back together again. Answers don't show the work or help my clients understand how they got there and that they can do it again.

My first executive coach did the exact opposite of this and ended up being the reason I quit my job.

My early career was still flying high. I was winning more awards and had earned a sales success trip with the managing partner and managing directors and the other hot shot sales guys. We went to Aspen for 5 days and it was top-notch the whole way. While there, I was thinking about a couple of my clients who had homes there and how easy it was to get there from Dallas.

So ahead of my next meeting with the Executive Coach that had been provided for me as a part of the perks of my continued success in the firm, I added "own a home in Aspen" to my long-term goal planning.

We dove into our session and I added that I wanted to make sure he'd seen my long-term goal planning updates. He said he had and that he had some concerns.

"That is a really big goal, Andy. Here at this firm, there is really only one or two guys that make enough money to be able to afford something like that. I think you need to rethink adding that to your goal list."

In hindsight, that was the beginning of the end of my time at that firm.

In highsight, I realize that he wasn't my Executive Coach, he was an operative from the firm there to keep us in line and tweak our performance for the success of the firm, not for our individual successes or individuality.

Now as an Executive Coach, I realize just how messed up most of the advice I got from that man was during my time. It had nothing to do with me, the person. It had everything to do with the problem, my performance on behalf of the firm.

Me wanting to dream bigger was scary to the firm if those dreams were bigger than the firm's top performers' numbers. He needed to get me back in the cage of accurate expectations before I got too big for them.

In hindsight, if he'd just let me keep my goal, it would have taken me a decade to really understand it wasn't going to be possible at that firm. They would have gotten another few years of production out of me. But instead, it was the beginning of the end and it sent me on a totally different path.

So I guess I should probably write him and thank him one day.