Finding your Purpose
Our coachee had been at the company, a global titan in the food industry, for over a decade and was known for his intellect, confidence, determination, and directness. In recent years, his development as a leader had fallen behind. He was failing to demonstrate the qualities needed to get to the next level and risked plateauing in his career. His managers knew his potential and valued his business insights, candor, and commitment. At the same, they wanted to be consistent with the company values and, as such, couldn’t promote him into a big leadership role until he addressed his sharp edges. With a strong commitment to investing in people, the organization sponsored the individual’s coaching with us.
A key feature of this coaching engagement was to work with the leader to help him discover his leadership purpose. Prior to the coaching, the individual had felt compelled to take too much on his own shoulders as a way to demonstrate his worth, to solve people’s problems for them, and to be the smartest person in the room. These behaviors had a range of negative consequences.
The purpose he generated centered on him being a source of inspiration for creating change and engaging others in change. He also worked on the characteristics and actions he would need to live by in order to bring his purpose to life such as empathy and collaboration. We used the coaching sessions to explore real-world situations where he experimented with living his purpose through the behaviors.
As a result of the individual’s development, of which the coaching was catalytic, the leader was promoted into a global, multi-billion-dollar transformation role. The changes he made in his leadership style have been visible to his key stakeholders. The leader is harnessing the ideas of others to drive change, which is a win for him, them, and the business.
MindsOpen is a great way to summarize my coaching experience as we worked on my development, leadership purpose, and style. My coach’s ability to combine psychological rigor with significant global experience across a broad range of industries has unlocked my leadership potential and significantly accelerated my personal journey. Senior executives and mentors recognized this evolution and promoted me from a high potential “diamond in the rough” to a successful leader leading a multi-billion spend, global transformation program. My leadership brand became visible to others through a clearly defined set of characteristics that guide my behaviors every day, resulting in me successfully engaging the wider organization to act and create value for the business. My MindsOpen coach helped me identify and shape these characteristics in line with my past, present, and future, which makes it very natural for me to include them in the way I lead.
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