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Coaching Corner
Leading through a personal crisisÂ
Leaders are human beings. As a leader of other human beings, you face complex and intricate challenges every day. At times, pinpointing and articulating these challenges can be difficult. However, until you can thoroughly address and resolve them, they have the potential to hinder your personal growth and your team’s success. This is where expert coaching can come in.
The challenge
Cameron is a C-level leader in a large multinational, leading a high-performing team of global professionals. Her team is accustomed to working under high visibility and pressure on projects that impact the entire organization. Cameron is the team’s public face and a company ambassador with clients. There is a refrain within the organization: when Cameron’s team performs well, so does the company.
A routine healthcare checkup, however, reveals something very serious and unexpected. Cameron is diagnosed with breast cancer. Although the prognosis looks good and the tumor is localized, the shock of this diagnosis has eroded Cameron’s self-confidence and security. Instead, she feels plagued by fear and anxiety.
As well as having to navigate a lot of personal worries, Cameron is now concerned about the effect that the breast cancer diagnosis will have on team members who look to Cameron for leadership and direction. In addition to medical and psychological treatment and support, Cameron looks to executive coaching to reflect on the career and leadership impact of this critical life moment and journey ahead.
The coaching journey
Initially, Cameron wants to focus on how best to support the team during this period of uncertainty and turbulence: the behaviors or communication that can help the team continue to perform optimally without her day-to-day presence, leadership, and guidance.
But deeper conversations with the IMD coach reveal that Cameron’s anxieties are less tied to the team’s performance per se. A greater fear – one tied to a fear of dying – is a fear of losing professional identity and becoming someone different; someone less capable, efficient, or reliable. Cameron is not afraid of being and showing vulnerability in the workplace. After all, Cameron’s strong leadership has historically been predicated on open, authentic relationships with colleagues and team members. Being vulnerable is not the issue. Instead, she is afraid of having to trade one identity – that of a strong and reliable leader – for another: that of a victim suffering an illness – and, worryingly, a disease that may even be interpreted as the result of self-neglect and over-exertion at work. Cameron has started imagining colleagues using labels like these and being somehow judged by others in the workplace. What is not yet clear is whether this fear stems from Cameron’s own judgment creating assumptions about how other people will react (as opposed to actual reactions.)
Working with the coach, Cameron begins a journey of self-reflection. This journey opens up new possibilities and new ways of interpreting the situation. Cameron comes to understand that identity is not simply limited to being an executive, a leader, and a professional. By focusing on this very narrow definition of identity, Cameron is effectively also narrowing the lines of communication with colleagues. Instead of engaging in open dialogue, Cameron has been more absorbed in an inner struggle around identity. Consciously reorienting towards the team in a more “human” way, and opening up bi-lateral paths of communication, Cameron now sees as an opportunity for growth.
Key tactics, insights, and impact
Cameron works with the coach to explore the ties between authentic identity and authentic communication. Together, they work to uncover a more profound sense of self and probe the identity of the human being who, behind a self-imposed mask of “professionalism”, is going through something as enormous and important as a fight against cancer.
Cameron is encouraged to ask deep questions. These include: Who am I when I am not working? What makes me happy? Who do I want to be and how do I honor my values?
Working through these questions brings Cameron to a fuller sense of selfhood and nurtures a core part of that self that has hitherto been concealed and that now needs to be fully expressed. Cameron gradually begins to regain the fundamental self-esteem to face a fear of being judged somehow by others. Bringing this more robust, more authentic identity and sense of self back into the workplace, Cameron now feels prepared to explore and work through other people’s perceptions of a “person with cancer.”
Cameron is ready to discover the impact of this diagnosis on the team. Following an initial meeting to officially share news of the illness, Cameron asks the IMD coach to facilitate a workshop for the team alone. This session is an opportunity for the team to take the time and space to articulate, confront, address, and share their own individual concerns and fears for Cameron’s health, Cameron’s role, and how the team and the organization might cope if Cameron is out of commission. In a second workshop, with Cameron present, the IMD coach invited the team to collectively address the questions they had tacitly avoided to this point:
- Cameron’s need to bring a fuller sense of identity to work and how the team perceive this identity.
- The team’s need to share their feelings and formulate questions.
- How to manage Cameron’s expected absences for treatment: whether to remain in continuous contact or to allow for periods of silence.
Bringing the team together in a psychologically safe and open space has strengthened feelings of connectivity and empowerment as together, they have been able to assimilate uncertainty and fear about the future. Cameron has felt personally and professionally supported as a consequence and has been able to return to work following treatment; more present as a leader of others, with expanded self-awareness and understanding of human interpersonal dynamics.
“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.”
Questions to ask yourself
Should you have troubling and sensitive news to share with your team, what would you need to:
- Articulate your feelings and needs?
- Own your identity both at work and at home?
- Shape the perceptions and responses of others such that you build bilateral support and alignment?
Authors
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