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1. All great performers have a coach. Look around – professional athletes, public figures, musicians and leaders. To operate without a coach is akin to operating without a mirror. It is like operating with the attitude that “I know I am right”. This “I know it” attitude is a killer in any organization, particularly at the top!
You make it significantly more difficult to win without a coach.

2. A coach reveals your blind spots to you. Let’s face it! All of us have blind spots, including the CEO. And my claim, dare I say, is, “the longer you have worked, chances are, the more barriers you have built!”
The coach helps you see these barriers that you cannot see on your own. These barriers need to be busted – for the sake of the organization.

3. The coach takes a dispassionate view, without any biases – he says it as he sees it. Few leaders have people in their organizations who give them unbiased, dispassionate perspectives – not necessarily because they don’t want to (in many organizations they are afraid to), but mainly because they do not have a dispassionate perspective.

4. Also, the coach asks you pertinent questions, those that others do not have the courage or the authority to ask you. These questions open up a whole new world for the CEO – one that was not available to the CEO prior to the conversation.

5. If you want to build a learning organization, you need to be the first one to have the attitude of “what may I be missing, if discovered can shift the results of my organization”, rather that the attitude of “I have so many years of experience and I know what needs to be done”.

6. A coach supports the CEO to manage conflict effectively. Often, decisions of the CEO please one group, and displease another. The CEO has to walk the tight rope walk, and this skill is built with the support of a coach.

7. There are certain conversations you cannot have with the board, and then there are other conversations you cannot have with your second line. The CEO needs a partner who the CEO can be open with; one who is going to be sensitive, and yet objective; honest, and yet respectful.

8. The Coach helps you significantly expand your options. And when you expand your options, your decision-making significantly improves.

Here are some questions for you to consider, particularly if you are a CEO, or a member of the senior management in an organization:

a. Do you have the courage to acknowledge that you need a coach?

b. Are you ready to question your inherent beliefs, biases and assessments that may be stopping you from achieving your full potential, and in turn the organization’s full potential?

c. Do you and your organization need to be shaken up out of their slumber?
d. Are you working hard, and yet not achieving your results?

e. Are you ready to make a learning commitment, and then build a learning culture?

If your answer to 4 out of 5 questions above is a Yes, then time has come for you to get yourself a skilled coach.

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I worked at and ran a business school for 21 years of my life. I thought you learn management and leadership in classrooms. I went and collaborated with one of the four federal universities and then the second largest University in the UK. I worked with thousands of students from 52 different countries and taught them management and leadership.

Today, I realize, I had got it all wrong.

I realize you cannot learn management and leadership in a classroom – just like you cannot learn to swim in a classroom, or play tennis in a classroom; or learn music, dance or any other skill for that matter in a classroom.

You Need to be Out There, Learning in Action.

I am questioning our historical way of learning management and leadership – where we learn first and act later. We need to get our teachers and students to recognize, “you need to act first and then you learn.”

Real, Embodied Learning

That is how real embodied learning takes place! Leadership muscle is built through actions and practices, and not through only knowing of concepts (It’s exactly like building your body muscles — you can know of the exercise, but till you do not do the exercise, the muscle isn’t built.)

Once learning is “embodied” it goes into your muscle memory. You can access that learning at any point of time in your life.

Learning Programmes Not Useful Unless Backed by Actions

I see a lot of leadership programmes take place in classrooms and conference rooms, and I question the usefulness of these programmes, unless backed by actions and practices. Here are some important thoughts for entrepreneurs and middle & senior managers looking to expand their leadership capacity; and, for people in the learning and development space looking to develop their leaders (and their second line of leadership)

Learning Happens by Shifting Practices

It doesn’t happen in conference rooms. If you are looking to develop your leadership capacity, look for institutions that work on your practices and support you to shift your practices. Experts say that over 80% of our actions are habitual. We need to change our habitual actions if we want to expand our leadership impact.

Get a Coach

I cannot over emphasize the importance of a coach. Ever since 2010, I have had a coach supporting me, and after each coaching conversation, I have noticed a shift in the way I perceive and interact with my world. It is important to recognize that “Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

Create a Structure of People that Support You and Learn with You

In 2012, a bunch of my friends and I created what we then called ‘The 5Am Club’. We used the club as a place to practice powerful distinctions and practices, get supported by like-minded people, who wanted to play big games (despite not knowing how to when we started), and achieve extraordinary results that we had historically not achieved. The learning each one of us had in that one year perhaps was more than what students perhaps learn theoretically in a business school. This was real learning in action.

Remember, there are no shortcuts to building leadership muscle or any muscle for that matter. The question is, “Are you committed to building your leadership muscle?”

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About 5 years ago, I wrote a blog post presenting an interpretation that sometimes your experience may be your biggest constraint. I stopped at that. In this article, I have suggested steps to ensure that your experience works for you, rather than be a constraint.

Let’s begin by looking at what experience means. You can have the same event take place, and if there are three persons observing that event, chances are all three of them will have a different experience. So, experience is an interpretation you create, and often you hold that interpretation as a fact. The fact was the‘event’, the experience was the ‘interpretation’ of that event.

Let me give you an example: Let’s say a group of Indians set up a company in the US. In the first few years, the company does well, and then for some reason, it goes bust. There are three Indian directors at the time of the company going bust (the company going bust is the event).

One of the three directors makes an interpretation: “Doing business is risky,” and hence decides that he will never set up his own business ever again.

The second director makes a slightly different interpretation. He states, “Doing business in a foreign country is risky and decides that he will hereon only operate in his own country.” And finally, the third director has a completely different interpretation. His interpretation is: “We screwed up! The next time, I will need to look for signs for serious threats to the business.”

The same event has three different interpretations and three different experiences. These directors are unaware of the fact that their experience in that moment almost set up their default future.

Here are possible future of these three directors:

• Director 1, given his ‘experience’, he will never set up another business
• Director 2, given his ‘experience’, he will never set up a business in a foreign country
• Director 3, given his ‘experience’, will set up a new business, and perhaps in a foreign country — but will have his radar up for threats.

These directors may also give advice to others, based on their experiences, and will proudly back up their experiences with the event of the business in the US going bust. They are blind to how their experiences shape their future.

This happens all the time, and often, we are blind to this phenomenon working in the background guiding and often creating our default futures. A dealer manager of an automobile organization that I actively work with had shared his experience while working with a particular dealer, whom he called ‘inefficient and useless’. The default future, with such an assessment (and experience), is this relationship would not work (and for the period it would, it would not thrive). The dealer manager after 2 years eventually decided to terminate the contract with that dealer. Within a month, the dealer was snapped up by competition. The competitor did not experience this dealer as ‘inefficient and useless’.

And this dealer went on to do record sales. These are just a few among many examples that I come across regularly in my work of how our experience becomes a constraint in our growth.

Here are the three points you need to keep in mind to ensure your experience works for you, and does not become a barrier.

1. Become Aware: While experience is critical in the ‘action domain’, it sometimes becomes a constraint in the domain of ‘looking for new possibilities’. The first step is to recognize that it is our experience that creates a certain lens through which we see the world. This lens may assist us in certain places – but is this lens also limiting our possibilities? This simple awareness that ‘my experience may be limiting me’, can open up a whole new world of possibilities — as long as you are ready to explore that world of possibilities

2.Question your experience: As I stated above, experience is an interpretation; however, we hold our experience as a fact. Historical events cannot be changed. However, our interpretation of these events can. Your experience may tell you “this thing cannot be done”. And this ‘experience’ will only limit your ability to “get this thing done”.Once you become aware, question your experience. The question is not “whether this thing can be done?” the question to explore is “how can I get this thing done” — particularly if the results matter to you.

3. Be connected to “what result do I want to generate” moment-to-moment:This is the key point. As long as you are connected to the ‘result you want to generate’, you will keep looking for ways to generate that result, independent of your experience. Often people make assessments that are not aligned to the results they want to generate and worse, they are unaware that they are making these assessments.

History is evidence of the fact that breakthrough ideas in businesses do not come from the same industries. If you continue to do what has always been done, you will continue to get the same result. If you want a breakthrough result, you need to come out of your comfort zone (read experience), and try ideas that have never been tried.

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There is a whole world of blame that many of us live in and the interesting part is most of us are not even aware that we blame!.

Let’s take a closer look.

Brene Brown, a researcher and an author of repute says, “Blame is a way to discharge pain and discomfort.”I do believe, it is a subconscious cover-up to avoid facing situations head on! In other words, it is an excuse – a temporary getaway from looking into myself.

As humans, we are very quick to make stories in our head; as soon as an event takes place we are ready with a story. And a lot of times it’s a story of ‘Who is to blame for this and who can we point fingers toward’.  We believe that the story we just made up is the truth and react on it, probably in most instances causing more harm than good. Most people are blind to it that the story they just made up is their own and that they created it.

WHAT IS AT STAKE WHEN YOU BLAME?

Power-This is the most important bit, when you blame, you shift responsibility of the situation on someone else. It means, you are indicating that there was nothing you could have done to alter the results and that you were powerless and helpless. Powerlessness gives you no choice and hence there are no actions at your disposal.

Relationships– When you blame; you point fingers. Your relationship with the person you are pointing fingers at gets hurt. The trust the other person may have had on you can get impacted.

Results – There is so much time spent and wasted in blaming and figuring out who is to blame that results that were needed in the first place can get sidetracked. There is a delay in delivering the results and sometimes the results are not delivered at all.

Possibilities – When you indicate you are powerless, you close door for possibilities that you yourself could have been a source of. You indirectly shut yourself from seeing what more could be done to still achieve the results.

GETTING BACK POWER

Blame is the opposite of Responsibility.

The good news in all the seemingly chaotic situations is that instead of blaming if you decide to assume responsibility you regain power to choreograph your next moments. If instead of creating the story “You are the reason this situation is so bad” you create “Let me see what I can do to make this happen” you automatically assume responsibility.

The generative meaning of ‘Responsibility’ is being willing to be the cause in the matter. It means you will make things happen come what may; you are totally committed to the results you wish to achieve and your actions will be inside of this commitment. This stance of being accountable suddenly opens up a whole new world of power, a whole new world of possibilities. These actions were not available to you when you were busy blaming!

BLAME AND RESPONSIBILITY IN A NUTSHELL

	Blame	Responsibility
Definition	Is discharging pain and anger	Is willing to be the cause
Internal Story people subconsciously make	“It was someone else’s doing, I could not have done anything about it”	“I am accountable and have the power to decide the next course of action to best alter the results.”
Emotion	Resignation, frustration, anger	Resolution, courage, ambition, excitement
Impact on Trust	Trust between you and the person you have blamed may reduce	Trust between you and the person you have blamed can significantly elevate
Impact on the results	Results are delayed	The person assuming responsibility decides and regains power on the results
Impact on the possibilities	When there is blame the door to possibilities that can be generated in that instant is shut	When responsibility is assumed, a whole world of choices and actions opens up.

DO LEADERS BLAME?

My take is; a big No. Leaders take responsibility for the situation and would much rather focus at the task at hand and results they want to achieve. They take care of their relationships and ensure their actions are within what they care for. They embody being powerful in every moment of their life and helplessness is a space they would rather not prefer!

Here are a few questions I would like to leave you with. My suggestion is, give yourself sometime and introspect on them.

1. In which areas of my life am I choosing blame over responsibility?

Look deeply into every relation of yours and see what comes up for you.

Examples-

Do I blame my child for scoring less marks.? Could I have done something there? What can I do now?

Do I blame my subordinates / departments for delayed results.? Could I have done something there? What can I do now?

2. What results will I achieve if I assume responsibility in all the above areas?

When you authentically seek answers for these within yourself, chances are you will start to see the power you have to design your future!

Sheeja Shaju, Program Leader and Leadership Coach, Institute for Generative Leadership, India.

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