Hold the Pickles, Hold the Lettuce, Executive Leadership Questions Don’t Upset Us
Hold the Pickles, Hold the Lettuce, Executive Leadership Questions Don’t Upset Us
No, we haven’t taken leave of our senses at VIM Executive Coaching. In fact, we’ve never been more serious. The other evening, we happened upon a YouTube channel of old television advertisements. It was a compilation of videos from restaurant chains. There she was, the Burger King woman circa 1974, telling us that the chain would make our burgers any way we wanted them. As executive coaching in Denver or anywhere else for that matter, calls upon multiple influences, we realized that the jingle could apply as well to trends in leadership coaching.
More Relish Doesn’t Help
Whether we are talking about dressing up a bad hamburger, adding all sorts of syrups and sweeteners to mediocre coffee or poorly conceived executive coaching, frills, bells, whistles, added or subtracted, won’t help if the basics aren’t there.
We will often have prospective clients contact us who boast of quick-fix courses, group discussions, hot-off-the-presses runaway bestsellers, podcasts and the like guaranteeing immediate leadership miracles. Here is where our prospective clients often meet the old commercial: “I’ve tried adding a little of this approach, taking away a little of that and adding a twist of another technique,” they’ll say.
To which we’ll add: “What about mindfulness, authenticity, compassion and responding rather than reacting?”
As the current, and overused expression goes: “Mic drop!”
For the executive leader boasting of this, that or the other thing (that absolutely didn’t work), is usually puzzled by a concept such as mindfulness in the midst of 21st Century quick fixes and remedies.
Bringing it back to the corporate or association world, if the basic leadership principles the executive has been taught aren’t working, chances are that adding several flawed podcasts or eBooks to it, won’t help one bit.
A Matter of Authenticity
We can add all sorts of quick fixes to a leadership approach, but they usually prove to be ineffective if the basic “product” is flawed. If an executive has drifted far from his or her core, if he or she is inauthentic, reactive rather than responsive, feigning (rather than feeling) compassion, it will show.
VIM Executive Coaching is unique in that we build on the person an executive leader already is, rather than trying to remake, model or “add ingredients” to something an executive could never be.
There is always a truth at the core. The rather quiet, calm executive leader shouldn’t be molded and remade into a caricature of someone else, such as a loud, plaid-jacketed used car salesperson.
If an executive leader is comfortable with being quiet and calm, our mission is to make that person more authentic, more mindful and responsive to the needs of others, Obviously, the reverse is true. An out-going and talkative person should be free to be effusive providing her or she is compassionate, responsive and mindful of those around them.
We believe that at the core of every executive leader is an individual, not a cookie-cutter personality. In making that individual an even better leader, we want to bring out the mindful, core person and to build on that.
We can add our own personal techniques to the mindful and compassionate core, but we can never dress up an inauthentic leader by adding yet more inauthentic frills. VIM Executive Coaching invites you to discover your authentic self through mindfulness and other techniques. It is a journey leading to greater compassion and effectiveness without worrying about adding lettuce, pickles or any other ingredients that aren’t you.
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