” Q: Why do leaders themselves need a coach? They are usually successful people who tell others what to do. Why would such a person agree to have someone else tell them what to do?
A: I would say that not only they can benefit from a coach. Anyone interested in their own development, transformation, should turn to a coach, a mentor. We all need support, someone to give us other perspectives, to ‘put ourselves on’, as a client of mine said.
When it comes to leaders, a coach is also important because the higher a person is in the organization, the more likely they are to hear only what they want to hear. People around them tell them what they think they want to hear, what they saw it works.
“I want people to tell me the truth even if they pay with their own jobs,” Samuel Goldwin’s famous statement resulted in the exact oppsite. There are few organizations with a culture where people have a healthy dose of disrespect for their boss, say their assertive opinion, and are not fired.
It is difficult for a manager to hear different opinions if he himself does not have self-confidence, if he possesses a too big dose of narcissism, detachment, some paranoia, or if he sometimes manifests dysfunctional behaviors.
The coach has a certain ‘diplomatic immunity’, they can put a mirror in front of the leader to see what others do not tell him, what is more difficult for them to accept, and to start together on a discreet path of transformation. I say discreet because a coach is always behind, it’s not about they on this journey, it’s about the leader. The coach is like Jiminy Cricket – he stays in the shadow of Pinocchio, the latter goes out into the world and explores, and in the end, the wooden doll becomes human. I like the metaphor because, in fact, what I want in my projects is for the leaders I work with to become the best version of themselves at that moment, and for that version to have a positive impact on organizations. When more organizations become places where people enjoy working, it means that leaders have done their job well (and coaches, in the shadows as well).
Q: In fact, how do you explain the need for this service, of executive coaching?
A: This need has always existed. Alexander the Great had as his mentor Aristotle, who took care of the young man’s education, giving him knowledge in the field of philosophy, art, mathematics, geography, politics, astronomy.
Keeping the proportions, of course, the great leaders had mentors, coaches, advisors, as we want to call them.
However, coaching has grown in Romania in recent years. Executive coaching requires the ability to be both a mentor and a coach, and a consultant, it requires you to have business knowledge and experience working with teams, processes.
Globally, however, we are also talking about a trend towards self-leadership. This means to understand as much as possible about ourselves, to be in a continuous process of becoming better, to develop, so that we are better leaders of others, of organizations, to adapt more easily to changes.
Q: Can any leader be advised? Do you make a selection of “clients” or advise anyone who asks you?
A: Anyone can be advised but not everyone is advisable. Or not anytime, not at any time in their lives. I had a few situations where I said no. The request did not come from someone who wanted coaching but from the HR director. But when I met the person who would be the coachee, I realized that it was not the time, he did not want to enter such a program, with or without me. I soon found out that that manager had even left the organization.
I would add one aspect here: the choice takes place on both sides. The client chooses his coach, the latter also has a say. It is essential to have a certain ‘chemistry’ between the two, to have the premises for a good relationship. If one party does not have enough confidence in the other, in the ability to have a constructive relationship, the process has no chance of success.
Q: What is the satisfaction of your work? What does “great achievement” mean in your work?
A: I am happy when a client succeeds in what he proposed at the beginning of the project with me, when he or someone else around him appreciates the transformation, when he is promoted or finds his way, the balance. Few people give feedback; but when I get good feedback from an executive, it’s a moment of joy for me. I know it’s not about me in coaching, I’m behind, but if the one on stage has a good performance, then it means that I did my job well.
Q: You state on your website that you try to read 50 books a year. We live in a world that is digitizing at an accelerated pace and is becoming more and more distant from reading in its classical form. Why is the appetite for reading an argument for your business?
A: I try to read even more than that. But I don’t finish all the books, I abandon some of them and then I don’t take them in consideration anymore. I give up on books that don’t come with something new (there are many such books in the business literature), that are not well written or whose subjects are treated superfluously.
I graduated from the foreign languages faculty, before doing an executive master’s degree in business, human resources, coaching and consulting.
I trained myself by reading, I learned that the whole history of culture is a long line of differently tuned metaphors, as Borges said. To give meaning to life I need metaphors, books, information. I can’t appear in front of a client to coach if I’m not constantly developing, looking for something, my own Grail, maybe. Sure, I listen to podcasts, audiobooks, read articles, but maybe because I have a philologist background, I think that the basis of a man are the great books of the world. I like to say that it is good to furnish our minds with the most beautiful books, just as we furnish a room; we spend a lot of time in our minds, it’s good to be happy to be there, not to get bored.
Moreover, the world is constantly changing. Technology, the pandemic, have made many jobs irrelevant, new ones appear. Other skills are needed. To acquire other skills, it is good to practice your learning ability, curiosity, to explore as many activities as possible, but also your potential ‘identities’. What we were doing twenty years ago may no longer fit the context, the world around us, who we have become ourselves. As life expectancy has increased, the potential for us to go through several ‘existential crises’ over time is great. In order to be able to go through other moments in a smooth way, not to get caught unprepared, it is good to be a kind of continuous ‘work in progress’.
Here are some reasons why reading is not only useful for the mind, but I would venture to say like air and food for the body.
Q: Is reading about to become a concern of the elites, a prerogative of leadership?
A: I hope not. I have some very young colleagues who read quite a lot.
I know people who don’t read but listen to books. And they really listen a lot. This is in line with adult learning styles. Apart from the situations when we do research, we want to write an academic paper, and when I think we need to read with a pencil in hand (or make notes on the tablet), I think it’s very okay to listen to a book. After all, technology has called into question the way we’ve always done things. It’s hard to adapt, but it doesn’t help us either. So we learn to dance with change, to integrate it. I think a lot of people read; Of course, it will take until Romania buys books like other states, but I think the trend is positive. An argument in favor of this thought is that technology also brings us the desire to know more, curiosity.
Q: A remarkable book (and why).
A: “In Search of Lost Time”, by Marcel Proust. Why? For how it is written, for the lives you live through the book, for the universes it opens, for the musicality of the phrase.
Q: A person you admire (and why).
A: My Insead teacher, Manfred. Because he is like a Renaissance man: he can have a deep discussion about business, psychoanalysis, painting, literature, leadership, sociology, history, because he is a brilliant mind, he has a lot of energy, even if he is not too young, for that he has dedicated his life to turning leaders and organizations into something better.
Q: The person to whom you owe what you are today (I am possibly thinking of an early influence – mother, grandmother, eccentric aunt, etc.)
A: My French teacher – because, in a gray period, the communist one, she fed my imagination about what France, the culture of this country meant, inspired me to want to get there when no one could leave Romania, to always tend to its elegance and refinement.
Q: Leadership is a pragmatic field. How does he get along with your artistic, romantic side (you like to read and write, and on your website you confess that you want to visit a perfume workshop and that you were on the verge of becoming a stewardess)?
A: Leadership is about science but also about art. It’s a pragmatism, there are some techniques, of course, in this field, but the style in which the man manifests himself is essential. It’s like when you dress elegantly, suitable for a cocktail, but you put too much perfume on – it wears you, instead of you wearing it. The art of being a leader is like the right perfume for your outfit, context, person.
I always loved perfumes, I could spend a whole day in a niche perfumery. I like to combine various perfumes to create something new that no one has.
If I had to reinvent myself, I would like to deal with perfumes, how they suit each person. Many do not know how to choose something that will make them stand out. Many times, when I work with someone, I can easily tell what would suit them. It’s a little harder online though☺️.
Q: Would you change anything? If you were to go back 20-30 years, what would you do differently?
A: I would stay in France, as I could several years ago, to see what I would have met on that road.
Otherwise, I would like to live in the future, it seems to me that the future promises so much that I wish I could participate in a faster, smarter world that will surely build something memorable. I have the feeling that we, my generation, are in a transition zone. The world of driverless cars, a small device from which we can control more, space travel, a good standard of living for everyone, all this and much more fascinates me more than the past.”
via: Forbes Life