How can I grow further, from here ?

What should I do now to Grow ?

Across my CEO Coaching and Mentoring sessions, there is one “growth confusion question” that often crops up from senior Leaders and CEOs both young and old.

What should I pursue for growth from where I am today?

Dumb question, one might say. But I approach it with care and empathy, not to use too much of research and management jargon in the conversation – keeping it factual, light, and humane. The context needs to be set first, as it is different for every person asking that question.

“There is something deeper than what the surface shows.”

The first phase of the conversation is about getting closer to where this question is originating from – the trigger point. It easily takes 50-60 (sometimes even more) good ‘Why’ questions to unravel the complex interactions of thoughts, beliefs, apprehensions, worries, desires, egos, etc. to be able to start any meaningful analysis.

What Growth are we talking about ?

- Career growth?

- Financial growth?

- Position, Status Growth ?

- Happiness growth?

- What else ?

Some Leaders are able to differentiate between these very skillfully. They use information sources and their live networks to think through the complexities faced by them and are able separate the ‘self’ from the ‘rest’. Their question is aimed towards seeking more clarity for a chosen path, rather than for choosing a path.

On the other hand, a large number of Leaders are able to see the difference but are not able to choose the appropriate one without more conversation or context. They are still looking for some meaningful decision criteria. The process here is to discuss a lot about their perceptions and pre-conditioning roots before we can take them to any decision-making engagement.

We live in a complex world today. Disruptions, threats, black-swan events, social-media misleads, Fake Gurus and Guides are all adding up to create a large black cloud up there. Testing us always and terrifying us at times. We need to choose our act, soulfully:

- Should we postpone stepping out?

- Should we carry an umbrella ?

- Should we change our clothing ?

- Should we just continue Business-as-usual ?

- What should we do ?

It will not be prudent to prescribe what you should do, but I must say from the experience of my corporate life and as a practicing CEO Coach, that you must once in a while close your eyes, shut the world off, look inside your heart and soul, take a deep breath, pause, and then open your eyes to choose the path you wish.

What I find noteworthy in many of these conversations is that a massive chunk of corporate behaviour patterns and corporate cultural inputs create a bias and influence on an individual’s ability to decide for the self. There is an ideal ‘oneness’ between work and life that many are looking for, not knowing where to draw the line, if at all and how.

#insight #intuition #soulful #ceocoach #leadership #Careergrowth #happinessgrowth #financialgrowth #growth