Welcome to this week's edition of Friday Favorites: a weekly curation of reflections, resources, and invitations on leadership and life.
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Happy Friday!
How has your week been?
Any fun plans for the long weekend (in the US)?
I've recently been navigating something new that I don't have previous experience with.
As a result, I did what I often do:
Phase 1: do boatloads of research
Phase 2: enlist a handful of experts —in this case, four of them
The advice of the experts went like this:
Expert #1: Do A
Expert #2: Do B
Expert #3: Do C
Expert #4: Do D
The recommendations of Experts 1, 2, and 4 were not only drastically different, but in many cases, opposite.
Each expert cited research, statistics, and data.
Several of the recommendations were infused with a dose of personal opinion.
I was left not with clarity or a path forward, but rather with what felt like a whole bunch of puzzle pieces from four different puzzles, each of which portrayed different scenes.
Note: this is why it can be helpful, as an organization, to implement a cohesive leadership program, rather than a “flavor of the week” series of one-off workshops and trainings.
Now, there were indeed helpful nuggets to pull from each of these experiences.
My job was to pull out the nuggets and put them together in way that could indeed form a cohesive puzzle, relevant to my own situation.
That said, this experience has led me to revisit a list of criteria that can be helpful to apply when we enlist the experts:
Credentials: whenever hiring a coach, I recommend hiring someone who is trained and certified through an ICF-accredited program. Whether we are hiring a leadership coach; a personal trainer; an interior designer; a therapist; a landscape architect; a health coach; or a business coach. . . it is helpful to look at credentials and make sure this person has what we are looking for.
Experience: does this person bring relevant, applicable experience to the table? Have they worked with someone like me, or a company like us, in the past?
Self-Management: this means that the person is able to keep their own personal “stuff” in check, in order to show up in service of the client's goals, rather than their own personal agenda. “Stuff” might include: biases, things that they find triggering, or opinions that might not be helpful to the situation at hand. This can be somewhat hard to screen for up front, but an initial intro/discovery call can provide clues.
Vibe: does this person align with my vibe/our company's vibe/our team's vibe? Can this person push and challenge me, while also respecting my own values and beliefs, or our company's culture?
Impact: do I feel better, not worse, after working with this person or company? Do I feel empowered versus frustrated? Do I feel equipped with a doable set of actions and next steps?
Gut Feel: do I have a positive gut feel about this person, their work, and about the possibility of working together? Does it feel like clean energy? Or, am I having a red flag about a possible mismatch, or the presence of dirty energy that I'm ignoring?
One of the great things about coaching is that it's based in the belief that our clients are creative, resourceful, and whole. This means that we ask questions, offer reflections, and share recommendations, resources, frameworks, or suggestions as applicable —but we do so while holding an assumption that at the end of the day, the client is the expert in his or her own life. . . not us.
I'm going to revisit this list next time I enlist the experts.
Anything else you'd add?
From here, we will move to this week's list of favorites below.
As always, thank you for being here, for reading, and for being part of the Friday Favorites community.
Happy Memorial Day —remembering and honoring my classmates Adam, Nick, and Mike this weekend. ❤️
We will be releasing a few new public events, likely in the fall.
At this time, we're primarily focused on serving our wonderful clients in-house.
If you're interested in talking more about what it could look like to work together elevate the leadership capacity of your organization, please feel free to drop me a note anytime.
Here's how we are currently working with organizations:
Offering our signature in-house leadership development experience for leaders, managers, new managers, and up-and-coming leaders
Leadership and executive coaching
Executive coaching, strategy, and facilitation with leadership teams
We also have a handful of 1:1 coaching spaces open for high-integrity leaders
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