EXECUTIVE COACHING
Reconnecting with what matters most…
Situation
Andrew, a remarkably successful President for Asia-Pacific of a well-known multinational company, a celebrated ‘media-darling’ with a stellar career, told me he was wishing to ‘reconnect’ with his family. For a couple of decades, he had let the demands of the job shrink his time with his wife and children down to a minimum, with the belief that he was doing a great job at securing a financially good future for his family. His incessant traveling around the world had taken such a toll on his health over the years that he was spending a lot of the weekends just catching up with sleep.
His chronic stress and frequent conference calls on Saturdays and Sundays were worsening his mood at home. Although his family understood the importance of his region-wide responsibilities, they were feeling neglected. One of his two teenage kids, Liam, had adopted toxic behaviors that were of major concern to Andrew. Yet he could not find a way to ‘talk’ Liam out of his unhealthy habits. Each time Andrew tried, her could not control his disappointment as Liam stubbornly avoided a real dialog, and the father promptly erupted in blame.
Excerpts from our coaching work
Andrew and I embraced a profound exploration and actualization of the deeply-held values and fears which accounted for the gap between his ideal and actual life choices. We found out that a particularly detrimental belief had been ‘I have distanced myself so much from them that they won’t take the risk of letting me close again anyway, for fear of seeing me go astray again.’
Andrew came up with a revamped, solid beliefs and behaviors platform for reconnecting with his family. He had courageously chosen to share transparently his reflections as they came along our coaching work with his wife and then with the children. And little by little, that reignited a family dialog. Andrew was grateful for the wise and helpful insights and advice his wife offered him. Early in the process, he apologized to his wife and to his kids, individually, for having let his ‘corporate ego’ stand in the way of his relationship with and responsibilities to the people who were the most important to him: them.
As a family they discussed which concrete actions he could take, to finally become a worthy and committed spouse / parent. That included one dinner every two weeks with his wife in a fine restaurant, one family-weekend a month away from the city, and sport with the kids every Saturday with a ‘no excuse policy’ – applicable even if he had flown from another continent the night before… Meanwhile, at work, Andrew challenged himself to excel at his job with a ‘least from me, most from them’(his employees) mindset, learnt to say ‘no’ to minor requests –accepting the ‘costs’ of it-, and coerced himself to stop working at times chosen in advance and go home. That left him with no choice but to re-engineer his effectiveness at the job.
Andrew paid more attention to his diet and decided to exercise twice a week before work, at home as well as at the hotels he stayed at. He lost weight and gained a lot more energy from it.
Outcome
Andrew quickly became fresher, produced sharper strategic thinking, and grew a more inspiring role model to his many teams at work. The performance of his teams across Asia-Pacific improved significantly, as did the top-line and bottom-line of his consolidated P&L. A few months later, the Chairman of the Board told Andrew “he looked younger”, asked him ‘what happened?’ and requested tips for his own health and stamina.
His family grew closer together and, importantly, Liam dropped his noxious habits and adopted a positive mindset and sound behaviors. One Saturday, as Andrew was resting from intense badminton games with his two kids, Liam told him: “You know Dad, don’t try too hard; you’ve shown us it’s always possible to change for the better, and you’ve proven you love us already!”