Leadership And Compassion

I had met Victoria recently who had hired me as a coach. Victoria is a highly motivated, energetic, determined and passionate woman in that she is driven by her purpose and vision in life. She is a senior executive with a multi-national firm and she has progressed very well in her career. She is one of the youngest managing directors within her firm and somebody whom people within the firm envied and looked up to. Victoria is a caring and compassionate individual but at the same time very goal oriented and at times in that drive may seem to appear as impersonal.

Victoria normally is prompt and punctual. However on this day, she arrived to my office 10 minutes late. She profusely apologized. I observed that she seemed agitated and particularly stressed about something. I accepted her apology, smiled and requested her to take a seat. I allowed her to calm down and I did this by being silent for several minutes. That helped her to calm her nerves and regain her composure. She had a glass of water and she started narrating how her day was, what caused her to be stressed out and the reason for her delay and agitation. She appeared back to normal calm and composed self after I listened to her story.

Her desired outcome from this session was to stay in the PEA during moments when her inner critique seemed to be taking control, especially when she had to present in front of the board or any other senior executive team.

Victoria was coaching with me on aspects of Executive Presence especially given her new role and larger responsibility associated with her recent promotion.

I focused the entire session on Coaching With Compassion. This enables a person to speak about their ideal life, their vision and be positive and powerful.

How does compassion help the work environment and boost the confidence and engagement of employees?

1. Enables people to see their strengths, and get them into a positive emotional state. This allows them to think and be creative.

2. Your Positive Emotional Attractor (PEA) is aroused and that facilitates you to think about possibilities and dreams with optimism and hope.

3. You think about the resonant relationships that support and believe in you.

4. You are confident and you believe in yourself.

5. The more you are in your PEA state, the more you are motivated and driven by your purpose.

Victoria had forgotten about her tough day and some agonizing moments that had led her to an agitated state when she had entered my office. It was almost like a ray of sunlight had entered the room.

The best part was when we had about 5 minutes left to the end of the session, she said my questions had evoked some insights for her on how she could deal with being in the PEA in moments where she feels her inner gremlin takes over. She mentioned that she is going to put some thoughts into the aha moments that these questions had given her and share with me on email and in our next coaching session as to how she had put to use some of these learnings to overcome her executive presence.

I could tell she enjoyed her coaching session and despite being a vivacious person the coaching with compassion had taken to her a different level of achievement in her own mind and how she saw her life.

Within organizations, as a leader if you can set clear goals, and treat everyone as a partner for progress you facilitate growth, fulfillment and development. Good communication, a key to purpose and problem solving should never be underestimated. When you give people in your team or organizations role in defining their values and tying it with the vision of the company, you encourage interaction and cooperation.

Let us not forget that success is built-in valuing the Human potential and providing an environment that allows the positivity to grow and nourish.

Ask questions which raise their awareness of the wider context of their action.

To arouse the PEA, studies are suggesting that we need to: (1) be social; and (2) engage the person in positive, hopeful contemplation of a desired future.

The latter might also be stimulated when discussing core values and the purpose of the organization or project.

Extracted from NEUROSCIENCE AND LEADERSHIP: THE PROMISE OF INSIGHTS by Richard Boyatzis

The power of positive imaging and visioning is that it catches your dreams and engages your passion. You cannot inspire this passion in others without engaging in it yourself.

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