In my 30 years as an Executive Leadership Coach, I have seen that there are invariably two core areas to address to effectively get leaders to grow in their roles: increasing their self-awareness and expanding their comfort zone. Both can be challenging but they build on each other to deliver amazing transformation that impacts the leaders’ teams as a whole.

GROWING AS A LEADER THROUGH SELF-AWARENESS

The more leaders understand themselves and why they do what they do, the more they can become more intentional about how to act and respond to situations to create the results they desire.

When I work with executive leaders, there are different ways we can begin to increase their self-awareness:

• Getting feedback from the people they work with (their teams and colleagues)
• Doing leadership assessments to identify their innate talents and strengths, and see whether they are using them effectively
• Reflecting on what’s working and what challenges them as they go about daily leadership tasks
• Having a meeting with their boss or coaching sponsor to get more insights on how they can grow as a leader

After we have the full picture, I ask the leader to start paying attention to their choices and specific patterns of behavior and thinking. We start to make incremental changes to improve how they manage themselves as they move through their days.

HOW SELF-AWARENESS HELPED A LEADER GROW AS A MENTOR

One client learned through feedback that his direct reports were frustrated that he didn’t make time to support them. He admitted he was annoyed when they asked him questions, as he felt they were interrupting his ability to think and get things done. The feedback brought him awareness that he was not embracing his role of developing his team and supporting them in accomplishing their goals.

As a result, he began to block time a few mornings a week to answer his team’s questions – almost like a professor’s office hours. He started scheduling one-on-one meetings with them to ensure they were growing and learning. This shift made a huge difference in the work the team delivered.

GROWING OUT OF YOUR LEADERSHIP COMFORT ZONE

Think about your comfort zone as an imaginary line that you choose not to step over. You can put your thumbs and pointing fingers together to form a circle. This circle represents your comfort zone. Outside of the circle is where you don’t venture. It is your growth edge as a leader.

The goal of leadership coaching is building an awareness of where that line is and then find gentle, incremental actions the leader can take to go beyond it.

THE SNOWBALL EFFECTS OF EXPANDING YOUR COMFORT ZONE

A leader I coached was avoiding having difficult conversations with a few of her direct reports who were good at their jobs but created much internal turmoil. Once she recognized the negative impact this was having on the entire team, she decided to take some steps outside of her comfort zone…and was surprised to discover it was easier than she thought!

She started each conversation with what was going well and then approached the tough topics with a grace and ease she didn’t know she possessed. Several of the employees owned up to their role in the issue. This success grew the leader’s abilities and gave her confidence to try other tasks outside of her comfort zone.

As I work with clients, they sometimes realize the same comfort zones exist in their personal lives. One senior marketing executive realized he had been avoiding talking to his wife about topics that made him uncomfortable, and had brought that pattern over to his job. As he began to experiment bringing up tough topics at home and work, it worked wonders for him. He laughed and shared that even his marriage was better as a result of the leadership coaching work!

TAKEAWAYS

As you can see, self-awareness and expanding your comfort zone go hand-in-hand. When you work on both at the same time, your confidence increases. You start to grow exponentially as a leader and up the bar on your impact.

How about you, do you where your comfort zone lies? How can you be more intentional about how you lead every day? Schedule a call with me if you want to discover how you can up your leadership game.