Your busyness and back-to-back meetings are the biggest risk to your executive performance. How long can you afford to carry on in this manner?

This might seem a bit dramatic but as a coach of many sponsors of large change programs that often impact 1000s of employees, I have consistently noticed how executives can get lost in actions and detail, losing their perspective and sense of personal and professional purpose.

My solution: find someone who provokes you just enough (to disrupt your thinking) but can also act as a coach to lift your perspective out of the weeds.

As a coach I help executives zoom; in (to detail) then out (to strategy) whilst at the same time having real human conversations about how they’re going personally. In this post I’ll give you some thoughts on how you can plan this type of conversation into your schedule; I’ll even outline the type of person you should find to have conversations with.

Making time to slack off

How difficult is it to get time in your diary?

Getting time with the people in charge of running organisations is a tightly managed affair; there are many gate keepers whose job it is to ensure an executive’s time is well spent (note: it is impossible to ‘save’ time; just spend it differently). Unfortunately, just having white space (slack) in your diary is not enough; in this article I’ll try to convince you to have a type of conversation that I have often conducted with executives to keep them on track.

What a coach notices when working with executives

Over my decades of consulting work helping to enable business transformation, I have often been the person assigned the role of briefing, influencing, training, or coaching the executive sponsor of a change program. I’ve learned how to both create ‘space’ for and act as a neutral challenger to executives. Let me explain.

Space Invaders versus Space creators

Have you ever met someone and very quickly found out they are a space invader; you leave the conversation feeling more overwhelmed than before you met them. Contrast this with a space creator who leaves you feeling lighter, with a changed perspective and a little energised or refreshed after a conversation.

Creating space through conversation is I believe one of THE most powerful tools a consultant or coach can bring to help executives lift or shift their perspective. It is within this space that they create that the executive finds room to shift their perspective, step back from their work, role and obligations and “try on” new ideas, thoughts or even behaviours. But most importantly it is in this space that executives can reconnect to what is important, get above the noise and see the “forest from the trees”.

But space is not enough; it is what happens in the space that matters. The extra ingredient is powerful questions from someone who has enough knowledge to test your assumptions, a challenger!

Your Neutral Challenger

Are you surround by agreeable people?

Do you often get challenged by your team?

It is common for a senior executive’s expectations to be managed by those ‘below’ them in the organisation. It is not unreasonable to expect subordinates to want to please their manager (boss; although I don’t like that term as not all managers are bossy). I often play the role of the neutral challenger to executives where I know enough about their business and role to ask useful questions that take their perspective up onto the balcony to look down onto their work/situation. Neutral because I do not have a stake in impressing them or winning favour.

The type of questions I could ask you for example would have a coaching element in that they consider your personal style, biases and lived experience but also provoke and provide perspective on the business context of your role e.g., operations, marketing, technology, transformation, finance etc. Always respectful, patient, and polite but provocative is the right balance to enable you to realign to what should be your focus and top priorities.

Seek out your space creating + neutral challenger

If we put these two characteristics together into a single individual, we have this wonderful conversationalist who can simultaneously challenge an executive whilst opening up space to give them an opportunity to take a break from their everyday perspective.

Your space creating, neutral challenger does not have to be an external consultant, but they often are. I encourage you to seek out your space creating, neutral challenger; a person who knows just enough about you and your role to ask insightful coaching-like questions that encourage you to take an alternate view on what you’re doing and how you do it. Once you find the right person book in a regular catch up; even if you don’t “feel” like it, keep the meeting in your diary over several weeks. I am confident you’ll see improvements in your ability to think a little bigger and take on a more systemic view. Doing this will improve the chance of your work being focussed on your purpose as a leader, executing strategy and delivering value.