Mike Pelfini — 02 December 2022
Mike Pelfini of ForeMeta Coaching helps executives improve their companies with leadership coaching in peer groups and one to one coaching.
Leaders and executives, particularly successful ones, may feel that they are fully in command of themselves and make fully rational and intentional decisions. But they may be unaware of what’s going on inside themselves, the terra incognita of their inner motivations, biases, predispositions, and habits. Research has shown, for example, that at least 43% of behavior – and in some cases more – is unconscious, automatic, and habitual. Helping leaders explore this foundational inner territory is a prime subject of effective leadership coaching.
Get in touch with your unconscious predispositions through leadership coaching
Effective business coaching can help you determine where unconscious predispositions may be blocking your path to greater success. We all have certain biases, based on our experiences, preferred thinking style, and other factors. We all have favored modes of thinking and behaving, developed over the course of a career and lifetime. These are typically helpful adaptations and shortcuts our minds use to cut through and manage complex situations.
These largely unconscious adaptations can also cut us off from new ways of thinking and lead us to follow paths that may have outlived their usefulness. They can also lead us to undervalue individuals with different viewpoints or working styles that have the potential to add to the overall success of an organization. Focused attention on raising awareness about our own habits and predispositions offers a way out of the dilemma.
Recognize Confirmation Bias and Similarity Bias
Two mental habits to pay attention to in this regard are confirmation bias and similarity bias. Confirmation bias is simply gathering information to confirm our existing beliefs. It can be comforting to rely on beliefs, sources, and authorities that have served us in the past but it limits our range of thought and action. Similarity bias is the tendency to trust people with personalities, traits, and tendencies that are similar to our own. While similarity bias is often considered in matters of race and gender, it can equally apply to different personality types and modes of thinking.
Unexamined predispositions and biases may be comforting, but they can limit our effectiveness and lead to less than optimal results for our organizations. Leadership coaching is effective when it helps us to safely step away from our comfort zone and begin to tackle issues with new and previously unfamiliar tools.
Develop the desire to change
Understanding some of the beliefs that limit our conscious actions as leaders is necessary but not sufficient for helping us reach our full potential as leaders. Effective leadership coaching can help us become aware of and understand the nature of the discomfort that these limiting beliefs often cause. This experience invites important learning opportunities that ultimately inspire the much needed desire to change our beliefs about what is possible.
Help leaders understand themselves
The fundamental work of leadership coaching is to help leaders understand themselves more deeply. Part of that is to recognize the unconscious predispositions that may be holding you back from even greater success. A business coach can provide a safe environment to explore unknown or uncomfortable areas, and to both identify and address under-developed skills. Through the process, you can answer fundamental questions such as: What do I truly want? How can I achieve that? And, What stops me?
The results can benefit both the individual and the organization. The American Management Association reports that companies investing in coaching enjoy stronger market performance than those that don’t. Further, according to a global survey of coaching clients conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Association Resource Center, the mean ROI for companies investing in coaching was seven times the initial investment, with over a quarter reporting an ROI of 10 to 49 times.
If you are an executive who would like to unlock your full potential, or are looking for ways to improve leadership and communication in an enterprise, or want to take the next step in developing your organization, ForeMeta Coaching can help.
Contact Mike@ForeMeta.com or call 800-942-3949 to schedule a consultation.