Extreme Leadership: On Coaching Trust
If you feel your faults and defects prevent you from seeing the faults and defects of others, remember, you may be the only contact with God someone may have today. Be proud of that.” Iyanla Vanzant
I read that quote this morning. It is from Iyanla’s One Day My Soul Just Opened Up. One Day… is one of my ‘bedside books’, a stack that I have beside my bed and use nightly to clear off of the daily news of fear and anguish that is so prevalent at ‘Live at 10.’
This quote answers the question I’ve gotten several times from others and ask myself occasionally: How can I coach someone when my life is in disarray. How can I lead others when I am not walking my talk? And so on. These are tough questions for any leader. Leaders are coaches who motivate, who see-feel-hear and inform on someone else’s action. They are role models. They are supposed to know “the path” to fulfillment, to ask the questions that support someone’s goal accomplishment. Yet there are those times in ones life when the choices one makes deliver up a situation that ‘may have him/her not look’ good – not be the role model he/she desires to be. For example, I have a friend who is a great trainer and coach. Recently he and his wife got a divorce. I hadn’t heard from him for a while and when I finally did I asked where he’d been and how he was doing. He answered, after the divorce he felt like a sham (fake). In his thinking, he was asking himself “How can I coach others on having a committed relationship when I just ended mine?” When he is in front of the room leading a training, his focus isn’t on all that went “wrong” but how can I serve. It is only afterwards that he doubts.
In this challenging economy, there are leaders going through tough times. Coaches who are struggling for whatever reason. Not all people, not all leaders and not all coaches all of the time. So if you are one of those finding yourself doubting yourself, remind yourself of Ilyanla’s great quote. You can also paraphrase it to this: “If you feel your faults and defects prevent you from seeing the (magnificence) of others, remember, you may be the only contact with God someone may have today. Be proud of that.” Then remind yourself of what Mark Twain said, “…when all is said and done, the one sole condition that makes spiritual happiness and preserves it is the absence of doubt.”
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