In order to create this virtuous circle, organizations are starting to get to the right balance into their ‘make or buy’ decisions in their search for talent, now favoring internal recruitment to fill their critical positions. They have, in many cases, gone through a long and painful path of favoring external recruitment, a kind of ‘mistress syndrome’ - the belief that the new should be better than the known defaults of the old, or have been forced to look outside for not having effectively planned for succession, only to suffer the consequences of their bad decisions or negligent behavior.

Having gone through this experience often, in many cases, way too often, organizations are now more authentically committed to develop leadership excellence internally. They are more committed to avoid the very likely and impactful risks of failure through cultural shock, wrong decisions or costly unnecessary changes due to lack of business understanding or due to conscious or unconscious bias of the good old ‘one size fits all’.

Coaching appears as an effective way of preparing succession for key positions. Through coaching, leaders can get higher levels of awareness of where they are vs. where they need to be in the future in terms of their leadership effectiveness and on what they have to do to get there. It can create the space and facilitate the thinking to enable high quality decision making, action planning and execution, which will support the delivery of excellent and sustainable results. Coaching can help in the ‘What’ is achieved, supporting leaders in building up a successful ‘track record’ of key achievements as a strong predictor of high performance in future roles. It can also help in the ‘How’ these results are achieved and, therefore, how far their performance is sustainable, by supporting them in knowing more about themselves and about their leadership style and impact and in enacting and leveraging the most effective behaviors that will most likely ensure their success in their current and future leadership positions.

Patricia Pedrosa, Executive Coach

In the year we celebrate the 26th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are still so many walls we keep bumping into, banging our heads on, making us turn in the wrong direction or just sit beside them, head in our hands, powerless.

Some of these walls we can see clearly in front of us, we just don’t know how to break them down. Some are invisible to us, we don’t see them and run into them like headless chicken.

I met Sarah a couple of years ago. She came across as a great professional, a very confident, even hard-headed, female leader. She had a huge challenge in front of her in terms of re-organizing her structure, upgrading talent and functional capabilities, streamlining and improving business processes. She already had a clear view of what had to be done and a detailed plan of how to get there. She was already taking important steps in that direction. For each step she took she would bump into a wall that she had not seen. One of her key stakeholders was not fully on board with the plans and her line manager was testing her ability to manage this kind of transformation without coaching her through it. She was moving alone, fully convinced that this was the right direction and assuming she had the trust and sponsorship of her key stakeholders to make it happen. She was frustrated that she was not getting any traction and that she did not feel recognized by her line manager for the huge efforts she was making to move things forward. She was not seeing the wall that was built in front of her. That was the first step to take in supporting her – to help her see the wall. We can’t knock down walls we do not see.

I also found walls that are even more difficult to see although usually, easier to knock down. The walls we have built in front of our selves.

Let me try to categorize these walls based on my experience in coaching people. The most common are the walls of lack of capabilities, lack of capacity, lack of willingness and FEAR.

My favorite one is fear. When I see the wall of fear rising in front of me as I listen, unpeel, untie, challenge, throughout the Coachee’s myriad of facts, thoughts, feelings, concerns, I smile inside. I love helping people kill their fear. I love the killing and then the releasing of the hostage.

Ken was a senior leader in a global Company, with 25 years of experience in different commercial functions. He was very knowledgeable, very experienced, passionate, full of energy and drive, always embracing what life and work would bring him with a positive attitude, always focused on finding solutions, building bridges across different functions to make things work, resolving conflicts in the best possible way. Nonetheless, he was in conflict with almost everyone he was working with. He was losing credibility and respect. He was lost and fearful. He was desperately trying to learn as much as possible, read everything there was to be read about conflict management. He learned and tried a few conflict management techniques but nothing was working. His boss was still giving him a hard time almost every day, telling him how weak he was as a leader, how others would always win over him, telling him what he had to do or he would lose his job.

He felt frustrated, humiliated and again committed to change his behavior and to be tougher, more assertive, even aggressive with some of his stakeholders so that he could finally be recognized as a strong leader who would have the final word. He was trying hard and bumping hard into his wall, a leader that was playing with his fear. The fear of losing his job. That’s a difficult one to kill.

Most people fear for their jobs, their families’ bread winning, their careers, their reputation, their own pride but mostly the respect of others, their children, their wife/husband, their parents.

Losing one’s job is one of the changes in people’s lives that can be so impactful that it may change one’s personality. There aren’t many events that can cause this level of change, maybe only the death of a loved one or a serious disease of self or loved ones.

So fear of losing our job is common to most people and completely legitimate. But we can set ourselves free from it. We need to. Or, we will be weak leaders, we will be fearful, constrained performers. We need to kill that fear to fully unleash our potential.

First step is to climb this wall of fear and take a good look at how it looks like to be on the other side. What would be different if I was not afraid of losing my job? How would that make me feel? How much would that make me better? Make my life better? What does it take for me to be free from this fear? What is my plan?

And this is where this coaching journey would start, an amazing journey of unveiling possibilities and making conscious choices.

This is where my passion is, in helping people finding out what they want, facing reality, see the walls in front of them, experience the wonderful sensation of getting Mr. Fear out of the room and invite Mrs. Possibility to join us. I just need to create that space for them to reflect, to be safely challenged in their assumptions, to comfortably look at themselves, to be confronted with the questions that will lead them to the answers they are looking for – that ‘Aha!’ moment, rewarding and inspirational to both of us.

Patricia Pedrosa, Executive Coach