Coach Me! Your Personal Board of Directors

9 How to Develop the Authentic Leader in You

Nicole Heimann

Nicole Heimann is a multi-award-winning executive and executive team coach, taking executives and their teams from good to great. She is the author of the book How to Develop the Authentic Leader in You, keynote speaker on authentic leadership an leadership alliances, and biographer of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith in the documentary The Earned Life .

I was invited to a meeting with two board members of a large industrial company to coach Paul, the CEO. Paul was described as a highly intelligent visionary, very strong strategically, possessing a great ability to deal with complexity, as well as a global and holistic thinker.

However, the Board of Directors had been alarmed by an employee survey. They were nervous because they did not want to lose this CEO, but there was a problem: he was hard to “get.” His executive team “did not feel” him. The communication felt strange. People had reported to the board that they felt like exchanging information with a computer without any emotional reactions. They did not know how to connect with him. The absence of emotional expressions made his team members and the people in the organization feel insecure and lose trust. One colleague said, “Each time I try to build a relationship by starting with some small talk, he doesn’t join in the small talk and says, ‘Get to the point’ or ‘What can I do for you?’” Nobody seemed to really “know” Paul, and he was experienced as distant.

From Paul’s ...