Coach Me! Your Personal Board of Directors

13 How Powerful Leaders Create Safety: View from Both Sides of the Desk

Carol Kauffman

Carol was ranked as the #1 Leadership Coach from the MG100 and in the top eight by Thinkers50. While on faculty at Harvard, she received $2,000,000 to launch the Institute of Coaching. She is a visiting professor at Henley Business School and a Senior Leadership Advisor at Egon Zehnder. Coaching leaders is her first love, and she has over 40,000 hours of experience.

When you are seen as powerful, people stop telling you the truth. As a CEO, you need to know the truth that others are experiencing. What can you do if no one will tell you? It can feel like you are on one side of the river and they are on the other. To connect and lead, simply walk over the bridge to where they are. If you can deeply understand them, they will follow you back over the bridge. This is so obvious, but why do not we do it more often?

Here are some lessons you can learn from a coaching engagement I had with a CEO. First, I had to walk over the bridge to where he was. Then, he walked over the bridge to his team. It was a small action with huge impact.

Marco was tapped to be the CEO of the largest manufacturing company of its type in the world. There was one condition, however. He had to be in coaching for one year before he could step into the role. It is a familiar story: brilliant results, the turn-around guy, and knew the business like no other. He was seen as a bully: steamrolled people and did not listen, and ...