A highly focused business leader in the Middle East is struggling in a continually expanding and changing role. How can she operate more strategically?
THE ISSUE
Sophia works for an international company based in the Middle East. She has worked in a number of other countries within the same company including in Tanzania, Kenya, America and India on a range of focused long-term projects. Four years ago she was promoted to director of the UAE in her function.
She is talented, hard-working and very task and results focused. In the past two years she has had three different bosses who each gave her widely different ranges of objectives to achieve. Her team, which has grown from seven to 19 members during this time, has been feeling under a lot of pressure, dealing with what appears to be a continual change in direction. It has become clear to the team that Sophia has been struggling as she has been exhibiting stressful and impatient behaviours.
Sophia has recently been given some feedback that she needs to operate more strategically. However, she is feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work she is being asked to do and is now starting to think that she would like to leave. She has begun to feel stuck in her sector and company and is seeking a change of career and new beginnings, although she does know that she would like to stay in the Middle East for the time being.
- This issue’s Troubleshooter has been curated by Veronica Munro, international C suite executive coach, performance facilitator and author
THE INTERVENTIONS
Sacha Fitch
Executive coach, and managing partner, Fitch Bradley
To help Sophia logically evaluate how she wants to move forward, I would first clarify her reasons for wanting to leave and second explore her ideal future through Robert Dilts’ Logical Levels of Change (eg, Chapman, 2010).
I would give her the opportunity to reconnect to a time when things were going well and create an anchor to the power there. I would then ask Sophia to identify turning points she feels have led to the current situation.
Sophia’s reported behaviours suggest a possible imbalance between her parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, meaning her stress levels are often elevated. I’d share some psycho-education, for example, the Chimp and Human brain metaphor described by Steve Peters (2013), along with strategies to regulate her stress.
Logical Levels analyses what is needed to achieve change. It views situations through six lenses: environment, behaviour, capabilities, values and beliefs, identity and vision.
I’d walk Sophia through each level, asking questions around “what do I want for my future career?” and “what do I need?” I’d notice where she exhibits different emotions and energy to discover at which level she’s stuck. Finding the solution may require moving up levels. From here, Sophia can positively evaluate her options before making final decisions.
- S Peters, The Chimp Paradox, TarcherPerigee, 2013
- M Chapman, ‘Level playing field’, in Coaching at Work, 5(5), 2010: https://bit.ly/3tejIiJ
Nigel Cumberland
Coaching and mentoring leadership talent, The Silk Road Partnership
Coaching can help Sophia make sense of where she finds herself today, where she wishes to be, and to become comfortable and positive about available choices. While flowing with what she’s seeking in the coaching relationship, I’d be ready to bring various elements to the coaching, including:
- Noting her stress, I’d wish to help her explore how she’s physically and emotionally feeling. This might involve helping her observe her breathing and parts of her body where she might be feeling heavy and full of tension.
- Help her unpack where she feels she is in terms of her life and career, and to help her reflect upon her sense of struggling and feeling stuck.
- Encourage her to visualise what an ideal future looks and feels like in terms of a job role, work culture, sector, environment, location and lifestyle, etc.
- Invite her to close her eyes and explore her values, drivers and motivators, if they’re being met or unmet, and which of them might be serving her or no longer helping at all.
- Reflect together on her relationships in terms of patterns over time, and how she senses they’re impacting her today.
- Explore topics such as how comfortable and successful she has been leading a team of 19; how she reacts and copes with changes of direction and focus, how she views the request to move from being task and operational-focused to being more strategic, and how she approaches her workload in terms of prioritising and working smart.
- Be alert to issues that unexpectedly emerge during the coaching engagement, eg, perhaps a current line manager’s cultural patterns, or poor leadership style, rather than just a question of workload causing her to want to leave her current role.
- She may discover her issue is the need to change some of her habits and behaviours, in which case I’d offer her some cognitive behavioural coaching.