In order to become successful – as an individual or as the leader of an organization, you must work on YOU first.

As leaders, it’s up to you to help your teamwork on themselves. It goes beyond emotional intelligence as a concept. You must provide the tools and resources they need, and you must coach them through the work. If you can do that, having first set the foundation for success by doing the work yourself, everyone involved comes out a winner.

Bolman & Deal (2017) assert that “reframing can help managers move from feeling confused and stuck to discovering a renewed sense of clarity and confidence.”

From past experiences both personally and in working with clients I can tell you that the same is true of Coaching from the Inside out. Coaching from the inside out is the pre-work to emotional intelligence, the essential framework that makes building your empire so much easier – not to mention more stable!

My philosophy on Coaching from the Inside outcomes from twenty-plus years of sales leadership experience. My belief is that we all view the world through a different window. The window is the lens that tints, shades, warps, or clarifies our worlds, and it is formed by our own body of work – past and present professional and personal. It has everything to do with who you are, where you come from, where you’ve been and it will determine where you are going. If that sounds a little unfair, I get it. But here’s the beauty of it: understanding what your window looks like – where it’s helping you become stronger and where it might be blocking you from success – makes it so that you can create the future you desire. You can’t hope to control where you’re going next if you aren’t willing to look at what got you here.

And here’s the thing – where you’re going next isn’t just about you anymore. It’s about your entire company, the organization, or team that you’re leading. That’s why this transformative style of work is so important for today’s workforce.

about this for a minute…The American Psychiatric Association asserts that 18 million adults suffer from some form of depression. Depression is the leading cause of disability for ages 15-44. (depression meaning anything from bipolar disorder to generalized anxiety) The median age for American workers is 42.3 years. Your company is being led by those 18 million adults.

From a cost perspective this is what it means to you as an employer:

• It causes 490 million disability days from work every year.
• Accounts for 23 billion in lost workdays each year.
• Takes an economic toll of over 100 billion each year from U.S. Business.

Coaching from the Inside Out isn’t therapy, and it’s not intended to be. However, I have seen the emotional and mental transformation this kind of care and investment in your employees and leaders can make. Coaching from the Inside out isn’t therapy, but the shift that happens when people dig deep and feel professionally safe to do so is incredible. The power that gets put back in their hands when they learn to understand the window through which they view their world is astounding. In business, it’s sometimes easy to forget this simple, yet essential truth. Employees are human beings. Coaching from the Inside Out brings the human element back to sales and leadership coaching.

In his book “The Advantage,” Pat Lencioni explains why organizational health trumps everything else in business. And you want to know the key to a healthy organization? Healthy leaders. The key to healthy leaders? You guessed it – working from the inside out. It’s not enough to say you’re working on emotional intelligence anymore. Emotional intelligence without the transformational work necessary to propel the core of those benefits forward is useless.

Instead, dig deep. Transform. Understand and utilize the lens through which you view the world. The lens exists whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, and if you ignore its existence, you may be holding yourself, your leaders, and your entire organization back. Furthermore, if you’re not allowing your leaders and employees to acknowledge and utilize their own lenses, and giving them the tools to shift, adjust, and clarify those lenses where needed, they might be getting in the way of your organization’s success, too.

Coaching from the Inside out focuses on that acknowledgment, utilization, and transformation so you can alter the way you lead, build relationships, and create success. It extends that same opportunity to your employees so they can create healthy leadership and apply emotional intelligence in a way that truly matters. It’s an extremely individual process but at its heart, it’s about, well, heart. It’s the kind of heart-centered work that leads to better bottom lines, new opportunities, stronger relationships, streamlined processes, and the ability to walk the real emotional intelligence walk.

Are you Coaching from the Inside Out in your organization? If not, why?