I Went From Good To Great As a Leader

When I started working with David, I already thought I was a pretty good leader. I was leading a large division of our company, served on the executive leadership team, and was a trusted advisor to the board of directors. My employee engagement scores were strong, and my 360 peer reviews showed that my colleagues thought of me as a competent leader. I was actually skeptical that David’s coaching could make any discernable difference. I had worked with an executive coach in the past and found it to be minimally helpful.

When David introduced his Fully Integrated Leadership approach, I was particularly drawn to the “performance-based” model he had brought from his triathlon coaching background. I am an ultra-distance runner and believe in a disciplined and rigorous approach to training. We spent the first several months in what he called the “assessment phase” of coaching. He put me through a battery of assessments that were different from anything I had experienced before. He got to know me and my leadership context through our bi-weekly calls, and he encouraged me to explore a deeper mindfulness and self-reflection practice.

We came out of the assessment phase with a set of concrete skills we would work on to deepen my leadership abilities in managing VUCA conditions. The next phase of coaching put me in “the gym” so to speak, working on specific skills in my day-to-day work. David recommended books I should read on such topics as organizational culture, systems thinking, and self-awareness, and he designed custom homework assignments where I could apply the concepts from the books in my work and life. We then used our coaching calls to reflect on my experiences using the concepts.
Over time, I started to see some major changes in my approach to leadership and life in general. I now had formal frameworks and models to help me think critically about complex situations, and I was able to facilitate collaborative decision-making with my team and division. I helped with the transformation our company was going through by talking about how to implement the right culture to support the structural changes we were making. It was as if I was seeing the world, my work, and myself in a whole new way.

David and I continue to work together, honing my skills and ensuring I am sustaining the concepts we have been training on in our work together. He is a critical part of my support team and I can say with great confidence I would not be the leader I am today if I wasn’t working with him.