Executive Coaching And The Necessity Of Change

Our consistent theme at Pythia is: you need to improve both your technical and people leadership capacities. There is no option to stand in the place you started and in fact it's a bad idea.

How could you change? What would you change?

Suppose you are ready to change your leadership skills based on all you read from this site. That means you have come to accept that you will lose something (that you should lose but it's still a loss), there was a compelling need to change, and you can anticipate gaining something new - better habits, better mindsets, better skills. 

Our friend Ken Nowack likes to say "only wet babies like change" and he's right. But of course wet babies want change, while adults...maybe not so much!

Let's get this out of the way first: coaching is not therapy. There is significant agreement at the highest levels of professional organizations regarding boundaries between coaching and therapy. 

In therapy we're addressing personal or family-based emotional distress, etc. A therapist should help you overcome fears or anxieties through developing coping strategies, or possibly by dampening those experiences through medication. You might need both therapy and coaching, but don't expect one person to assist you with both outcomes.

Final thought about therapy for now: one of our favorite therapist bloggers, Seth Gillihan, writes that you should on occasion "take a break from self-help" and focus externally. In other words, as he says, "there's more to life than self-as-project." Yes you're anxious but your world needs your attention too.

For the sake of argument we'll say that what the world needs from you is your cybersecurity team and its process. That means you may need coaching.

A fundamental easy-peasy way to think of it is that a coach should help you step up and maintain your 'A-game'. In coaching, we're focusing on goal definition, identifying barriers to goal attainment, creating better teams, working through outdated business models, etc. Some coaches focus on performance enhancement; sports and trading are two arenas where you'd encounter that. 

You should find a change partner, an experienced coach who has walked others through the change process many times. A good and brief description of what this is about was posted recently by our friend Lubna Somjee. 

Assume your technical skills are out of date. Because let's face it they are. Remember, you were hired for your skills and you will be fired for your personality. So if you are already changing your management skill sets and capacity to deal with a Board through coaching, you're addressing your personality. 

That leaves skills.

Even if they don't get around to firing you for your personality, you will be fired if you have an ineffective or apparently too expensive cybersecurity process.

Ready?

Start your skill development journey not with certifications but with answering these questions, and remember to be honest in your reflection:

1. In what ways is our cybersecurity process aligned with the business goals of the company and in what ways is it misaligned?

2. How do our cybersecurity processes further the success of the company?

3. How do our cybersecurity process metrics align with broader company metrics?

These are not 'yes/no' questions. They require you to think like a businessperson.

If you have difficulty thinking that way, or -- worse -- you think that's dumb: get a coach. If you believe that your boss would answer differently from you: get a coach.

Ask us how we at Pythia can refer you to the best coaches (and therapists) in the world.