Thinking About What’s Important

I once coached a founder who had stepped down from running his company. What he wanted, at first, was to explore how he should build relationships with the executive team. He wasn’t all that happy with their performance. He often had disagreements with them.

When people have a problem, many times it is because there is something deeper going on.

As we talked, I asked questions about the aspects he hadn’t consider before. And he started looking at the situation differently. He realized that he was meddling and interfering with his executive team and didn’t let them run the business.

He did that because he was, basically, bored. So even though his involvement wasn’t needed anymore, out of boredom he did the things he knew best — that is running the business.

But once he realized the conundrum, new possibilities were open to him. He knew that he shouldn’t fight his boredom by quarreling with his executive team. Instead, he could spend his freed-up time for anything he deemed really important.

As a result of this work, he decided to spend more quality time with his teenage son.