Corporate Rejuvenation: It’s Not Business, It’s Personal
by Shawn Miller

A year ago at this time, on the verge of 2004, I was working on an article on how to make — and keep — New Year’s resolutions. Among the many suggestions from area experts whose advice I solicited was one to work with a life coach, a strategist who helps devise a plan to achieve life objectives, then provides a framework of accountability under which to accomplish these goals. Unlike therapy, which focuses backwards in time to repair past damage to the psyche, life coaching shifts focus forward by proactively removing obstacles in the path of future achievement.

This article got me thinking about my own resolutions, one in particular — to write a book — that has found its way on my list each New Year, only to reappear again the following with little — okay I’ll admit it, as of January 2004 absolutely no — progress made. In my early 20s, I had the age of 25 as the milestone by which I wanted to achieve this goal. That got bumped up to age 30; the latest milestone is one I won’t divulge in print. So on the brink of 2004, I decided to take my own advice and enlist the support of a life coach.

I embarked on a search that ultimately led to Laura Hendershot of Consummate Coaching. Not only did her Web site identify her as protégé of one of the early pioneers in the field, but it also revealed that perhaps more importantly, she, like me, is the mother of three kids.

What surprised me most about the early stages of this process was that very little time was spent directly on book writing. Instead, Hendershot’s questions focused on my values, passions, what motivates me (obviously not arbitrary self-proclaimed deadlines related to aging), other facets of my life — over-involvement in kid-related activities, weight-management, disorganization — that seemed out of whack. Eventually, we got down to developing book-related targets, but only after we made successful achievement manageable.

A year later, I have countless hours of interviews on tape, an outline of my story, and two chapters actually written. One thing I know for sure is that none of this would have been accomplished without life coaching. It seems infinite the number of times that the only thing driving me to complete tasks was a looming appointment with Hendershot. And on those occasions when I failed to meet objectives, my life coach taught me to go easy — it seems all the guilt and negative self-talk that fuel a drive to perfection can also poison productivity. All lessons learned during this process carried over into life’s other aspects — but none as much as this ability to forgive imperfection (I remind myself of this as I sit here revising this article a week past its original deadline).

I was also to learn this year that the life coaching field has grown beyond personal one-on-one goal achievement to impact many other realms. One in particular, the corporate was a bit surprising because from the outset, such an intensely personal process can appear incongruous to the application of an arena whose objectives — for the most part — can be defined as highly impersonal.

Purely by chance and for research related to another project, I attended a business re-development seminar conducted by Greg Voisen of eLuminate, a consulting firm dedicated to helping businesses and individuals overcome obstacles to success — a broader application of the life coaching process. I found application of this concept to the corporate arena fascinating, and wondered whether the personal lessons learned and insights gained through my own experience could be directly translated in an organizational setting. The short answer, according to Voisen, is absolutely.

Voisen graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in business management, which led to a 25-year career in the insurance and financial planning sector. While helping clients achieve financial objectives, Voisen figured he spent about 90 percent of consultations focused on more personal struggles. That’s when he began to make the connection between business or financial difficulties and personal strife. So in 1991, he decided to shift his career into one more directly related to this correlation.

His first company, Sales Solutions Systems, was based on a program Voisen developed for people in the financial industry to address the huge incongruence he noted between the pursuits of his colleagues and their personal fulfillment. “People are often driven by money in their professions,” he explains, “but end up empty spiritually.” An expansion of this program beyond the scope of his former industry led to the formation of eLuminate. In August 2005, Voisen will complete a master’s program in spiritual psychology, coming full circle in his quest to heal professionals and corporations by first healing the spirit.

Since 1994, Voisen has worked with a variety of companies — from avocado packers to retailers, both large and small in annual revenues — to facilitate the process of rebuilding their organizations into those that “would put their original company out of business.”

Like a more individual life coaching experience, this process starts first by identifying core values and a fundamental purpose, then aligning all resources to support these, while eliminating those influences that undermine defined principles. Contrary to traditional business mantras like “It’s not personal, it’s business,” Voisen is convinced the key to true organizational success is understanding people and tapping into what motivates them, rendering this a very personal process.

“Every business owner wants to do more, be more,” says Voisen. “But what management sometimes fails to realize is that it’s not about the numbers, it’s about the people — everyone needs to be engaged and included in the process of changing or growing an organization . . . when you’re constantly trying to convince people of your goals, that’s a sign that there’s no synergy; instead, everyone is working toward their own agenda.”

Therefore, critical to the success of corporate change management is the buy in and support of all team members. And just like individuals need to identify passions and find a calling to realize true success, those businesses that define for themselves a higher-level purpose consistent with organizational values and goals have a better chance at long-term success. Voisen says upper management must include people at all levels in this process of goal determination and setting, so they have a say and are engaged in the evolution of the business. “Businesses don’t transform, people do,” says Voisen, convinced that you can’t heal one without addressing the needs of the other.

Voisen describes change management as an awareness process during which an atmosphere of open communication must be fostered. “Management must cultivate an environment in which communication is free, open, and where people don’t feel like they need to hide mistakes out of fear of reprimand.” Just like being too hard on yourself for falling short of perfection is counterproductive in the long-term, so are harsh reprisals by management in response to employee mistakes. Instead, Voisen explains that when mistakes are made, management should mentor employees, imparting advice on how to avoid similar errors in the future.

Not that there should be an environment free from accountability. In fact, one of the biggest obstacles to success in corporate America today, according to Voisen, is a lack of accountability at all levels. Not only can there be a shortfall in employee willingness to take responsibility and commit to excellence, but, Voisen says, “I often have management-level people come to me unhappy with how things are going in their company, and they’re generally pointing fingers outside themselves. I always turn that finger back around and ask: ’What is it you’re doing as a leader to create this environment?’”

Accountability is fostered when employees not only clearly understand expectations and the scope of their positions, but agree to — in lieu of having been ordered to — follow through.

Accountability is, in fact, an underlying factor in both personal and business objectives. It’s what drove me to meet personal deadlines with Hendershot, and it’s what motivates the people involved in the businesses Voisen works with to define key initiatives and stay on track.

Upon completion of Voisen’s seminar, I recognized so many parallels in my personal quest for achievement and life coaching principles leading to success in broader, more team-oriented, business-minded pursuits. In fact, unlike in my college major of political science wherein one of the fundamental lessons is “don’t apply the behavior of individuals to attempts to understand the interactions of nation-states,” developing a feel for what motivates individuals really can be essential to the success and forward-motion of corporate organizations.

I finished this seminar a couple months ago. Just days ago I came across an ad in which the services of a “money coach” — a job title I had never heard of — were being sought, someone to work with individuals to keep them from sabotaging financial objectives. It seems the coaching field is spawning yet another permutation of itself.

So, whether your goal is to write a book, climb a mountain, lose weight, or increase bottom-line profitability, there’s hardly an objective imaginable for which the services of a life coach can’t be applied to create a foundation of commitment and accountability that leads to achievement at levels previously only imagined.