Stubborn Negative Mindset or Habit? How to Accelerate Change for What Seems Unfixable
The Problem We Might Not Realize is a Problem
We tolerate and normalize more dysfunction in ourselves and our organizations than we should.
We accept too readily that negative behavioral quirks or mindsets are permanent personality features. Or we assume people are too old to change.
This is not necessarily true at all.
Despite decades of executive coaching and leadership development being available to many individuals and organizations, how many organizations do you know that aren’t dysfunctional somehow?
Something isn’t working.
I believe we can do better than this – a lot better!
Case Study: Talented, Self-Sabotaging Leader Makes About-Face
My client, the Head of Product of a Series C SaaS company, was fed up with his longtime issue of becoming defensive when given constructive feedback or being challenged. He was worried it would sabotage his most important relationships as well as his career. A leader like this can hold back their team’s ability to learn, grow and perform at their best because it feels unsafe to take risks or offer feedback. He had a lot at stake.
I took him straight to the root cause, digging deeper than he ever had before. He was trying to hide what he thought were his flaws, not realizing that drives people away more than the flaws do. I helped him see how essential self-acceptance is to change and growth. After going through a Jungian Executive Coaching process, he was finally able to develop more empathy towards himself, including his younger self he had rejected long ago out of unwarranted shame. The unique technique I used launched a fresh relationship between these parts of himself which made behavioral change so much easier.
Since then, when he receives constructive feedback or is challenged, he doesn’t react the way he did before. The triggers aren’t as strong, and he has more capacity to control his responses effectively now. He even sees the many positives in those situations that he didn’t before.
“Jungian Executive Coaching helped me find the root cause of my triggers and finally transform my mindset and behavior. Five sessions of Amy’s coaching were more impactful than nearly two years of therapy.”
As a bonus, he was able to give up the avoidance of shame being his main driver to achievement. He found a new, positive fuel source: learning, sharing knowledge, and nurturing his relationships.
Shortly after we worked together, my client received a big company strategy project from his boss’s boss that showcased his vision and leadership skills, and then the promotion he coveted. A year later, a new dream job offer at a Series E SaaS company.
“When you have an intractable behavioral issue, you need a profound change accelerant: Introducing Jungian Executive Coaching.”
Why Jungian Executive Coaching Works So Well
Jungian Executive Coaching is not psychotherapy, it’s a form of coaching – but it can be more powerful than either one for the purposes it serves. Most therapy is way too slow; most coaching is way too surface. Jungian Executive Coaching is faster, deeper, practical and the changes it evokes long-lasting.
“If you’re not intentionally engaging your unconscious, you’re only harnessing a fraction of your intelligence, power and competitive advantage.”
It works because it involves the whole psyche, including the unconscious. Bottom line: Your coach isn’t taking you deep enough to get truly transformative results if they’re not addressing your unconscious. Keep it up on the surface, get superficial, temporary results. You’ll learn the “right behavior” to perform but not how to make that easier and natural to do. (Never mind discovering who you really are and what you’re really capable of!)
You get profound and lasting change when you actively engage your unconscious and imagination through this Jungian approach. Your coach prompts you through a process that surfaces new insights and support you didn’t know you had and helps you integrate it in a practical way in your life.
Origins of Jungian Executive Coaching
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who developed analytical psychology at the turn of the last century. He believed that 80% of the human psyche resides in the unconscious, a remarkable wellspring and reservoir of wisdom, insight, creativity, potential and support when we can surface its contents to our conscious minds.
Jung discovered ways to facilitate bringing the unconscious into awareness and identified individuation – the lifelong process of discovering and expressing the true self – to be the main goal of human development to create a fulfilling life. Crucial aspects of the true self remain in the unconscious until we can surface and integrate them.
Jungian Executive Coaching combines the best of Jung’s psychological ideas with proven coaching methods to evolve a more progressive and effective approach.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
My Goal: Corporate America Embraces Jungian Executive Coaching
So much potential is being left on the table – or below the surface as it were – because Corporate America is reluctant to innovate in this arena. Yet dysfunction is so rife, it’s considered normal.
We need to stop accepting such a low bar.
Corporate America is famously not adventurous when it comes to people operations. Not too long ago, “meditation” and “mindfulness” were never spoken of let alone invested in and encouraged in the corporate world. Too “woo woo”! But in the past decade or so, they’ve both become virtually ubiquitous as corporations saw the promising research and courageously dipped their toes in. They came out reporting greater well-being, engagement and productivity, better decision-making, problem-solving and improved task performance for their employees. The ROI is indeed significant, and the science continues to concur.
I predict that Jungian Executive Coaching can have as or more meaningful an impact on executives and their teams. I’ve seen it repeatedly in my own coaching practice, I’ve experienced it myself, and I’ve witnessed others make remarkable transformations with such an approach. I’m looking at conducting a statistically significant study in my coaching practice to prove it because I know it’s that effective.
“If we want our leaders, teams and organizations to actually move beyond their dysfunctions to sustainable thriving, corporate leadership development should include Jungian Executive Coaching alongside traditional executive coaching.”
That’s the future I foresee that inspires me every day I work with the most impressive coaching tool I’ve ever found.
This is the first of my blogs introducing Jungian Executive Coaching. Please subscribe below to receive future blog posts covering the many benefits of this approach, the 15 most popular coaching topics clients bring to Jungian Executive Coaching, what a session is really like, how it complements classic executive coaching, and much more.
