I’ve been thinking about learning… the lifelong kind. The kind that says, "I’m not too old to learn something new". The kind that says, "I should listen when people want to tune me up a bit because I have a blind spot". The sage who wrote Proverbs in the Bible tells us that if we teach people who are already wise, that they will be wiser still.  “Instruct the wise and they will be wiser still” Proverbs 9:9. Don’t you want to be that guy?!

As an executive coach for the past eleven years, I have certainly learned much about working with high performing leaders and executives. The five key areas any leader or executive can benefit from an executive coach are:

The term “coaching” in today’s world has gotten very complicated and misunderstood. In my youth, a coach was the guy who yelled at you from the sidelines if you were in any kind of sport. Today, we hear about coaching in a wide variety of areas, such as sports, music, relationships, spiritual development, executive and even “life coaching” in general.

My wife and I were at Canlis Restaurant in Seattle for dinner. I must confess, I’m usually content with Waffle House, so I was happy to catapult to the #7 restaurant in the U.S. I was secretly wondering, however, what it was that I was about to experience. My first clue should have been the New York Times review that noted, “A Canlis Salad, when properly prepared, is a revelation.” - Sam Sifton, NYT. A salad? A revelation? About that time, Wanda, our server who had been a team member at Canlis for 33 years, came up to our table and greeted us.

Have you ever noticed that no matter how strong you get from exercising, you always have to put down the weight?  It eventually becomes too heavy to lift, and you no longer have the energy to do anything but struggle with it.

When it comes to hiring the right people, we hear many versions of the same story. It goes something like this: “We hired this person...” and with that comment, a very frustrated leader reaches across the desk and hands me the resume of the person they’ve just let go, and then adds, “…but this isn’t the person who showed up on the job.”

It always amazes me how long a business owner will hang on to the wrong employee, the type who, despite their value to the organization, rubs against company culture.

Hiring great talent these days is a daunting task. Interviewees are on their best behavior, equipped with their arsenal of stock phraseology, canned responses and even contrived body language. By the end of most interviews, the chance of actually knowing the individual underneath all the strategic veneer is slim to none.