This the introductory piece for a series of articles on personal and professional self-development for entrepreneurs and corporate executives.
The wheel of life is a simple yet powerful tool for visualising all areas of one’s life to see which areas are flourishing and which ones need improvement. It is often used by Coaches to give their clients a “birds eye” view of their lives.
This is to ensure that our wheel, the whole of our life is balanced , all aspects or needs are fulfilled in the right way .In view of the fact that a person’s life consists of both personal and professional issues when one aspect of one’s life becomes the focus and the others are neglected , the wheel is out of balance.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that encourages us to separate our personal life from our professional life in effect, putting our wheel constantly out of balance. This results in leaders many times making one aspect of their life the focus and neglecting the others. This can create enormous stress.
This is because the issues in a person’s personal life impinge on their professional life and vice versa which affects one’s productivity and feeling of fulfillment.
It is this same one sided lens view that makes us pay so much attention to the people we lead and invest heavily on training to change their behaviour and enhance their performance, forgetting that many times we are the root causes of the problems we seek to correct in them and we need coaching ourselves. 27 years of coaching, counselling and my own personal life experiences have revealed that in our work as leaders, failure to attend to one’s own personal and professional life issues in order to create your own sense of balance results in frustration , stress , limited drive, lack of focus , inability to maximize ones performance and to lead effectively.
The central principle of the Gestalt theory as summarized by the Gestalt Psychologist Kurt Koffka rightfully states that “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” There must be personal and professional synergy.
BECOME MORE is an article / Podcast for leaders who by virtue of their very busy schedules are unable to take time off to “stand and stir “at their own life. It presents real life personal and professional topics drawn from my years of engaging in people development. These topics are presented under the label “Leader shift Focus Series’.
I conclude the write up on each topic with powerful coaching questions to help you to:
- Assess yourself in the light of the topic
- Evaluate limiting beliefs that sabotage your success
- Become more self-aware, increase responsibility and accountability
- Devise strategies to create your own sense of fulfillment and balance
Sika Twum is an Executive Coach/International Gestalt Practitioner/ Corporate Trainer.