I give them a bigger bandwidth within which to experience themselves, their organization and the role they intend to play. I hold the bigger picture for my executive clients to live into. One aspect of being an executive coach that I love is that I’m in a sense a leader’s leader. The bigger the picture you can hold the more valuable you are to your company and organization What makes a good leader and someone who is more likely to get promoted over and over again is the willingness to jump out of the fishbowl, out of the pool, off the stage, in order to see the Bigger Picture from which to lead far more effectively.
Ability to see the bigger picture how to#
Like all of us, Chantal wants to avoid that moment when she meets the "I don’t know how to make that leap without possibly falling on my face and looking like a complete fool and failure."Įveryone of us who aspires to something greater than our current fishbowl, our current job, position, role, or level of responsibility has to risk this moment of vulnerability and failure. She’ll be surrendering her invulnerability, and the survival mechanism she developed, that worked well enough to avoid vulnerability. She’ll have to operate from a different and larger perspective, which requires a letting go of the known for the unknown. Like the woman on the flying trapeze, Chantal will have to let go of a known way of viewing the world. Chantal realized that in order to fulfill her roles as the CFO she’s got to let go of her limiting OPM and take the leap. Most of us take our Operating Procedure Manual(OPM) with us to the next level of leadership only to find that we are drained by juggling what we’ve been doing with the requirement of working as if you are holding the Bigger Picture before you even know what that means. Until Chantal was hired as the CFO, it didn’t occur to her that she would need to operate differently from the way she had been working just months ago. We say "What Fishbowl? What Bigger Picture?" It’s not that we are ignorant, it’s that rarely is there a context that allows us to get that there is a Bigger Picture to see. Again, like a fish, we don’t know that there is a reality outside the fishbowlwithin which we are immersed. It’s challenging to pop out of your current fishbowl or context in order to see the Bigger Picture. Do these individuals have the capacity to see the Bigger Picture and then make leadership decisions that will support what is desired for all? and, it’s what Alon’s manager is wanting from him, too. And, seeing the bigger picture is what Chantal wants from the manager, Marko, who she is hiring next week. In the business environment, seeing the bigger picture is what Allen wants of his new CFO, Chantal so she can do her job more effectively. Here’s an example: Allen hired me as a business coach – a thinking partner, to assist him in seeing the bigger picture of how his company is running. Seated off stage in the audience or even in the balcony I can see the bigger picture of how the actors engage with each other, the lighting, the set design, the sound quality: I can see things I wouldn’t be able to if I didn’t set myself apart to view the Big Picture. If I’m a director of a play, I’d not be able to see the whole representation of a scene if I were on stage directing amid the characters. I have to be up above the pool in order to get more of a bird’s eye view this way I can see much more activity and take actions more quickly. If I’m a lifeguard, and if I’m in the pool swimming around with the rest of the swimmers, I’m much less likely to see any swimmer in distress. Without considering the value of our contribution, the degree of fulfillment, toxicity or dysfunction we may contribute to, and the productivity gained from a business or financial perspective, we can’t see the overview of how we are actually being in our lives. And, just as most of us don’t distinguish ourselves from the work, roles and details to which we’ve been attending. A fish can’t distinguish itself from its water, just as most of us don’t distinguish ourselves from our thoughts, emotions and body sensations.
We are all immersed in a paradigm and reality, much like a fish in the water it swims in. I’ll give you a number of analogies that might be helpful: The Fishbowl Analogy:
Seeing the Big Picture what the heck does that mean? What requires one to see the big picture? And, what dilemma becomes apparent when considering the leap into really seeing the big picture? "The Leap?" you might ask.
I pay attention when something is said two or more times there’s something to be mined for myself and perhaps for others. I can’t tell you the number of times over that past few weeks that I’ve heard the term seeing the big picture.
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