Episode 327: Resistance to Coaching: What Leaders Are Really Protecting | The Manager Track
EPISODE 327 · ~40 min

Resistance to Coaching: What Leaders Are Really Protecting

Maren Perry, founder and CEO of Arden Coaching, has spent twenty years working with senior leaders. In this conversation she names what is usually underneath a calendar that will not cooperate, and what it takes to move past it.

The Manager Track
Resistance to Coaching: What Leaders Are Really Protecting
EP 327 · WITH RAMONA SHAW
executive coaching self-awareness priorities leadership growth
Show notes

What we cover

Most resistance to growth never announces itself. It shows up as a calendar that will not cooperate, a quarter that is too full, a leadership program that would be a better fit next year.

Maren Perry, founder and CEO of Arden Coaching, has spent twenty years working with senior leaders and executives. She can identify what usually lies beneath that scheduling problem. People reach senior roles because they were very good at something, and that gives them something to protect. Coaching asks them to set it down for an hour and look honestly (and vulnerably) at what is working and what is not.

In this episode, Ramona and Maren get into the part of leadership growth that rarely gets said out loud: the distance between what a leader knows they should do and what they actually make room for.

In Episode 327, we cover:

  • What resistance looks like
  • The two sides of any goal, the thinking side and the feeling side, and what it means when they do not match
  • Why people feel stuck
  • The quadrant most leaders agree drives their success and still give zero attention to

If you have a project, a conversation, or a development opportunity that has been sitting on your list for months, this conversation will help you understand why it is still sitting there even though you know you “should” tackle it now.

Watch this episode

Timestamps

00:00Why we brush off coaching, feedback, and mentoring
02:00Meet Maren Perry of Arden Coaching
03:30Resistance shows up before anyone is in the room
05:30Ego, expertise, and what senior leaders are protecting
07:30When the coaching setup itself is the problem
08:30Letting go of what you know to get to what is next
11:00The thinking side and the feeling side of a goal
13:30What being stuck actually means
16:00Two levers: change the circumstance or your response to it
17:30Rebuilding the spark inside the role you already have
19:00Priorities, calendars, and what sits underneath them
21:30Important but not urgent, and why it gets dropped first
23:00Honoring your own time blocks
25:00Structures sufficient to your resistance
27:30How fear shows up in successful leaders
31:00Why offsites unlock the thinking a Tuesday morning cannot
33:00The 360 feedback that changed how one leader led
36:30Seeing the blind spot, and the months of work after it
38:00Inside Arden Coaching and where to find Maren

Resources mentioned

Links

Related episodes

What’s next?

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