leadership development.

Getting to the core truth

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I first met Elaine when we were both doing counselling in a program for grieving children. I was always impressed by Elaine’s empathy and penetrating insights when taking the kids through this program. She was able to connect in a relevant way and take them on a journey that allowed them to get back to a place of happiness after the trauma they had been through. 

The next year, I found myself in a career transition after spending nearly 20 years working at senior levels at large consumer packaged good organizations. Burned out, and not wanting to rush back into a new job doing the same as before, I knew I needed to explore what would bring me happiness as I re-entered the workforce for the next 10+ years.

I reached out to Elaine for advice and started a “conversational journey” over the next 12 weeks to find a better understanding of myself and what truly were my passions that I wanted to follow in my next career. 

What was interesting throughout this journey was Elaine’s ability to reach deeper into my soul with a series of creative exercises and probing questions about my whole life, not just my career and leadership skills. Elaine is one of the most intuitive people that I have met, and her style of coaching allowed for a line of questioning that brought deeper meaning and self-awareness about my life. 

What I uncovered through this journey was a better understanding of myself and what were my true passions. Getting to the core was not about what society and friends expected of me, but a journey that allowed me to explore what I needed to focus on to allow me to be personally fulfilled in career, family relationships and external pursuits. 

In the end I did go back to a big corporate job, but Elaine’s counsel helped me in clearly identifying what kind of job and culture would give me the most fulfillment. What were the skills I could best leverage and what were the key job responsibilities I enjoyed the most and those that I should stay away from. This elevated my leadership skills in the organization as I was much more self-aware of my strengths and my blind spots, and how I could best contribute to the executive team.  

While this conversation with Elaine was nearly 14 years ago, it continued informally over the years and was a contributing factor to my individual leadership success and happiness in the corporate roles I had. But her process also unlocked my passions, which ultimately lead to a second career as a college professor. 

Iain Chalmers
VP, Diageo