Advising and the Art of Accompaniment (Part I)
What is an executive advisor anyway?
As I talk to leaders today, I am concerned about the significant number who are thinking about walking away, and I am passionate about helping them to develop strategies to flourish in these vital roles. This is the first of two posts outlining my approach to executive advising based on years of serving and being served as an advisor. Today’s post will be more conceptual, while the next post will specific examples of some of my current advisory engagements. The role of an executive advisor requires some explanation. Many practitioners of advice-giving include coaches, consultants, life coaches, and mentors. Some focus their service on a specific niche, e.g., chief financial officers working to issue debt. In contrast, others are generalists and work with human resource professionals to solve personnel or organizational problems. Some have never served in the role they are advising, while others have many years of experience before sitting in the advisor chair.
First, if you have read this far and are thinking about retaining an executive advisor, you are to be commended. Mature leaders seek out advisors when they step into a new leadership role, and boards should view a leader’s desire to have one or more trusted advisors as an indicator of humility and strength. Many of the most experienced and accomplished leaders I know have one or two advisors they continue to retain across multiple roles in different organizations. Overly insecure or arrogant leaders simply don’t seek out advisors. The executive advisor does not make decisions or take the place of a board or a senior leadership team—these people are critically important—but instead serves as a confidant with whom the executive can think aloud, test ideas, identify areas for development, and revisit the most difficult, persistent problems. A trusted advisor makes you better at what you do.
The Art of Accompaniment
My approach to advising is grounded in the art of accompaniment.* Advising as accompaniment assumes that the advisor’s best work is done by walking along with a leader on their self-appointed path. It matters that I have done the work before and know something about what it is like to serve in the CEO role. This is because advising as accompaniment is work done in solidarity with the leader through the inevitable highs and lows of the work. The accompanying advisor figuratively “goes where the leader goes” and builds a trusting relationship while on the leadership journey.
The aim of accompaniment is to listen to the mind and heart of the leader, to gain a deep understanding of their motives and assumptions, to be available to celebrate successes and disappointments, and to learn the context of the leader’s work well enough to ask questions that serve to sharpen a leader’s performance. On occasion, the advisor is assigned a project or a task to identify resources that can advance a leader’s goals and increase the likelihood of success. While doing these things, the advisor must help to determine when the executive is stuck, identify the pain points and keep the work moving forward.
An advisor is first a listener attuned to the experience of the whole person (intellect, emotion, as well as the physical and spiritual) in leadership. Effective advisors are aware of their biases and set aside their own agendas to listen to the goals and objectives of the leader. A trusted advisor asks probing questions to develop a leader’s thinking, emotional intelligence, and overall performance. Strong advisor-leader relationships are also characterized by a leader’s solicitation of advisor feedback and a willingness to listen to the unvarnished perspective of an advisor. An advisor can provide space for the leader to “vent” without consequences and serve as a focus group of one as a leader tests ideas and arguments. You will know you have an advisor you trust when you ask for feedback on an issue and actually want to hear it, even if it stings a little. But it will be easier to accept if the advisor is experienced and you have built an honest, vulnerable, trusting relationship.
The executive advisor is a trusted confidant who can help support a leader by working in the seam between the leader’s personal and organizational life. Executive roles are challenging because they typically make a total claim on every aspect of a leader’s life. Like a rising tide, the demands of these roles threaten to saturate any leader’s remaining personal time—time that is still needed for health, family, and friendships. Mobile technology has made this more difficult for everyone, but the expectation that a leader be constantly available to solve the most difficult problems eventually diminishes a leader’s effectiveness (we’ll discuss the neurological reasons later). Balancing and prioritizing personal and professional commitments are very challenging. A senior leader should look for an executive advisor who has lived with these challenges and can offer strategies for navigating this unique role to help that leader be at their best in all their commitments.
Of Young and Old Rabbits
I can best illustrate the art of accompaniment with a story of an advisor who walked with me on a literal journey. On my 50th birthday, I resolved to walk the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain from the French border to the Atlantic Ocean. Once I had the requisite permissions from my family and employer, preparing for this arduous walk over 30 days became my avocation. Whenever I had downtime, I read every book I could find, scoured every map, listened to podcasts, and read every blog. I had so many questions. What do I pack? What are the best hiking shoes for a 542-mile hike? What is the best route? What is the best schedule? What percentage of people finish? What is the best training regime? In all that I read, there was a cacophony of opinions on each of these questions, and it wasn’t easy to have confidence in the judgment calls I had to make as I prepared.
After two years of preparation and a year of training, I set off to climb over the Pyrenees Mountains by myself on a foggy morning in late May. Always on the lookout for experienced advisors, that morning, I fell in with some Spanish retirees who had no trouble scuttling up the mountains, and I was relieved to see that I could keep up with them. Because they were from Spain, I hoped they had more experience on the Camino than me, but they were new to it and answered most of my questions with relaxed answers like, “it’s a mystery” and “who knows?” I admired their training, and we had a lot of fun climbing the mountain on the first of 32 days, but these fellow pilgrims would not be my advisors.
At the first hostel over the summit, I had to learn how to find a bed, find dinner, do laundry, and get cleaned up after a rain-soaked 15-mile hike so I could be ready for the next day. I did my best by watching others, but I was clumsy and inexperienced. To my relief, I was assigned a seat at dinner that first night with a Belgian man named Geert, about my age, who was walking the Camino for the fifth time. He graciously took me under his wing. I was so grateful to walk with this quiet, experienced pilgrim of slight build and minimalist backpack who patiently asked and answered many questions based on his experiences as we walked together over the next five days. On her second trek on the Camino, a German woman also fell in with us and suggested we listen carefully to Geert, “this old rabbit with much experience, who is still alive after more than 2,500 miles!”
Geert and I were early risers and liked to be up before sunrise and on the trail by first light. This meant that we were up before any of our other roommates. I was new to the quiet exfiltration from a bunkroom of eight people before dark. I packed my pack by the foot of the bed, made a lot of noise with velcro, dropped my water bottle, and turned my flashlight on by accident. Meanwhile, Geert, the old rabbit, slipped out like a shadow.
We sat quietly by a plaza ten miles later and sipped our mid-morning coffee. Out of the silence, he asked, “would you like some feedback and advice?” I looked at him and replayed the question as he waited patiently for my reply. After a beat, I said, “Yes, I think I would like some feedback and advice.” He then clearly and tactfully stated, “you made much noise this morning as you left the room. I am sure it woke most of our roommates. Knowing you, I am sure you didn’t intend that. You could leave much more quietly if you had everything ready the night before and, in the morning, pulled your sleeping bag and backpack into the hall to pack there. You are a kind and good person. I want others to keep thinking of you that way,” he smiled wryly into his cappuccino. I laughed loudly at my foolishness while my cheeks turned red with embarrassment. He gave me clear, honest feedback and excellent advice that I continued to use on the trail for the next 25 days.
Geert had mastered the art of accompaniment. Three things made Geert’s work as my advisor so invaluable to me:
I valued Geert’s considerable experience, which included some things I could have learned from a book, but even more valuable to me were the things I could only learn while walking the trail. I had not thought of these things before, like pacing, health, sleep, stamina, trailside rest, and several threats and opportunities that could not be found in any guidebook.
I valued Geert’s goals, which were similar to mine, and his perspective, which differed from mine.
I valued the trusting relationship we developed over several days.
Six days into my walk, I took a rest day, and Geert kept going. We parted ways, and I never saw him again, but his advice proved trustworthy and helped me to finish strong 27 days later.
Working the Seam between Professional and Personal
Congratulations to you if you have decided to hire an executive advisor. It speaks to your wisdom and strength. I commend you for your commitment to “work the seam” between the professional and personal aspects of leadership. My next post will illustrate some of the different ways I work with executives to support their thriving and help them to achieve their most important goals.
Are you tired of walking alone in your executive role? Contact Michael Le Roy for a free, confidential consultation to see if executive advising is right for you.
*I first heard the term “art of accompaniment” in a book written by Pope Francis. While he was speaking about one of the ways that the church was called to work with people, I thought it also provided an elegant term to describe good advising.