The Leader Who Travels Without A Trusted Guide… Gets Lost: 3 Things to Look for When Choosing a Guide

A few years ago, my family and I travelled to St. Lucia. What a beautiful country! One of the days, we hired a guide so we could see some of the country with a pro. The guide was excellent. He was born and raised St. Lucia and knew the best places to go and the important things to see. The volcano. Hot springs. A local market. And the Caribbean side of the Island where the water was calm and blue. Instead of hiring a guide and having the curated day that we did, we could have rented a car and spent the day getting lost and unlost. (Some call that an adventure. I call that an expensive headache!)

People use guides for many reasons: hunting, traveling, rafting, and fishing just to name a few. But leaders are on a journey too. And sometimes it is worth having a guide to personally assist you in reaching your greatest accomplishments and destinations. A good guide will help you:

• Make the most of your journey

• Experience the greatest rewards

• Avoid the biggest dangers

• See what others might have missed

As you seek a trusted guide, coach, or consultant (of any type), here are the top three things to look for.

1. They know how to help you define what you are looking for.

An exceptional guide knows how to ask you the right questions and then listens carefully to your answer and what you do not say. Guides know it is all about helping you reach your goals and not about their goals. The Center Consulting Group’s coaches and consultants often tap into the expertise and experiences of one another to stay sharp and learn as much as they can to be the best help to the people they are guiding. So, be sure to ask anyone you are considering using as guide about their approach, their experience, and their training. Do they have a team that is bigger than just them? What have they led? How many teams have they built, how many organizations have they created, or how many products have they launched? Ask and listen very carefully to how they answer.

2. They have extensively traveled the route.

I am fascinated by how many people have now become “life coaches” and “consultants.” If it keeps up, there will be so many that there may not be anyone left to coach! The lack of experience some of them appear to have is a bit scary. Some have little actual leadership experience, but they are offering to help others lead! One of my clients ended up in one of these situations and said, “What a waste of money. They were of little help.” Remember, good guides do not just ask the right questions, they also know about the real-life challenges – and not by reading a book or watching a video, but because they have done it.

3. They have accumulated learning from many prior journeys.

Think about what it would be like to go on a whitewater rafting trip with a guide who had only been on the river with stage 4 rapids once. You would end up helping her far more than she could help you! Compare that to a guide who had been on the river (and many others) for hundreds of trips. The longer a guide has both traveled herself and helped others, the more knowledge she will have accumulated. That collective knowledge helps you avoid dangers and experience success.

Contact us to learn how our experienced coaches and consultants can help guide you as you face the challenges of leadership!

Jay Desko is the CEO of The Center Consulting Group and brings experience in the areas of organizational assessment, leadership coaching, decision-making, and strategic questioning. Jay’s degrees include an M.Ed. in Instructional Systems Design from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Leadership from The Union Institute.