How We Work
LifeLine is meant for turbulent times.
- For leaders who are “stuck.”
- For leaders who are overloaded—under pressure so overwhelming that it drains their optimism, energy, and creativity.
- For leaders with business problems that don’t seem to have solutions.
For these leaders, our approach can’t skirt around the edges, or offer surface techniques. Our method for leadership development must shift foundations.
And so … LifeLine Consulting pinpoints mindsets—those inner messages that determine a leader’s success under pressure.
The origins of your mindset are in your personal story (literally, your “LifeLine”). Your own story usually holds the key to understanding why intense pressure at work may undermine your confidence and control.
We turn the tables and make your LifeLine work for you. We promote inner discovery and insight-driven change that increases your capacity to withstand pressure at work.
Here’s how …
Including the Whole Story
Much as we’d like to, we can’t escape the past. Our personal biographies—our own unique stories—always travel with us, and they can hobble us if we ignore them.
When leaders feel stuck in their own bad movie, it’s often because they’re re-playing a script from the past. “I know what to do, I’m just not doing it.”
That’s the dilemma facing skilled, but overloaded leaders—and those who are responsible for developing them. You may know leaders who repeat the same ineffective behaviors, or who have an “Achilles heel” that limits their ability to move up to greater responsibility or challenge. Or you may be enduring a chronic business problem or personal pattern you just can’t shake.
Fortunately, we’ve learned a secret that helps give good leaders more vitality and optimism: we don’t dwell on the past, but we don’t ignore it. To short-circuit cycles of frustration and disappointment, leaders need to look in the rearview mirror without flinching.
We integrate the past with the present (a “LifeLine”) so leaders finally have the whole story about their strengths and blindsides.
Because they lack that whole story, leaders often know what they need to do, but they don’t do it. We find that when experienced leaders are stuck, or are faced with unprecedented responsibilities or unfamiliar challenges, they usually don’t need new skills. Instead, they need to apply the lessons in their personal history to the challenges they face now. They need to cultivate what’s already there.
So what must leaders do? Find the courage to break down their own inner barriers and access their unused personal power.
And our role? Helping them to uncover and flex the strengths that already exist.
Because leaders with more resilience and resolve understand the truth of that old adage: “Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.”
Breaking the Logjam
So when leaders feel stuck and overwhelmed, it’s usually because they’re repeating patterns from their personal biographies that no longer work.
We help them identify those patterns—those “stuck scenarios”—and see what triggers them.
Once we know why there’s a logjam, we move quickly to help leaders identify the smallest, simplest step to change what seems unchangeable, and then to take that step.
That’s one of the benefits of our approach—we can work fast, because we work deep.
Our ultimate goal? Helping good leaders thrive under pressure.
The Venues for Learning & Change
Individual Leadership Development
A leader may choose to engage a LifeLine professional directly, or an internal leadership development expert might recommend us to a leader. In either situation, a leader gains a personal resource who offers undivided attention. The benefits? In-depth discovery and learning. Personal, customized strategies for change. Complete confidentiality.
Often, leaders who especially appreciate a LifeLine may be:
- Overwhelmed by pressure, diminishing resources, or conflicting priorities
- “High potentials” being groomed for top jobs
- In transition to an expanded role, a new job, or a new location.
- In a group underrepresented in management
- Struggling to maintain a balance between their work and personal lives.
Team Development
LifeLine Consulting with an intact work group offers even greater potential to shift the impact of pressure in a team, department, or organization. LifeLine offers the customized support needed by the team to manage extraordinary pressure, including skill building, education, and on-the-spot consulting. Teams continue to respond to their workplace challenges while LifeLine professionals enable them to face those challenges in new ways.
LifeLine services in a team context also offer the leader and members a venue for continuously testing and developing specific, personal competencies. The potential for real individual change is increased in the team setting because the group’s common, shared experience accelerates learning, application, and group support. And with the entire team involved, impact on the organizational culture is similarly increased.
Groups that often welcome a LifeLine include:
- Work teams under increasing, relentless pressure, with constantly shifting priorities, diminishing resources, ambiguous accountability, etc.
- Leadership teams accountable for meeting ambitious business goals, monitoring leadership practices, and changing workplace culture.