I was speaking last week with a fellow leadership consultant and coach. In this conversation, we both agreed that when a client comes onboard as a client to be deeply developed as a leader, it takes a lot of guts. Not just a little bit of guts, a lot of guts. Yet, it’s worth it; but, candidly, there are a number of pain points to go through before you get to the “it’s worth it” piece. So here’s the bad first (and there’s a lot of it), and then I end with the good.

Leadership consulting and coaching is…

1. Invasive. For someone to truly want to be a great leader, they have to become aware of all of their junk. People, generally, don’t want to do that. It feels like an intrusion into their pandora’s box. This is where they (or we, the coach, and the client) are digging into a lot of the nurture stuff. This is where we unpack the good/bad parenting that you experienced as a kid, the opportunities you did/didn’t have as a young adult, the demographics and psychographics that had a huge influence on shaping who you are – good and bad. This isn’t to take the place of a licensed therapist, nor to make you feel totally exposed. Instead, it’s meant to expose how soooo much of your leadership tendencies and behaviors have to do with where you came from, what happened to you in your past, and the lens that you look through as you enact your leadership philosophy on the world.

2. Personal. Yeah, a coach and consultant gets hired to come in as a professional to help a client do this deep and hard work; but, without question, it’s super personal for the client who’s getting coached or consulted on their leadership. This is more of the nature stuff – their wiring, their personality, and their innate skills. Some people don’t think this stuff is personal; but, most people who say that haven’t dug in at the deeper levels. When you tell someone they are a driver, pioneer, get-things-done-type-of-leader, that can be received well. When you tell them, and show them, that there are a lot of landmines that come with that wiring (i.e., bulldozer, loud, forceful, etc.), it becomes personal. When you show them that they don’t understand – and, possibly, don’t value and respect – other temperaments as well as they should, it’s personal.

3. Disruptive. You can take the blue pill in the Matrix, and keep on keeping on without a lot of disruption. BUT, if you are going to do the hard work, and you are going to take the red pill, life is going to change…a lot. Once you excavate a lot of your unknown self-and/or hidden self and bring it into the light, you won’t be able to go back and do business the same way you did before. In fact, if you are serious about it (which most clients are), you won’t be able to do marriage the same way you did before. Your parenting will change. YOU will change. Life will change. And if you are significantly changing the way you do leadership, and the way you do business, that is going to impact your work. It will affect your peers at work, your clients, your boss, your direct reports, your work-life. And let’s be honest, change (even when it is good) is tough. Change is, simply put, disruptive. It can be so disruptive that, even when it’s a good change, clients want to go back to how things were before they jumped into this process of becoming a better leader. But, once you take the red pill, there’s no going back. Once you learn more and more about you as a person and a leader, you can’t undo the journey of sanctification. You can’t unlearn what you have learned.

4. A big investment. It takes a lot of time to meet with a coach or a consultant. It takes a lot of time to understand your nature and nurture components. It takes a lot of time to not just take a personality or behavioral assessment, but to truly understand it – to understand who you are, and who other people are in their core. It takes time to illuminate and talk through judgmental tendencies that can fester from those differences. It takes a lot of time to not just understand those judgmental tendencies, but to value and respect the differences that other coworkers have. It takes time to come up with an action plan to overcome the behaviors that you know you have that you don’t want to exhibit at work. It takes a lot of time to read, process, talk, and listen with a coach or a consultant that will guide you deeper than you thought you would ever go around this stuff. And, just being honest, it will take some money to work on this; especially if, once you see the value of having gone through it yourself, you feel the strong need to bring the rest of your work team into the same process. From there, a lot of other changes can roll out at your work because everybody has fresh eyes on themselves and the people they work with. No, it’s not just fresh eyes; it’s truth. You now have truth about you and your coworkers – in a good way; and nobody can keep things going how they were. Things at work have to change. Which can take a lot of re-engineering; which can take a big investment in both time and money.

5. It’s High Impact. In other words, it’s worth it. Every bit of it. All of it. Level 3 leaders that take the red pill can become level 4 leaders; and maybe even level 5. Talent in a business can get supremely optimized if leaders are doing deep-dive personal work to really know themselves well. Employees avoid burnout, or avoid tip-toeing to the great resignation, because they feel like they have a culture – created by the leadership – that is trustworthy, honest, genuine, and respects diversity. And these employees know that this wasn’t always the case. They know that the leader (or leaders) did something different. They know that they – the leaders – are different. They know that the culture is different. They know that the business is different. And whatever the leadership did, (whether the leaders openly told the organization they were going into leadership-heart surgery to become a better leader, or it was more covert), the team – the people – know things are better. And the leader? The coaching client? They know it was worth it. They are not only a better leader; they are a transformed person. They have more purpose than they ever had before. They care more for their teammates at work, and for the business, than they ever did before. The leader thought they were signing up for a process (which they were), but they didn’t know it was going to be this high impact. For sure, it’s high impact. It’s worth it.