Work is where we spend the largest portion of our life. And we’re not talking about the hours you spend at the headquarters, sitting by your desk or meeting clients. Work is a state; a continuum. Think of work as an action you decide to make every day. Such actions reflect on your qualities, skills, and drive, only to be transformed into measurable behaviors that will result in a series of potential outcomes that should always be aligned with your company goals.

To meet such goals, your attitude, emotions, and mindset must be in good shape. And, considering the amount of time and commitment you pour into your work, you must train yourself to achieve an optimal work experience. That is, a capacity to overcome boredom, burning out and lack of motivation.

Note: If you’re ok, your work is going to be ok. Dare for more and train yourself for greatness.

Luckily for you, executive coaching is an efficient technique to train top executives so they can succeed at their positions without compromising their well-being.

Optimal experience isn’t about work-life balance

Problems at home, hardships, health issues, these are all real problems that might affect your work. A top executive or CEO also deals with these problems while being showered with a humongous work responsibility.

An executive coach can’t solve these problems on her own, nor she can help you achieve the holy grail of work-life balance, what she can do is provide you with the right tools to help you flow at work.

By taking a look at your attitudes, qualifications, work history, and values, an executive coach is able to see a bigger picture; a look at your coping mechanisms or the way you tackle problems at work and an executive coach will be able to provide the right strategies so you become proficient in dealing with any emotional contingency.

What is an optimal experience at work?

Have you ever been at work, about to tackle a seemingly impossible challenge, and without realizing it, you get to fully immerse, focus and enjoy solving the problem? This is called flow at work, a condition of satisfaction and accomplishment that manifests as an intrinsic reward experience from doing your job –and enjoying it.

Flow or an optimal work experience doesn’t have to do with easy challenges or unwinding at work. Optimal work experiences can be explained in two axes:

1. The difficulty of the task
2. Your skill

Since executive coaching focuses on top leadership positions, both the difficulty of the task and the skill of the top executive should be quite high. If the difficulty of the task is high and your skill is lower, you get frustrated. If your skill is too high for the task, you get bored.

Once you understand how flow works, you begin to approach work challenges with a different mindset. For example, if a task is too much to handle at once, an executive coach would recommend you to divide the task into smaller fragments, or if something seems too boring, go the extra mile and add a mini goal –It should always feel like serious play.

When goals are clear, everything is clear

When you hire an executive coach, the main objective is to unleash your full potential so you can obtain the results you want. As you learn to have more optimal experiences at work you become more complex, with faster responses and more creative solutions.

The reason why executive coaching works is because the coach never loses sight of what her objective is. The same applies to any top executive position, every action, every goal, points in the same direction; it gives your purpose, drive and inner motivation that doesn’t wear down regardless of external outcomes –your work motivation is intrinsic.

After some training, you become an unmovable force. You enjoy what you do; you flow, and when you flow you begin to think outside the box, you become a more qualified leader.

Top executives and flow: is it necessary?

When it comes to work and flow, entry positions have it tougher when trying to achieve flow while CEO’s need to have every available tool for any type of situation. Flexibility, emotional intelligence, empathy, expertise; all qualities that make a great leader and which are linked to your relationship with your coworkers and partners are values you can share.

With executive coaching you’ll learn how to communicate with your actions, your attitude, plus your experience with optimal work would become two fundamental work values for you and your team –you’ll become a leader who’s worth looking up to.

 How executive coaches can help

Executive coaches are ready to strengthen a top executive positive traits while turning weaknesses in opportunities for growth. A good executive coach would help you pour your whole self into your work while seeking your well-being as an individual which in turn has a profound effect on your work culture and organizational environment.

If you want to know more about how executive coaches can help, John Mattone is the author of different books like Lessons in Leadership, Culture & Culture Transformation, or the Success Yourself title that holds some valuable material for your growth as a leader.

Find out more by contacting John Mattone today, and take the next step towards success.

Glossary of terms

Flow – An optimal mental state first described by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, in which an individual gets to fully immerse, focus and enjoy a particular task even losing the sense of space and time. During this state, creativity is expanded. Not to be confused with hyperfocus.

Serious Play – A technique used to solve complex problems that require lateral thinking to foresee different scenarios. Gamification, role-play and other techniques are included.

Emotional Intelligence – The ability to understand, recognize and manage one’s emotions while also understanding the emotions of others. It’s a pillar concept for teamwork theories according to organizational behavior and industrial psychology.

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