by Frame of MindAugust 23, 2018

Kim Ades (President and Founder of Frame of Mind Coaching™) and Phil Shaer (Chief Legal Officer of Canopy Growth Corporation) discuss why super successful leaders still feel dissatisfied.

 
 
The Canopy Growth Corporation is the first federally regulated, publicly traded cannabis producer in North America. Phil Shaer is the Chief Legal Officer of Canopy Growth, but he also wears many other hats. He leads their human resources department and works intimately on business development.

Despite his senior position and level of success, he still feels dissatisfied.

Listen as Kim Ades and Phil discuss the correlation between being highly successful and feeling chronic dissatisfaction.

 
How Leaders Can Feel Satisfied
Phil: What, if anything, could I be doing to be satisfied? Or should I be?

Kim: That’s a very interesting question, even the way that you phrased the question. You asked, “What can I be doing?” Most Type A’s and highly driven people think, “There’s an action I need to take in order to increase my satisfaction.” And the truth is that there’s no action that you can take. You can’t work out harder. You can’t put in more hours. None of that will increase your satisfaction. Your satisfaction comes from your thinking. And right now, there’s a modality or a habit of thought that you engage in and have engaged in for years and years and years, and that habit of thought is what causes the dissatisfaction.

So how do you turn that around? You have to say, “What is that habit of thought? What is the trap I keep falling into? And really, what are the beliefs I have that cause me to chronically feel dissatisfied? I need to shed light on those beliefs and trade them up, really convert them into something that is more useful for me and that decreases my dissatisfaction.” So there’s no action that you take. It’s a process. You know, when we coach people, that’s exactly what we do. We look at the beliefs they have and see how their beliefs create a lack of alignment for them. And that’s what we have with you, right?

Sure, you’re super successful, but inside, there’s this turmoil that still very much exists. And we need to address that. You know, one of the things we do with our clients is we ask them journal. Why? Because from a coaching standpoint, we can see very clearly what the beliefs are and why their turmoil exists. And we know some of it already just by having this short conversation with you. The question is, what beliefs have you held onto and still hold onto for dear life?

You have this idea of what you need to do. The word “doing” is very important here because it’s misleading. “I have an idea of what I need to do in order to get the validation I really, really need.” And that idea has increased your success, has driven your success. But that idea still also causes you pain. And so we need to change that belief around. We need to address it. We need to turn it into something that’s useful and still continues your path of success, but also creates internal peace, right? Does that make sense to you?

Phil: It does. Yeah.

Kim: My suggestion to you is, journaling could help, but if you were to allow yourself to really look at the beliefs you have that drive your perceptions, your beliefs and your thoughts, then things could change for you. And that’s really the thing. It’s not about doing anything, it’s about really examining the way you view the world and the way you view yourself. That’s the thing. It’s not an action, it’s a thinking thing.

Why Leaders Don’t Feel Good Enough
Phil: Yeah. I do get that, intellectually. It’s odd, right? Because I think I have these moments where I know, objectively, I came in here, I was the new guy at Canopy Growth, and am I now one of the senior guys that everybody goes to and relies on? Yes. And so I have those moments of thinking I just lucked out with the first job, getting all senior. I started over completely in a new space and the same damn thing happened. It can’t be a coincidence. But yet then, do I still have this self-doubt about it? All the time.

Kim: For our audience, those of you who are listening, listen to this picture. You have a gentleman who’s at the helm of a company, working on the leadership team of one of the most up and coming companies in the world, Canopy Growth, who’s doing a phenomenal job, and yet he lives his life with a great amount of self-doubt. So he’s super intelligent, super capable, super skilled, super talented, but in the back of his mind, he’s like, “Hmm. Am I doing a good enough job?” The “good enough” concept comes out.

And that dialogue erodes not only your day-to-day functioning, but your basic happiness, your basic peacefulness and probably impacts your relationships. And so we need to address that. Like to me, that’s like the highest thing on your list of things to do.

Phil: Agreed.