Coaching “very smart” people

The more I Coach, the more it’s clear that there’s no getting around the need to take action, to do something other than what’s going on right now. Highly intelligent, underachievers are different, but they’re also just like everyone else in so many ways – something they might not always be thrilled to hear.

Underachievers have trouble connecting their cognitive style to their interactions with other people, the workplace, their own emotions, and the way the real world works.

Again, it’s the “just like the rest of us” part that’s mostly the problem, not the “different” part. The need for an identity, a place in the world, validation, meaningful work, colleagues, friends, and income is the same for almost everyone, and even those who, from the outside, seem to be very “different” are still mostly wired like the rest of us – highly emotional creatures, first and foremost, needing to find a comfortable, credible way of facing the world.

It’s very sad that someone’s own mental functioning can so often be a form of misery, avoidance, drifting, and isolation. Being highly intelligent should be a piece of wonderful good fortune, an asset to living one’s life well, and an absolute blast. Which is why my work with “very smart” people begins by focusing on strengths.

One of my approaches to coaching someone really smart is to go right at the obvious paradox that, the smarter you are, the more readily you realize how much you don’t know – truly. It’s the point about healthy humility as opposed to humiliation. Yes, it’s good to crunch information quickly, or be naturally creative, but, by now, most people come to know from experience how “way off” they can be (and have already been) – especially about things having to do with human beings.

That’s not negative, that’s positive, liberating emotional honesty. If you’re truly smart, it’s about being curious about the world as well as trying to get it right, (whatever it is), not about being seen by others to be right.

Managing one’s own feelings is a task everyone – from “very smart” to mentally “challenged” – has to accomplish in order to navigate life well.

Frankly, working with smart people to become more productive and relaxed, combines two major threads important to me.

One is that under-achieving, smart people, even the ones with difficult personalities, can be in terrible anguish – whether they’re quite able to feel it or not – and they need help just like anyone else.

Plus, the world surely needs all the help it can get – especially from people who might, just possibly, be part of generating creative solutions.

Having our smartest people function on as many cylinders as possible is good for all of us.