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Last Updated: Jul 2nd, 2008 - 21:15:22 |
(ARA) – Charles Parten knows what it’s like to have it all – big house, perfect family, wealth and power. And as a personal executive coach, it’s his job to help others achieve career and business success. But he has a different story he prefers to tell.
That’s the story of how you can have it all, lose it, hit bottom and not only survive, but thrive in a whole new way. These lessons are based on his personal experiences.
“My life has encountered almost all the successes and failures a person can experience in many lifetimes,” says Parten. “I draw on my personal experience of figuring out what matters and what really does not matter in life, business, family and relationships to share valuable lessons that all may learn from.”
By sharing life’s joys, sorrows and tragedies with clients of his coaching business, Charles G. Parten, Inc., Parten has inspired over 2,000 clients, including over 200 CEOs and presidents to look at the truly important things in life and help them be able to face anything life throws their way. It is especially important for top level executives to know and be able to articulate to themselves and others the core principles, values and beliefs that guide their lives and their business dealings.
“I listen, I empathize, I challenge, I build trust and I get critical issues on the table,” Parten explains. “My own past wounds and experiences have helped me to identify with many of my clients. I know the price that’s being paid, but more importantly, I recognize their path of success that begins with acceptance and humility. What better use can I make of my life than to help where I can, to grow with my clients, and to continue guiding them as they achieve success?”
Humility is a key attribute of great leaders, Parten believes. “Humble leaders invariably are genuine, kind, open and vulnerable. They listen until they understand. Their honesty and optimism help build a team. Their word is their bond as they undertake projects with enthusiasm and energy.” By focusing on the other person, humble people eagerly accept feedback. They make life fun and interesting by asking questions to learn, they admit their mistakes and shortcomings and freely give credit when others achieve. Humility enables a person to get things done through others.
However, for high-ranking executives who are at the pinnacle of their careers, enjoying the material comforts that success brings, humility can sometimes be the farthest thing from their minds, and the hardest objective for them to achieve.
Parten can identify with these clients. The son of a well-to-do family, by the time he was 40, he had all the typical American trappings of success – homes, multiple cars and boats, a wife and two kids, real estate holdings and a thriving family business. But some bad decisions and a deteriorating business climate coincided, and in a matter of years, he had lost everything.
The list of travails that Parten lived through brings to mind the story of Job. He and his first wife divorced, he faced foreclosure on his home, lost all his businesses, watched his family suffer through the flood of the century, lost all of his possessions, lost daily contact with his children when they moved across the country to a new home, went through two bankruptcies, experienced the death of his mother and father, lost his inheritance, was hospitalized for three stress attacks, went through a second divorce and mourned the death of his one-day-old granddaughter all in a very short span of time. “I went from subtle arrogance to real humility,” he says.
In his new book, “In God’s Army, Only Wounded Soldiers May Serve,” Parten draws on his personal experiences to help successful men and women avoid the mistakes and failures that marked his road to understanding what truly matters. “My transition to maturity involved joys and sorrows, mistakes and failures. Yet every experience, planned or not, equipped me to become coach to some of the best and brightest leaders in the county,” says Parten.
The trials and tribulations were not easy, but they were worthwhile. “Adversity is not the worst thing that can happen – in fact, it can be the best thing for some people,” Parten notes. He adds, “We can survive adversity. We can be useful. We can coach each other, for we are richer for our experiences.”
To find out more about how Charles G. Parten can help your organization refine your brightest and best business talent and their executive teams, visit www.charlesgparten.com, call (612) 889-4491, or e-mail cparten@charlesgparten.com.
Courtesy of ARA Content
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