One of the fundamental tools of business is the contract; the document that clearly states what each party in a transaction will do and, more often than not what will happen if they don’t do what they have agreed to do. In fact, contracts are generally invitations to lawsuits in the US. According to Clements Worldwide, 82% of corporations in this country are involved in multiple lawsuits on an annual basis.
The problem is that while a contract describes what will be done it generally says nothing about how it will be done; this is to say, how the parties will treat each other.
Successful relationships are built on covenants, not contracts. Covenants originate in the cultures of the parties to the contract. They are human, not abstract. They are enforceable because of relationship not legalities.
Covenants, the manner in which we agree to behave towards each other are obviously important because of the increasing awareness of the issues faced by women in the workplace. But they are also important to men. The ego based behavior that allows for the harassment and assault is born out of a failure to see each other as human rather than objects. Without covenants we have no ethical framework and we’ve seen that the results are less than human.
Executive coaching serves to remind men and women in business of the larger picture of the human enterprise and their own strength and resourcefulness to shape it.
