Sometimes the Emotion Doesn't Fit the Desire

Often people have dreams and desires that they have not pursued. These dreams have never past the “I wish” stage and have not been evaluated as to whether they are worth following. As a coach leads a client down the process of exploring the possibility of such dreams being fulfilled the client may demonstrate emotions that don't fit the desire for their dream. I experienced this in a coaching session where I was trying to encourage the client to picture themselves having fulfilled a dream that they had wondered about for quite some time but had done nothing about investigating the possibility of its reality in their life. As they described what it would be like to have reached that dream, they reacted emotionally in describing the expected response of their achieving that dream from the people they care about.

As the session progressed, it became clear that for the client what was important was achieving a sense of accomplishment that was acknowledged by those they loved. Realizing that they weren't particularly motivated about the dream that they had stated at the beginning of the session, I went back to the place in the conversation where the client demonstrated emotion. What the client cared about most was that the people closest to them would acknowledge their desired achievement.

I began to engage the client to identify what were other things that they were more motivated to complete that would give them the same sense of achievement. They proceeded to light up and identify something else that would take less time to complete but would give them the same sense of satisfaction.

Sometimes for the client the initial dream is not exactly what they are motivated to pursue but because you force them to think about what it would be like to fulfill that dream emotions are demonstrated that relate to other things that are important to them besides this particular dream that they initially voiced in the coaching conversation. Here are some tips to drawing out the underlying dream:

1. After having spent some time helping the client visualize their dream with details and feeling, have them return to the present and ask them, “How motivated are you now to pursue steps toward fulfilling the dream.”

2. If the client shows low motivation then go back to the place where they demonstrated emotion and ask what was significant about what they said at the moment that prompted the emotion.

3. Identify what they state as being significant and then ask them what that can look like.

4. Ask them how motivated they are to pursue this secondary dream. Usually you will find that this secondary dream is more of a motivator since it is closely linked with the emotion they demonstrated related to what surfaced as significant apart from the original dream they had begun the conversation with.

Taking the client through this process will help them determine something that they have more motivation to complete and still fulfill the desired goal they stated in the first place.

Changing Course

How quickly are you able to change course once you get off the ground?

It takes a huge amount of time and energy to get a team off the ground with a project or strategy implementation. Its definitely a great undertaking to get to the point of implementation. Knowing how much time this takes, do you consider any necessary course corrections along the way?

Here's the issue: since it takes a huge amount of time to get a project off the ground, by the time you get past the point of implementation, enough time has gone by that the parameters you set up at the beginning to get to your destination have changed. The analogy of flight demonstrates this. On a planned flight path, pilots make several adjustments along the way to correct the flight path given the changing conditions in the air. Changing conditions can be anything from a small change in wind speed to a major storm that requires the pilot to fly at a higher altitude to avoid the turbulence.

Embedding frequent reassessments into your project implementation to account for change in conditions can be one of the most important things you do to ensure you get to your intended goal. After all, the time spent on getting a project off the ground would be time poorly spent if course changes were not anticipated and implemented at key stages of operation.

How do you allow for reassessment and course adjustment?

Here are some tips:

• Before implementing, assess if your original plan is still relevant. What are the instruments you are using to assess relevancy? These may be market analysis, trends, significant changes in the environment and continual relevancy to market needs.
• After implementation, plan for frequent assessments to see how the project is going. This is like taking a temperature to gauge whether conditions have significantly changed. This can be simply polling your front line people for an evaluation to doing a significant assessment of customers or clients to polling practices to gauge effectiveness.
• Maintain enough of a fluid atmosphere that will allow for the need of an immediate course change should the situation warrant it. Getting your team used to dealing with change can go a long way to being able to make quick course corrections. Many projects have gone down in flames because the team was averse to changing quickly.
• Foster consistent documentation and constant discussion. A project should never go without review or discussion for more than 6 months - preferably 3 months. Document everything so that there is a way of recalling past issues and discussions. Its not surprising that great ideas and great processes are forgotten quickly. Documentation gives you a reference point.

Creating an assessment culture in your work environment will go a long way to ensuring that you stay on course to where you are headed. These tips can add to a successful project run and a successful project change.

Getting an Outside Look

Getting "another opinion" is often heard in the context of health care diagnosis and business strategy in order to get an accurate picture of our own health or our own financial situation but sometimes "another opinion" is missed when a team is working on a strategy related to their own environment.

It is almost inevitable that a group of people working on a strategy will develop a sense of "group think" that can blind the team to objectivity. Having experienced the lack of healthy outside opinion, I've realized first hand the huge miscalculations that can be made in a strategic plan.

From a coaching perspective, getting an outside opinion is a valuable step to achieving success when crafting a plan to fulfill a goal. Most of us have "outsiders" who are friendly sympathizers and supporters of what we do but do not live daily in our world. Intentionally soliciting the opinion of such outsiders is actually one of the most strategic steps you can take in crafting a fool proof plan. Sometimes these outsiders are right under our noses but we are missing them and missing their valuable objective input.

Here are some tips on engaging outsiders to take a look at what you're doing:

• Is there someone who lives and works in what I call "a parallel universe" to your work that you can engage in helping you assess a strategy. Such "parallel universe" contexts are people working in similar fields, people who observe you on a regular basis yet not connected to your business or professionals from other disciplines who also work at developing projects similar to the one you're working on.
• Is there someone who has achieved what you are attempting to reach? If there is, are they accessible and willing to take a look at your context?
• Find someone with a lot of wisdom who has been around for a long time and ask them to take a look at what you're doing. In our culture, we tend to right off these people but they have been around the corner several times and have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share.
• Find a young person who is not from your generation and have them look at what you're doing and offer feedback. On the opposite spectrum from the previous tip, young people have a very different perspective and tend to be more idealistic and dream bigger and understand their culture and popular culture much better. Having their input can jog some things you haven't seen or expected or even thought possible.
• Approach the competition! If you and your team are tough enough and open enough, approach the competition and get their opinion. Short of fearing a possible sabotage in the advice that might be given, more often then not, healthy competition is desired and a healthy competitor could offer some excellent observations.

Dealing with Blind Spots

Sometimes as we go about plotting strategies toward a desired change [whether it be structural, technological or operational] blind spots occur where we or someone on our team is not aware of information necessary to achieve the change desired.

A blind spot can virtually disable a strategy, slow down a process or completely stall a plan for change. There is no greater frustration as a leader then when the process toward change is delayed because the necessary information was not available.

How can we avoid blind spots and be sure that all the information we need is on the table as we look toward implementing change? One of the important steps in coaching change is to help a client with getting all the possible information on the table. Sometimes this takes time - more time then we think but time well spent. Blind spots exist because an individual has been seeing information in one particular way. Try and help someone to look at a potential change goal from different angles. Here are some powerful questions to ask that can help with opening up a blind spot:

• Who do you need to speak with in order to gather all the information you need? [repeating the question "who else" continually to push the person to exhaust all the possibilities will help with this question]
• Who's input depends on the success of this change? [using "who else" again will push one to consider every possible person involved or affected by this change]
• How can you be sure you have all the information you need? [this question will cause the person to consider what they may not have thought of before]
• What makes you feel uneasy about this change? [this will bring up any remaining questions that exist]
• On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you that you have all the information you need? [this will help you gauge confidence - the more information a person has the more confident they'll be]
• If scored low on the previous question ask - "How can we move your confidence to a 9 or 10?" [again this will probe what else is missing and so needs to be part of a more confident approach]

As you can see above, two of the questions have to do with exhausting the people resource available. I specifically start off with these questions because I believe that people are the single most important resource to making good decisions. The more people involved the better chance at avoiding blind spots, both personally and among your team members.

One Slice at a Time

Have you ever been so hungry for pie that your appetite can sustain downing the whole thing in one sitting? Can you picture yourself - a fork and a whole pie? I’m sure we’ve had times where this was possible but most of the time we take a pie one piece at a time usually after an evening meal and sometimes even indulging in a piece just after lunch.

What does eating pie have to do with leading? I think the analogy can be brought over into tackling assignments and goals that we encounter on a regular basis. Some of us have the capacity to tackle large assignments and tasks keeping all the pieces going at once. Few of us have the long term capacity to sustain this approach especially when we have several large assignments and goals all happening at the same time.

Breaking larger assignments and goals down into smaller and manageable pieces [or slices if we want to keep the analogy going] can maximize our ability to reach our larger targets and minimize the stress that comes with tackling all the pieces at one time. Some important questions to ask in terms of breaking a larger assignment or goal into smaller pieces are:

What are the steps that are necessary to completing the assignment?
What is the first thing I need to do?
What order of priority or immediacy do the other steps have?
What is my timeline in tackling each step so that I get the assignment done?
How much time do I need to devote to each step?
Who else do I have to involve in getting these steps done?
How can I hold myself accountable to sticking to my timeline and completing each step?

After you have run through these questions and established a timeline with definite steps and time references, then take a step back and ask yourself if this is realistic. You may need to adjust the timeline, steps and/or time references. Then have a co-worker or colleague take a look at it and offer their input. You’ll be surprised how this exercise can give you the ability to reach several larger goals that can swallow you up if you try to tackle all of them head on.

Solving Problems the Coaching Way

One of the challenges of being a leader is dealing with the many issues that face us on a daily basis. Most of these issues are those that come with people. How many times a day do you spend trying to solve other people’s issues? Want to free up more time during the day to get to the things that you want rather than the things other people want?

The stressful point of other people’s issues is when we take it upon ourselves to try and fix the problem for them. Solving problems the coaching way turns the focus of responsibility on where it should be – in the hands of the one who presents the problem. Many leaders who deal with people on a day to day basis spend way too much time fixing and not enough time coaching. Who better to solve a problem then the one who presents it!

More often then not, people who work for you usually come to you with a problem because you are the one in charge, the one with all the knowledge, the one holding the leadership reigns. Yet usually the best solution lies in the hands of the one who is closest to the problem. Rather than having employees accustomed to getting you involved on a detailed level concerning an issue they are facing on the job, coach your employees to work through solutions to the problem that they know more about than you do since they have been spending hours focusing on it whereas you are still at the point of introduction to the issue.

What you are acknowledging by this approach is that those who work for you are intelligent and capable people who, given a positive perspective on their own ability, can work through a problem and come up with a solution. The next time one of your people comes to you with a problem take this approach by asking these powerful questions:

What were you trying to accomplish just before you got stuck?
At what point in the process did you run into a road block?
How do you think you can get around it?
What do you think is the solution to the problem?
What have you tried so far?
What have you thought of that you haven’t tried yet?
Are there any other approaches to solving this problem?

By asking these powerful questions, you are putting the responsibility of working through the problem onto the employee rather than taking responsibility on yourself. With some patience and willingness to leave the problem in the hands of the person who presented it to you, you will be surprised at the results and you may just realize that you have some very keen and capable people around you! The long term positive outcome is that your people will then learn to tackle problems on their own and coach each other to solutions minimizing the amount of time you are involved and freeing you up to do the things that you want to do. Give this approach a try and see what will happen!