Knowing Your Game
The minute she activates her video on Zoom, I sense that something is off, and once she starts talking, I notice how she is fighting a quivering lip as she responds to my opening question: “How are you doing?”
The woman on Zoom happens to be a corporate client, but she could just as easily be one of my private coaching clients, a friend, or myself for that matter. Like most people I work with, she is both capable and someone others typically look to for guidance and inspiration. But the conversation we are going to have is about her and the importance of taking a step back and paying attention to herself in order to tackle a few things differently. It is about understanding the changes she will have to make to prevent herself from burnout and stress.
Inspiring women to gain more balance and clarity is what I do for a living and therefore no news to those of you who have been following my work in the past. Sharing observations from my own life, along with some of the conversations I am having with clients, is part of my method to increase general awareness and attention.
Many of the stories I share stem from individual and sometimes unique experiences. But from this particular session, you will get some of my general thoughts on changes caused by the Covid pandemic, and how many of us are still trying to come to terms with the practical implications of this. Like my client who is right now figuring out new ways of engaging with customers, leading her team and managing herself in a sustainable way that aligns to the changed conditions in her market and industry.
The tricky thing about this kind of change is that it is neither happening overnight, nor as a direct correlation between cause and effect. As we all know, many of the changes prompted by the pandemic didn’t show immediately after the outbreak of the virus, but have unfolded as part of larger ripple effects.
What has happened in the case of my client (and many others like hers) is that her working conditions have been changing gradually and to a point where they are challenging her current approach. The dynamic hybrid solutions introduced in response to the pandemic have become an integrated part of our current reality and must be reflected in the way we do our work. Lack of balance between the two leads to a disconnect between our inner and outer reality and can be painful. During our session we compare the situation my client is currently in to trying to play volleyball with a basketball and being exhausted from trying to score based on the wrong set of rules!
Changes due to Covid is of course no news to my client. In fact some of her greatest accomplishments over the past two years have been how she and her team have kept coming up with creative solutions to complex issues and ways to go about unforeseen challenges. The thing she is struggling with now is therefore not her contribution or the effort she has been making. No, the problem is that she has not yet calibrated her own personal approach and way of going about these changes, and ultimately leaving her feeling drained and off balance. Over the coming sessions we are therefore going to work on:
Mapping the impact of specific changes to the game
Looking for way to calibrate existing procedures and routines
Reframing personal expectations and success criteria
One of the key objectives in coaching is to help the client to become aware of what is causing the struggle before defining new objectives, exploring options and making the commitment to change. When we are in the game paying attention to how it is playing out can be difficult. Finding ways to pay attention and create the distance that allows you to step back, observe patterns and identify alternative tactics before reentering the arena is therefore something to be mindful of.
Working through her blindspots and helping my client redefine key priorities and action patterns made me reflect on my own “default” responses to the many changes in my everyday life after Covid. Knowing that many of these changes are matters of adaptation and therefore a normal part of life. But it is also reminding me that some might still hold the potential for more radical changes to be made and with that perhaps more insightful and inspiring avenues in life.
How about you? When and how do you create time and space to pause and decide how to forward in the right direction and as the best version of yourself?
As gentle stimulation of the mind, I am therefore leaving you with a quote from Irish novelist Joseph O’connor:
“If you do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. If what you are doing is not working, do something else”.
Love,
Sille