Be There Before You Get There

Preparation is our first of five fundamentals of coaching. The more prepared you are the greater the chance you have to maximize your success.

Think about this as it pertains to your world as a coaching leader.

What is it that you struggle with?

Showing up consistently every day and being your best even when you are not at your best?

Providing and/or receiving honest feedback?

Having an uncomfortable conversation?

I have a coaching client in the biopharma space who is an amazing woman with a bright future as a coaching leader.?

One challenge she has is controlling her response when people are telling half-truths or stating the obvious during meetings and acting like they reinvented the wheel.?

Because of the thoughts running wild in her head, she makes it clear how she feels in her body language, facial expressions, and with the words that come out of her mouth.?

Let me share with you how we worked on this and I warn you it may seem a bit outside the box but we all know that is where magic can happen.?

I had Liz do three things:

• Listen to podcasts or interviews of people you cannot stand on subjects that get you fired up in a negative way
• Watch a news channel that irritates you for whatever reason
• Call someone (friend, family member, peer) who has the potential to agitate you just to say hello

Then, I requested that Amanda be extremely aware of what was running through her head, her facial expression, and her body language.?

As time went on and Amanda had more reps we documented what she did to control her thoughts, her feelings, and her responses. This helped her develop the sill of spending more time listening to understand and less time overreacting, rushing to conclusions, and shutting down.?

Then we worked on her visualizing when these emotions might show up in specific meetings/calls (who would be there, location, time, topic) and how she would respond.?

Be there before you get there.

First thing Amanda noticed was her increased ability to reframe situations and conversations which gave her access to her ability to creatively problem solve.?

Here's an exercise for you:

1. Identify a situation that will challenge you, push you, and maybe get you to react in an unproductive way and write it down.
2. Figure out two to three activities that can simulate the emotions of the challenge you wrote down.?
3. Do at least one of them consistently for 21 days and focus on the one that is the most frustrating.
4. Identify what you did to get you to a neutral mind while it was happening and respond to it positively and productively.

Keep doing great things,