Break it down....

People often tell me “ohhhh I have so much to do, I am swamped…” or “I get so annoyed with people when they don’t have the same work moral as me”, or “I don’t have confidence when I have to present” …….. etc.

You may say – but what do all those statements have in common…

Well – they are blanket statements. They are big statements that makes a challenge bigger than it really is. They are assumptions that everything is in one basket.

“Hmm but that is how it feels”, you will then tell me.

Let me correct that statement slightly – that is how you make it feel. You see we can make something very big that feels like it is swallowing us or eating us up, or we can make it just what it is.

Let’s take the statement “I don’t have confidence when I have to present…” and now let’s try and break it down.

?When you say confidence, what do you mean by confidence?

I am nervous, or I feel I am not prepared to present this topic, or I am worried by what people say and if they judge me, or I am sure they are going to look through me any moment and see I am a phoney.

By breaking it down we start understanding the feelings involved and tear a hole in the broad statement.

?Then ask yourself: When reflecting for a moment, in what circumstances would you say that you don’t have confidence when you are presenting?

When it is a topic, I don’t know so well or an idea I haven’t bought into myself quite yet, when I present to my corporate office, when my boss is in the audience, when I present to people I have to convince, or people whom I know are resisting.

Can you see once you start breaking down a sentence like “I don’t have confidence when I have to present”, suddenly doesn’t necessarily represent the what is really going on, as maybe it is only when you are presenting to Corporate Office on a topic that is slightly controversial, that you get that feeling of lack of confidence.

Same thing goes for the other two examples and many, many more.

I recently had a client who was so annoyed with his workgroup and people around him as he didn’t feel they were putting in their weight, working fast enough and getting the results to the standards he had in his mind.

When we started breaking it down, it was only two people that really pushed his buttons. They were both very new and very junior in their roles and had just been thrown into the deep end. With some training and a bit more attention they were both able to produce.

We also found out by breaking it down, that it was also a feeling of fear that was creeping in. My client was relatively new in his role.?A new role in a new field and he was a bit on thin ice. The fear of failing demonstrated itself in this annoyance with others. Once he was able to verablise it and accept it as being one of the sources, then he was able to work with it.

?By breaking down your mountains and getting an understanding of what that blanket statement is really made out of, you are then able to start finding answers and learn new and other ways to move forward.

If you need help to break it down, reach out: https://bit.ly/3N2sZk4

#coaching #highperformance #leadershipdevelopment