The Coaching Diaries, Session #6: Am I in Integrity With Myself?

Have you ever wondered what it's?really?like to have a leadership coach? This is the sixth of a series of biweekly posts that will take you inside my personal coaching journey at?Torch, as it unfolds in real-time. Catch up by reading the?first,?second,?third, ?fourth?and fifth entry.

It all comes back to our childhoods, doesn’t it??

How secure did our caregivers? make us feel? Did they meet our needs, or not?? If they didn’t, what kinds of coping mechanisms did we develop – and can those coping mechanisms manifest at work? That was the lighthearted topic of my latest coaching session.?

A little context: There’s a big project I’ve been working on. And during our coaching session, Stephanie asked me what should have been a simple question about it. Did I have the support that I needed to execute it??

Mostly. The truth was, I needed some information from a team member. This person told me they planned to share it, but they hadn’t yet.? I couldn’t move forward on some of my planning until I got it.?

“Does it work for you that the information hasn’t been shared yet?” Stephanie asked.?

No, it didn’t work for me. But I hadn’t followed up with them yet because…I didn’t want to bother them again.? I was prioritizing what I perceived? as their needs over my own.?

“This is common behavior? if you’re the kind of person who struggles with self-compassion,” Stephanie said. “We don’t feel like our needs matter, or are supposed to matter.”?

Research suggests that the? kind of people who struggle with self-compassion also tend to identify as women. But maybe that’s partly because? we live in a society which tells women – in implicit and explicit ways –? that others’ needs trump theirs.? Of course our needs, our rights, our wants do matter, are paramount.?

And in the workplace, acknowledging and meeting? our needs is a fundamental part of living with? integrity, or ensuring your actions are aligned with your values.?

Before this coaching session, I thought of myself as someone who lives, and works, with integrity. But Stephanie helped me realize I was falling short of my ideals.?

My tendency to sublimate my needs is a pattern. It’s rooted in a basic fear that if I assert myself too forcefully, offend someone, or appear as if I’m putting myself before others, I’ll be abandoned. In other words, as I’ve written in previous posts, I’m a people-pleaser.?

“People pleasing is the result of feeling like in order for me to receive love, I have to be a good little girl,” Stephanie said. “If you aren’t always saying yes, people won’t like you, you won’t get love, and your needs won’t get met.”?

The great irony is that people-pleasing can hurt our relationships, making it less likely that we’ll get the love and security we crave.? Christine Carter, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Center, shares an example of what this can look like: Say you’re trying to pretend that you’re happier during a work conversation than you actually are –?you had a fight with your partner over the weekend, but when your colleague asks how you’re doing, you act like everything is great. “Trying to suppress negative emotions when we are talking with someone—like when we don’t want to trouble someone else with our own distress—actually increases stress levels of both people more than if we had shared our distress in the first place,” she writes. “It also reduces rapport and inhibits the connection between two people.”

The first step to? addressing my people-pleasing instinct, Stephanie told me, is becoming more aware of when you’re taking action from a place of fear instead of a place of power. If you’re a people pleaser, this can mean the difference between two scenarios: In scenario one, you? say yes because you’re worried that if you don’t, you’ll lose something – like the respect of a coworker, or your reputation for being a hard worker. In scenario two, you yes because you genuinely want to do something – you are in control, and not your fear.? Making decisions from this powerful place requires checking in with yourself, which she recommended that I do at least once a day.?

That can entail asking questions like, “am I doing what I know to do? Am I in integrity with myself? Have I done what I can control?”?

And to that I would add, “what are the questions I’ve been afraid to ask?”

After my session, I followed up with my coworker. Turns out, I had misunderstood how much additional information she had to share. Luckily, I followed up with enough time left before? the deadline that I could find the necessary information on my own.??

My big takeaway: Much of our behavioral patterns do connect back to our childhood experiences, and to the messages that we get in society about our rights and our worth. But there’s another important force in changing those patterns – self-awareness. And that’s what can emerge from the subtle magic of coaching.?