From Debilitating Dissonance to Productive Peace

Last week, we introduced the world to Joanna, a busy executive in a fight with overwhelming stress. Even though her career and dating relationship were going well, Joanna felt plagued with the sense that she was falling short in every area of life. As we discovered, Joanna was dealing with a severe case of psychological dissonance – which arises when a person holds conflicting beliefs, or when an individual’s beliefs and actions don’t align. Joanna’s mental state was negatively affecting her ability to focus at work and she felt concerned that it might soon affect her performance. Joanna needed help, and today we’ll look at how she was able to begin the journey toward a healthier state of being.

First, we utilized a tool called the Peace Index, developed by author and speaker Jeremie Kubicek - Speaker/Best Selling Author , to perform a high-level survey of the key areas in Joanna’s life. While the context of my work with her focused on her professional role, we realized that her key relationships needed attention. “I feel like I’m just failing everyone,” she explained with tears in her eyes. “I try to give my team the development time they need, but there are so many pressing issues. I moved back home so I could see my mom, sister, and nephew more often, but our travel schedule seems to always prevent that. And even though I’m really happy with my relationship, I want to do more to encourage and support my boyfriend.” Joanna’s beliefs about how she should behave in her relationships clearly contrasted with her actions.

Joanna and I used another tool, the Relationship Strategy Planner, to take inventory of the expectations she held for each key relationship. Joanna listed the ways she expects herself to “show up” in each of her top 5 relationships daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. As with most clients, the act of simply doing this exercise proved cathartic for her. “It’s so helpful to just put this in writing and have it all laid out,” Joanna said with a sigh of relief.

Since dissonance is a contrast in beliefs or behaviors, eliminating it can be as simple as just changing a belief or behavior – but that’s easier said than done. Some deeply held beliefs or ingrained behaviors can take significant work to change. Fortunately, this wasn’t Joanna’s case. Her first big breakthrough came when she realized that her expectations in most relationships weren’t actually that daunting. “I just need to get many of these on the schedule,” she told me as she shook her head. I’ve seen this realization frequently. When leaders feel overwhelmed, they tend to exaggerate the amount they need to do to “catch up.” Left unchecked, this tendency can lead to the avoidance of actions that would yield significant returns without significant effort. In Joanna’s case, this had been going on for quite some time - so I challenged her to pull out her phone, look at her calendar, and send some texts. By the end of our 1-hour session, she’d scheduled lunch with her mom for the following Saturday and finalized the dates for an annual girls’ weekend which had been lingering in her text threads. She asked her sister if they could set up a monthly dinner, and scheduled a recurring reminder on her phone to text her boyfriend each morning.

Next, we moved on to her team. As Joanna explained the makeup of her group and her expectations for how she wanted to support them, she began to see the root of her problem. “I’ve developed these unrealistic expectations for myself, even though my team is mostly tenured and capable. Many of the things I’m beating myself up for missing, they’ve never even asked me to do.” That realization is an example of another method for addressing dissonance – examining the importance of a conflicting belief or action. While Joanna will always have the tendency to expect too much of herself, examining those expectations helped her realize that falling short on some of them wasn’t that impactful. “I feel so much better about blocking time to focus on some of these big initiatives I have to complete for next year’s Strategic Plan,” she shared.

By the end of our session, the change in Joanna’s physical demeanor was tangible. She smiled more easily and took fewer deep, heavy breaths. There was still much work to be done before her life would perfectly mirror her expectations. But she’d made a start and walked away with tools to continue the work. You might say she’d gained some Wisdom for Her Way.

If you relate to Joanna’s story and would like to learn more about Leadership Coaching or the tools referenced in this article, DM me through LinkedIn or submit an inquiry here.