A Coaching Power Tool Created by Jane Hayman
(Leadership Coach, AUSTRALIA)
Introduction
Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. Hilary Clinton
I have chosen the duo of regret and acceptance as my power tool because I believe they present parallel tracks when clients reflect on past events. When regret is foremost, the client can become trapped in looking back, lose trust and confidence in themselves, and remain unable to do the work of transformation or shift that they are seeking to do. Once a real acceptance has been established, both of themselves and their past actions, then the client is more able to develop or transform in the way they need to do. In this essay, I will draw on the coaching client and personal examples to demonstrate how these two concepts shadow and connect.
Explanation
For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Two recent experiences, one as an executive coach and one personal experience have illustrated for me the way that these two responses, regret, and acceptance, can play out together and be interwoven in experience and perception.
I have recently coached a client who presented to be more effective in a leadership role and to prepare for an attempt at promotion. As we worked together over 6 sessions, we frequently found ourselves exploring the issue of confidence in himself and his impact on the people he managed. Eventually, he disclosed that he had lost a close friendship several years before. He had not realized that his friend was upset about a particular repeated behavior until the friendship was dramatically ruptured. My client was full of regret about his past behavior and also full of fear that he was inadvertently being oblivious to the feelings of other people in his life. This regret was disabling him from reaching his full potential at work, as he was second-guessing himself and had lost confidence in his leadership and his understanding of his impact on the people around him. My work as his coach was to assist him to shift his perspective from regret to one of acceptance. Once he could understand that his past mistakes did not define him and that while his self-awareness had let him down on that occasion it did not mean that he would always be unaware of how he affected people, then he could do the work to move ahead professionally and realize his full potential.
My example has come about through my journey as an ICA student. For a whole range of reasons, I was unable to complete the Certified Professional Coach program when I first enrolled in 2016. Returning in 2020 to finish the outstanding components of the program, I have had many occasions to experience regret that I have been in this position and to blame myself that I am still having to finalize the program requirements. When I had moments of occasional difficulty in Observed Coaching classes I found myself thinking ‘If only I had made more effort a couple of years ago. If only I had pushed myself to complete earlier, I would have it all behind me’. Eventually, I worked through this – revisited the reasons why I had to put the course on pause and reached an acceptance that this is the situation and that feeling negative towards past decisions is not helping me. This acceptance has helped me rediscover my motivation and look at the opportunities within the program with fresh eyes. I have even managed to find some advantages in resuming the course after a break.
Acceptance operates like an antidote to regret. True acceptance eases the shackles of the past and makes it possible to reframe and re-understand events. Acceptance helps us unlock tired defeated narratives about ourselves and others and bring more positive energy to our current and future situations. At its best, acceptance can shift the dial towards gratitude which is an enabler for a more positive and empowered outlook.
As coaches, our aim is usually to partner with people moving forward, rather than to become absorbed in picking over the past. We know we are not therapists and it is not our role to work with past trauma. Regret is often intertwined with shame which is a complex emotion and may at times be beyond the scope of coaching. However, in my coaching experience, clients often want to resolve or understand the story they have told themselves about a particular issue before they can leave it behind. They see themselves as being ‘stuck’ and sometimes doomed to repeat mistakes from the past. When clients are haunted by something from the past they need to learn to understand what happened and reframe it so they can forgive themselves before they can do further coaching work. The story of the future does not have to be determined by the story from the past.
This might come up in a coaching discussion where the client, for example:
Likewise fear of future regret can paralyze a client and function as a blocker from their making a commitment or effective decision.
I just worry that I will regret it if I don’t do it…but I will be angry with myself if I do it and it doesn’t turn out well.
Underlying past regret is often a high degree of self-criticism and negative judgment, both of which can impede a client from making progress. Underlying hypothetical future regret, where a person is held back by projecting a state of future regret is a lack of trust in one’s abilities and decision making. Acceptance (and occasionally the related concept of forgiveness) is the key to rebuilding trust in one’s self and moving forward with confidence.
Application
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. Michael J. Fox
So how can we bring about the shift from regret to acceptance within the coaching process?
As a coach, our role is to gently hold a mirror to the client when they find themselves enmeshed in regret and self-distrust. By asking key powerful questions we can help the client to shift from this position to one of understanding their past selves and accepting the actions and decisions that they made.
Some of the key questions I might use to support a client making a move from regret to acceptance include:
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, refers to a concept called the Regret Minimisation Framework, which he utilized to decide to leave a secure and well-paid job and set up Amazon.
In Bezos’ words:
I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, ‘OK, I’m looking back on my life. I want to minimize the number of regrets I have.’
And I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that.
But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day.
Bezos encourages us all to inoculate against future regret by looking at the bigger, longer-term picture rather than the day today. This is very much the realm of the effective coach – supporting the client to take a step back and identify what is important and how it aligns with the client’s values and deeper goals. Seeing events from a broader perspective can help the client understand the relative significance or lack of significance of a series of events.
In my situation where I regretted not completing the course earlier it helped me to think about my overall goals of graduation from the course and celebrate that I was moving towards reaching them, irrespective of the year it happened. This reframing helped me find acceptance and move away from the regret I was holding onto.
Acceptance sits within the larger concept of self-acceptance within the gratitude approach based on Positive Psychology. Robert Holden writes powerfully about it:
Self-acceptance is solid ground. It is your home. It is where you return to, to find yourself again. When self-acceptance is low, your personality experiences ceaseless anxiety that causes you to doubt yourself, to be indecisive, to wobble, to question everything, and to play safe. Feeling shaky and off-center, your personality searches outside of you for validation, approval, and authority. This outer referencing starts early as young children learn mostly by imitation and mirroring.
Self-acceptance helps you to experience a “basic trust” in you and life overall. The more you accept yourself, the more you trust your inborn goodness, wise heart, and natural intuition. Deep within yourself, you discover your inner guidance and a direct line to the Divine. Self-trust invokes the highest in you. Also, the more you accept yourself, the more you trust that life doesn’t just happen to you; it happens for you. In other words, life loves you. This is what self-acceptance is trying to show you.
Reflections
Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
As coaches, it is our role to support our clients to move from where they are towards the place they want to be. When our clients present with regrets which are holding them back and blocking them, it is not our job to judge, to agree with, or to downplay the regrets. It is our job to walk alongside our clients and to invite them towards the opportunity of looking differently at past events. Acceptance is the key for our clients to reducing the pain, disappointment, and regrets of the past and moving into a brighter and gentler space with which to view their lives.
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwG_qR6XmDQ (interview with Jeff Bezos)
https://hayhouseoz.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/5-ways-to-self-acceptance-robert-holden/
Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire