Taking small steps
Paths are made by walking. You don’t need to jump. And you don’t need to run either. Choose your own pace, the one you are comfortable with, and take the first step! It is important to plan our steps no matter how small they are giving them a measure of accomplishment and a timeframe. And it is also important to celebrate them acknowledging ourselves for our new experiences and learning.
Support structure
It’s best to undertake a journey in a good company. That’s why it is important to have a team! Be it your family providing you with their encouraging support (I would say it is very encouraging from my family to allow me some space and time to work on my power tools J), or be it that very IT professional you handed over your struggle with the technical side of your business, make sure those around you know about your goals and know what support you would like to have from them. What we also need are new practices and habits for ourselves to maximize the outcome of our effort. Thus, we could ask a friend to advise us on a professional on-line forum we could join and start participating regularly thus getting gradually affirmed about the value of some on-line presented information and learning to interact with people via new ways of communication.
Case of the ‘overly explortive’
Let us change gears and have a quick look also at ‘overly explorative’ behaviour. Thus, in relation to the same coaching business, we may have someone who would spend lots of time reading around starting new businesses, attending nearly daily diverse webinars related to on-line marketing and going to all available live events to hear about the latest in the field. This overly explorative mode focus on mastering theory could be masking the avoidance of taking actions and can be grounded in particular fears such as, for instance, fear of on-line exposure. It is really important, therefore, to keep our goals in perspective and to assess our actions regularly on how much they are aligned with what we want to achieve.
Keep reflecting on how well what you are doing is helping you reaching your goal. And keep walking!
Coaching application
As coaches we should support our clients in exploring areas of their potential personal and professional growth and help creating actions towards their goals. It is important to help clients in a first place to clarify and specify their goals to create a natural pull for themselves and energize their work as well as to help seeing and prioritizing new opportunities in the light of what they would like to achieve. The importance of this phase cannot be overemphasized. Help your clients to thoroughly reflect on their goal. What’s driving them? What believes and values are getting addressed with their working towards the goal? What are the expected benefits of reaching it?
Upon clearing the goals, support your clients through their identification of and reflection on their avoidance of the things and experiences that, when tried, could move them closer to their goals. Together with your client explore the underlying believes and possible benefits of their avoiding behaviour. Then offer your clients to reflect on possible results of entering the avoided area. Let them draw first the worst case and then the best case scenarios of the results. Follow by asking your client to assess the future costs of not exploring the new area. It is important to conclude this exercise by inviting your clients to choose and specify the actions they would like to take in relation to each of the areas they’ve been avoiding. Make sure the actions are realistic by asking your client to specify those in more detail including a timeframe for taking the actions. You may want to use the attached Avoidance vs Exploration template to facilitate this work.
Please, note that as the result of this reflection exercise your client can actually get asserted in the appropriateness of his/her avoidance of certain experiences, which is perfectly fine! Important is that your client has now a better clarity as to what he/she needs to be doing – and what not – in relation to reaching his/her goal. Life is the sum of all your choices, as Albert Camus said, and the task of the coach is to support clients in making the choices that are right for them.