We live in a world that rewards doing, achieving and striving for the next thing. It is easy to become so focused on what we want to accomplish that we lose sight of the qualities that help us get there. How we listen. How willing we are to be honest. How we respond when things get uncomfortable.
A recent coaching conversation brought this into focus for me.
My client was preparing to conduct her employee’s performance review. This particular employee often triggers her, and she has been observing herself in their more challenging conversations.
She gets hot. Fear comes up, along with the thought, “I’m not good enough on my own.” Her guard goes up, and it becomes harder to listen.
This was painful for her. She considers her ability to connect with people one of her superpowers. She builds trust through her willingness to be vulnerable. Yet in these moments, she could feel herself closing off.
“In those moments, I lose a piece of myself.”
A different place to begin
Perhaps you know that feeling. You have something important to say, and you care about the relationship. You prepare for the conversation. Then something happens, and the person you intended to be feels out of reach.
For her upcoming review, we explored a question from the Being/Doing exercise: How do I want to BE in this conversation?
The exercise begins by imagining yourself at your best in a particular situation. What qualities would help you meet that moment? You give yourself room to name all of them before choosing the one or two that matter most.
She wrote down more than a dozen ways of being. Ultimately, she chose calm.
Then she noticed something important. She usually starts out calm. Staying calm with this employee was the challenge.
Now ask, what can I DO?
This is where the doing comes in. Once you have chosen how you want to be, the exercise asks: What is one thing I could DO to bring that way of being forward?
I appreciate the restraint in that question. One thing. An action that could make a difference. If a second action is needed, there is room for it. But there is also permission to stop preparing once you have identified what will help.
She wanted to be honest and courageous. She wanted to understand her employee before judging either of them.
She was learning to notice the heat and fear as they arose, put words to what she was feeling, and pause long enough to choose her response. That is the practice we had been calling Notice, Name, Choose.
The intention gave those choices direction. In a difficult moment, she would have something to return to: how she wanted to be, and the trust she wanted to build.
What we choose before we act
The performance review was still ahead. We did not yet know how it would go. But she had identified something she could practice and bring into the room with her.
She could not decide how her employee would respond. She could prepare to listen, recognize when she was becoming guarded, and return to the way she wanted to lead the conversation.
That is what makes this question so useful to me. An intention becomes practical when we connect it to an action. If I want to be curious, I might ask a question before offering my view. If I want to be courageous, I might say the thing I have been avoiding.
Think about a conversation or meeting ahead of you. You probably already know what you need to get done.
How do you want to be while you do it?
Give yourself a moment with that question. Then ask what one action would help you bring that quality into the room.