Some of you may know that I am an
executive coach. I try to coach no more than 8-10 clients at any
given time. There are many reasons for this but the main one is
that I want to ensure I keep a sustainable mix of activities so I
can always deliver all my clients a well-rounded approach.
I recently completed a five part coaching relationship with a
very inspiring client. I'll call her Emma. Her journey proved to be
a moving experience for us both, which led me to think that I'd
like to share it with all of you, our members. I asked Emma and she
agreed, and further, agreed to provide her perspective in the box
below.
Emma approached Professionelle to see if we would work with her
privately, after her boss suggested she do so. Emma is a senior
administrator in a very large corporate. She is tertiary qualified,
and leads a team of other administrators. But Emma wasn't happy.
She didn't feel engaged in her job and was restless. In many ways,
she had simply fallen into administration as a result of her great
organisational skills and social ability which made her very
effective at her job - but, as the ad says, she still felt 'she
needed something else'.
We had an introductory meeting and felt we could work well
together. My approach is very flexible; I don't have a
predetermined notion of how to go about the coaching process, but I
do have a 'bag of tricks'. I use them as and where the clients and
I find them useful. In Emma's case we started by identifying her
values.
The importance of Values at work
I work with my clients to identify what their deeply held values
are. Experience and training have consistently shown me that it is
absolutely crucial to find out what your values are. Most of us
have a faint understanding of them, but, often, figuring them out
in detail helps shed light on the many occasions when things seem
off kilter for us in how we feel about our work. By contrast, when
there is an alignment between our personal values and those of our
workplace, we become engaged, and indeed passionate, about what we
do and where we do it.
Emma was brilliant at this.
To help distil her core values - the ones she held most deeply -
I asked her to think about times she remembered being really
angered or outraged. I know this may sound at odds with my positive
psychology approach, but I have to say asking people ito remember
such occasions has resulted in the most in-depth and accurate
description of values by clients and workshop attendees.
In fact I did ask Professor Chris Peterson, one of the founding
fathers of the field, with whom I am currently doing an online
course through MentroCoach, if there is a more positive way of
exploring this. He suggested asking people whom they admire and
why, what their favourite books and movies are and why, and about
the best advice they ever received. I might try that, and see which
works better!
Back to Emma, who had three core values:
• Meaning and purpose
• Personal challenge
• Diligence and hard work
The reason I think understanding one's personally held values is
so critical is that unless there is an alignment between your
values and what you do and where you do it the chances are that
things will not feel quite right.
In Emma's case, there definitely was an alignment between her
work and the second and third values, and to a lesser extent with
the first one. However, Emma derived most of her meaning and
purpose from her engagement with her faith.
Once we'd worked all that out, Emma was better able to monitor
how she felt about her values being met at work - which began her
self-discovery journey.
But values are just part of the picture. The core element of my
Positive Psychology approach is understanding my client's signature
strengths and how the client uses them in his or her personal and
professional lives.
Before I asked Emma to do the Signature Strengths test, I asked what she
thought her strengths were so that we had a baseline understanding.
In many ways, Emma came up with what I would term 'competencies'.
These included project management, organisational skills and the
like.
Signature Strengths
Emma's top strength was diligence, and from now on I am
considering making it a pre-requisite to have diligence as one of
the top five strengths for all my clients! I am just kidding, of
course, but it really made a huge difference. Everything we agreed
she'd do, she did. I didn't have to follow up with her much, and
she really got stuck in, which of course resulted in her getting
the most out of the experience.
I asked Emma to keep a diary. It involved her going through her
daily activities and ascertaining what strengths she was using and
how good or otherwise she felt her day was. This helped her uncover
that she tended to over-rely on her perseverance strength. And that
on the days she did so, she didn't really enjoy things.
Emma's other strengths included love of learning,
curiosity, social intelligence and bravery. To
help her re-engage with her role, we crafted ways for her to use
more of these other strengths in the course of her daily tasks.
This led her to undertake some projects that were not directly
related to her role, but that gave her a very strong sense of
meaning and engagement. It also gave her an excuse to take an hour
for lunch and read something new, which let her exercise her love
of learning and feel energised for the rest of her busy
afternoon.
Because I'm Worth It
Emma, like so many other capable professional women, doubted her
own worth. Yes, she received lots of really positive feedback, and
plenty of suggestions about what she excelledd at… but really, she
didn't quite believe them! At this point, we turned to the
Reflected Best Self Exercise. which is a vital tool for
appreciating how others see you.
The Reflected Best Self exercise (RBS) was
devised by the Ross School of Business in the University of
Michigan. It draws on the principles of Positive Organisational Scholarship and is
devised to help people gain an understanding of what makes them
truly unique - what is the singular impact that they can have on
the world. I used this exercise myself years ago, and in part it
helped me come up with the concept of Professionelle.
The essence of the exercise is asking colleagues, friends,
family, and clients to tell you what is the unique contribution
they believe you have to make and to give you examples of when they
saw you at your best.
Simple as this sounds, it is a really hard exercise to do. Most
of us have worked for organisations whose focus has traditionally
been on our weaknesses and how to fix them. As a consequence, the
thought of only asking for positive feedback seems daunting.
Emma spent time thinking through who she should send the
requests to, and how best to word the request. She had an
overwhelming response from the people she chose and received the
most insightful and thoughtful comments!
But that is not what the exercise is all about.
The key to the exercise is actually distilling the key themes so
that you can write your own reflected best self-portrait. We worked
on this for quite a while. Emma needed some time to digest it all.
She saw certain things in the feedback, but I saw others. Together
we had a meeting of minds and the blending of quite different
perspectives. Doing this helped her gain an in-depth appreciation
of what others saw her doing when she was at her very best.
Where to next? What was she to do with all this fabulous
information? What should she be doing?
Some people have ventured to suggest that she might want to go
into general management or Human Resources. Others have pointed to
her leadership skills. What did she want from all of that?
Next came the hardest exercises of all - actually writing down
Emma's best-self portrait, her personal vision statement, and a
future "interview" with Next Magazine given from a time in the
future when she has reached her destination, whatever that might
be.
Some light work for her to complete over the Christmas
break!
So where did Emma get to?
Emma sent me all her completed exercises before we met for the
last time about a month ago. I was incredibly moved by how far she
had come. I had no preconceived notion of where she would end up.
The vision she developed for herself just seemed perfect and to me
made complete sense. So instead of using my words, I will use
hers:
Emma's Personal Vision Statement
In five years' time, in addition to having a young
family, I will have begun to study part time towards a degree in
social work. Where possible I will have gained practical experience
in helping individuals and families in the rural community where I
will be living. This will be in the form of volunteering for
playgroup run at the local Church and running the leadership of
that group, looking to expand both its community influence and the
services available to local families. I will have started to
develop a strong network contacts amongst both Government and NGO
social agencies, discovering what help is available to meet the
needs of the people in the community I interact with.
My long-term vision would be to complete a social work degree, and
to continue to gain practical experience in the local Community,
with a view to starting to move into Management and Policy/Strategy
of Child, Youth & Family to influence and facilitate change at
a higher (perhaps even national) level
Final words
In our final meeting we worked through how Emma might approach
this. Meanwhile, she's also managed to find a man and get engaged
in the time we were working together so her hands are quite
full…
I will keep in touch with Emma to see how she is going. And I
truly hope she will get to where she wants: I believe she can make
a significant contribution.
© Professionelle Ltd 2009