In the latest in this column for leaders who coach, Lynn Scott shares some thoughts on helping clients master their own thinking and avoid self-sabotage
Your role as a leader coach or internal coach is to help those you coach reach their goals. To get a result. To make a change. To enable, help or empower them to build their resilience or their confidence or their communication skills or any number of similar things. Your coaching superpower is to help them tap into their inner wisdom and find a way through.
There are a million and one things that you do in your coaching work. But in my experience, there is one thing that we don’t do enough of: help those we coach master their own thinking and help them see how their beliefs and thoughts are helping them or – often – keeping them stuck, frustrated or helpless. At the same time you need to see how your own thoughts and beliefs could be contributing to the problem or stuckness of those you coach. (Take these to your supervision sessions.)
Imagine if you think (privately or aloud) “that’s the way things are done around here, and nothing will change”, and the person you’re coaching thinks the same thing, then of course not much will change – that’s the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yet while you, or they, think the reason they are stuck is because of those external factors and circumstances, their team or boss or organisational culture or lack of resources or the current national or global situation or restructuring…what is more likely to be keeping them stuck is their own thinking about these things (and possibly your thinking about them, too). Of course, it also works the other way. Much of our success in life is because we have mastery of our own thoughts. And as one of my mentors always says: “thoughts are optional”.
That old favourite: ‘focus on what you can influence and change’ is so true when it comes to our thinking. This isn’t necessarily about ‘just think positive thoughts’ which can lead to toxic positivity. It’s much more about digging deep to recognise patterns of thinking that are not helping you or your clients and ‘cleaning them up’.
Here’s some examples of ‘thoughts’ my own clients have shared with me:
- An NHS leader: “Working long hours means I care”
When I met her, this client was close to burnout. Similarly she believed that her colleagues who didn’t work long hours, didn’t care. - The CEO of a multi-academy trust: “I’m not salesy so I’m struggling to promote the Trust externally”
- A coach: “I’m not very good at doing videos so I’m struggling to build my online business”
These thoughts were spoken aloud in the coaching room, which made it easy for me to help each individual think about whether the thoughts are true or not and to see if they are serving any useful purpose in their lives.
Going back to my NHS leader – it’s not as simple as trying to ‘think the opposite thought’ to the one she currently believes although sometimes that can work. It was a stretch for her to go from ‘people who don’t work long hours don’t care’ to ‘people who finish on time and don’t work weekends do care.’ So, together we worked through those thoughts in stages.
We started off with ‘I believe that I can get good results without working at weekends even if I don’t quite know how to do that yet.’ She could hold on to that thought and work from there – we call it a ‘ladder’ thought or ‘bridge’ thought.
Of course, much of the time, those thoughts aren’t spoken, though intuition tells us something is not being said. The clue for me is when somebody says they want something but does nothing to make it happen – or self-sabotage. For example, the person who says they’re desperate to move but does nothing about looking for a new job. Or the person who wants more life balance but still crams their diary with meetings or lets themself be interrupted by everybody and everything.
That’s the time to ask, ‘What’s really going on here?’ – and be curious about the responses. I’m sure there’s some thinking that needs to be examined. (And I’ve learned never to accept the ‘I don’t have time’ or ‘I’m too busy right now’ excuse for creative avoidance).
Here’s an example of my own faulty thinking. Recently, I launched a new 28 Day Get it Done challenge for my leadership community. With two weeks to go before the start date, I only had one booking.
My thoughts went to: ‘maybe it’s too expensive’, ‘it’s not the right time (energy crisis and all that)’, ‘maybe I should offer an Early Bird price’, ‘maybe I should just cancel it this year.’ That ‘not good enough’ feeling kicked in even though I’d run the programme very successfully last year. But also, ‘I can’t keep banging on about it; people will think I’m pushy.’
I find a lot of what holds people back is: ‘what will people think of me’. I thought I’d overcome this, but here it was, raising its ugly head again.
My own mentor shared a story with me about how she’d experienced something similar some years ago – and what she did about it. The first thing she’d done was to set herself a target and write it down where she could see it (to get her reticular activating system going). Funnily enough, I’d just done a video on this topic for the programme but hadn’t applied it to my own situation.
I set myself a target to get ten people onboard and wrote the numbers 1 to 10 on the flipchart next to my desk. At about the same time, I noticed another online business mentor promoting her programme for small business owners. Day in, day out, right up to the wire. She showed up in my inbox every single day. I loved her energy and conviction.
It was a great lesson for me – I was going to make sure I hit my target and do what I needed to do until I did. This meant showing up with conviction every single day – in my Facebook group, in people’s inboxes – and letting go of that ‘will people think I’m too pushy?’ thought that was keeping me stuck.
Reader, I got 14 bookings!
I changed nothing about the programme. I simply decided there and then to change my thoughts and to act from a more energising place. I surprised myself at how simple it was when I made that decision.
I know it’s not always that simple. Sometimes there’s deeper conditioning or other reasons why thinking is so ingrained. But honestly? Sometimes there isn’t.
So, if you’re thinking ‘this is hard’ – try challenging your own thinking.
- Lynn Scott is an ICF Master Certified Coach (MCC), director of Lynn Scott Coaching and founder of The Effortless Leader Revolution. She’s a leadership and team coach, coach supervisor and ICF Coach Mentor.
www.lynnscottcoaching.co.uk - You can join her free Facebook group for leaders and managers, The Effortless Leader Revolution, for more leadership tips and resources that work in the real world.
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