Dorothy (not her real name) started coaching two months ago with
a simple goal: to learn more about Emotional Intelligence.
During the 8 weeks, she’s talked about every facet of her life,
and as she’s talked, she’s realized, in combination with her
growing Emotional Intelligence, that things are not as they
should be.
In our last session she announced “I don’t know what’s happened.
I’m not sleeping. I’m crying all the time. I can’t focus on my
work.”
I asked her why. She named some clearly-related external events
– a chronic problem with a family member recently exacerbated, a
business in crisis which was only slowly turning around, a new
and difficult employee…
BUT
“But,” she said, “I know it’s more than that. Or less than that.
Or something. I don’t know. I’m confused.”
She’s struggling. She’s too mature to say, “Susan, you’ve made
me miserable. I came to you for coaching and look at me now!”
but I suspect that’s what she’s feeling. What has happened?
THIS IS TYPICAL WHEN WE CHANGE, WHEN WE START CREATING SYSTEMIC
SOLUTIONS.
“Will it work instantly?” asks Joe Flower, change guru. (“It”
meaning the proposed solution.) “No,” he answers. “Most good
systemic solutions make the immediate symptoms of the problem
worse at first.”
Why is this? Because we turn and face what isn’t working along
with the negative feelings this has engendered all along that we
were stuffing down, “coping” with, denying, or choking on. (What
a poor use of energy!) In other words, we quit “pretending.”
Dorothy has been existing in a situation that’s not sustainable.
When it made her miserable, she redoubled her efforts to “cope”
with it. She was determined to “rise about the situation,” to
“persevere,” and to “prove what she’s made of,” to use her own
words. She had hoped Emotional Intelligence would teach her how
to be happy while she continued doing things that prevent her
from being happy. Not!
HARD QUESTIONS
The coach’s job is to ask the hard questions. Often as she’s
talked, I’ve asked, “Why would you…?” and “Why do you…?” and
“Why are you X, when Y…?” Each time she falls silent. Or laughs
a nervous laugh.
“I guess you have a point,” she says. When actually I’ve said
nothing. I’ve made no “point”. I’ve simply asked a question. The
coaching client has their own answers.
At times I’ve thrown in Dr. Phil’s great question, “And how has
this been working for you?” With each round of apologetic
whining, denial, rationalization, and defense on her part, and
hard questions on my part, she has come closer to the sort of
self-awareness upon which Emotional Intelligence is built and
through which change can occur.
“Why DO I do this?” she asks me. “It’s making me sick.” (She’s
talking about recurring back pain and digestive problems.) Well,
if the “why” is a question for therapy, in several months she
might arrive at … who knows what. That’s the province of
therapy, and I’m a coach. To me, her ready reply of “Why DO I do
that … I must be crazy” will do. It’s for sure she isn’t acting
in her own best interest, and I’m equally sure she can learn to.
And because I neither affirm she’s “crazy,” nor commiserate that
it’s hopeless and she’s helpless, nor offer premature solutions,
“Why DO I do this?” becomes “Why on earth AM I doing this?” and
shortly, “How about if I stop doing this AND DO SOMETHING ELSE?”
I then supply strategy and tools. The client supplies the
courage and the energy.
IT’S NOT THERAPY
Motives, diagnoses, past experiences, childhood traumas, and
psychodynamics don’t really need to figure into the picture.
It’s just (“just”!) a matter of finding out what works and what
doesn’t, and replacing something that doesn’t work with
something that does.
Coaches supply the “how to” – the new things to try, the new
ways of doing things. We clarify patterns. We listen and ask
questions. We draw out the client’s inner wisdom. We get them
back in touch with their intuition (an EQ competency), our
surest guide.
The client must supply the misery that motivates. To do this,
they need to be reintroduced to how what they’re doing is making
them feel. Enter Emotional Intelligence.
WHY EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Our emotions are our guides. They tell us what’s working and
what isn’t; what feels good and what doesn’t; what we must
address and what we can ignore; what we want more of and what we
want less of.
In order to learn their message, we must first pay attention to
them, in an action-oriented sort of way. Instead of getting
stuck in our misery, we use it to catapult out of the situation.
Like many people who have strayed off course and are temporarily
mired in misery, Dorothy had shut down. In order to function,
she had become numb, driving herself onward with “will power”
and “determination.”
Not unlike beating the dead horse, the thinking brain was in
charge of the program, when the emotional brain was also needed.
Motivation is not a thinking word, it’s a feeling thing.
As Dorothy learns solution-focused problem-solving instead of
emotion-focused problem-solving, she begins to be able to see
more clearly how she has arranged her life, and at the same
time, starts feeling about it again. So there’s discomfort. No
pain, no gain.
PERSONAL POWER
Good systemic solutions make the symptoms of the problem worse
at first, and that’s where Dorothy is right now. It’s a
transition. In order to make the changes, she has to feel the
discomfort. If she didn’t, where’s the motivation? If she
didn’t, where’s the Personal Power(an EQ competency)? In order
to change, we have to believe we can make changes and handle our
life. It’s the opposite of the “victim” stance, which is
hopeless and helpless.
If we don’t own our responsibility for where we are, we can’t
claim the power it will take to change it.
The transitional period is inherently uncomfortable, and cause
for celebration. “That’s why,” I tell her, “people don’t want to
change. They’re not willing to go through that period of
dis-ease.”
NO QUICK FIXES
Quick fixes don’t work in coaching. Systemic solutions do, and
that’s where Emotional Intelligence comes in.
Asking the client each time how they’re feeling – physically,
emotionally, mentally and spiritually gets them grounded and
centered. Even if the answer is “terrible” in any category, it
is still grounding.
What’s chaotic is not to know. What we don’t “know” has great
power over us. Knowing – good or bad – allows us to make
changes. And knowing means having the words to describe it.
Emotional Intelligence supplies this vocabulary.
SKILL SETS
Administering an EQ assessment such as the EQ-Map® can identify
the competencies that need bolstering. Emotional Intelligence is
a set of competencies that can be learned.
TAKE HOME POINT
Developing your Emotional Intelligence will take you light years
ahead in your ability to make the changes you’ll need to be
making over and over again in your life. It gives you the
ultimate tool. How about giving it a try? Take the EQ-Map® and
find out what’s going on. Then take The EQ Foundation Course© on
the Internet, and combine it with EQ coaching and putting your
new skills into practice. Most clients report immediate positive
results in their lives.
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