Focus on the outcomes and the solutions are there for a lifetime! 

Here's a lovely, inspiring blog from Alex who is currently on our Face to Face programme.  I love it because Alex has applied the coaching philosophy to bring about a great outcome for a friend.  

Enjoy! 

Recently a friend was complaining to me about how she felt that everything was out of control and that she would never catch up with anything.  She said that she had a huge backlog of filing and paperwork and every time anything new came in, she added it to the pile and so the backlog was growing every day and she would never get it done.  She worried constantly, and found the situation so incapacitating that she started avoiding doing any paperwork at all because she knew she could never catch up.  She felt like her whole life was out of her control because it had spread to other things too, the lawn hadn’t been mowed for five weeks, the decorating in her house still hadn’t been finished 18 months after starting.  Whatever she was doing she felt she should be doing something else and it was all on top of her.

I confess to having an ‘on-going’ situation with my decorating, gardening and paperwork.  I think most of us at some times in our lives feel that we are juggling too much and getting behind on all the jobs we should be doing.  In the past I’ve either shared in the moan - sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t - or the fixer in me starts coming up with solutions on how to tackle the problem,  saying things like “maybe making a timetable would help?”.  Either way the problem gets fully analysed and dissected because I’ve learned it’s no good ignoring a problem and pretending it isn’t there.  Now that’s an interesting thought….

………this time I took a breath and thought about my coaching training  and I wondered if this time, instead of following the problem, which I would have done in the past, what would be different if we followed the goal? 

So what is the goal here?  Yes it would be lovely if all the backlog of outstanding jobs was done, but that’s not going to happen without something changing - perhaps the goal is feeling in control? 

I know that my friend is a clever, resourceful person and an experienced administrator and she knows what needs doing practically, so I thought about using a really power question and asked her ‘If the backlog didn’t exist, what would she do to keep on top of the new paperwork as it came in’? 

Immediately, she told me without hesitation all about her planned filing system and how she would set a time every day or week for each job…if she could just get on top of the backlog first. And again, instead of heading off in the direction of the limiting belief, I asked her if she could do that for the new paperwork coming in anyway? 

She was silent for what felt like a very long moment, and then she began………….

…..she said that she could do that and then she would be completely on top of the new papers.  That also meant that the backlog would stop getting bigger.  With the backlog now a finite thing, every time she completed a week’s new filing, she said she would also do a week’s backlog filing, and so the backlog would actually be shrinking a little each week, and because the work would be a little at a time, it needn’t involve finding lots more time, but would be just a part of the system that she had been waiting to put into action.

She was full of enthusiasm and keen to prove her new system worked – she was back in control. We discussed how this approach could perhaps apply to other areas of backlog - gardening, social commitments etc, and it fitted some better than others of course.

We never did address where the idea that she had to wait until she’d finished the backlog in order to do the new work came from as once we started working on the outcome, the solutions came thick and fast and this didn’t seem important anymore. 

I shared the experience with another friend (who is not a Coach) this story and he said we were just glossing over the cause of the problem and that it should be addressed properly.  I realised that before coaching training I would have felt this too and as I’m still going through the programme, I also realise that I could approach this situation in lots of different ways, some I know and some I’m yet to find out

I checked in with her a week later and the difference is noticeable - she’s doing the filing (and other things) and most importantly she says she feels like she can live again.  The amazing thing for me was that just by considering the questions, she had already seen the limiting belief, considered it and rejected it in a moment.  It really brought home to me how self-aware and resourceful she is and how incredibly fast changes can come about.

The big Aha moment (for both of us) was the difference that following the goal, rather than the problem, can make to how we think, feel and act.

Alex x