Five Lessons Learned from 2006
The last time I wrote it was in the midst of a hot summer. Now it's December and in the Northeast US it's still surprisingly warm. I love snow and enjoy shoveling out, but it looks like I might have to wait until 2007. In the meantime, however, I've been reviewing the year for myself. What did I learn this year? What could I have done better? I'm sure many of you are in the midst of similar review processes in your organizations. So, in this issue, I'm going to share five key lessons that I learned this year with the hope that you might learn from them as well.
When you review the year, think about the good things you’ve done so that you can reinforce your strengths and continue to leverage them more. Thinking about what you’ve done well also builds self- confidence as you recognize your successes. Also review what you could have done better so that if you face a similar situation in 2007, you’ll handle it differently. Life is a continuous cycle of practice and learning. Effective leaders continually examine their behaviors.
1. Take the time to follow-up. Even if you believe nothing will come of an interaction, take the time to follow-up after meeting someone new. You just never know what might be going on for that person or in that person’s organization. There might be opportunities that you haven’t even thought of. A key learning for me throughout the development of my business has been that connections count. You must make the effort to build connections and relationships even if the doubting voice in your head is telling you it’s a waste of time. That learning was reinforced this year. I followed up with someone I met at a conference in 2005 not sure that anything would really happen. She was an internal person and when I met her there were a number of external coaches like myself vying for her attention, but I kept in touch. This year a new opportunity in her organization emerged (not the one we had originally been discussing) and I was invited to join. Over the course of the year I became involved in three different coaching programs and ended up with 17 new coaching clients. Some of my clients who work in sales say it can take three or four years or more to turn a relationship into business. The lesson here is that relationships take time and effort to build, but the outcome can be well worth the wait.
2. Remain alert to your “default” patterns of behavior. No matter how self-aware you are or how emotionally intelligent you think you are, there’s always “stuff” to work on. Certain situations will trigger you to revert to old behaviors. We all have deeply ingrained “default” behaviors that come with our hardwiring and our childhood development. Holidays, which call for family interactions, can trigger these old behaviors, so be on the alert. Old patterns get triggered in business settings as well. When I work in groups I need to be especially sensitive to my old patterns and to my directive style. I’m the second of five children and all of my siblings are opposite in style to me. I’m more extroverted than they are and much more of a change agent. I like to be in charge, so it’s no surprise that I run my own business. But I often collaborate with others, and this year I worked on a project with a group of other coaches. In this particular close-knit group, my style was in the minority. In my family I always felt different and in this group I felt different. It took conscious effort to manage those feelings of difference and to keep myself from getting emotionally triggered. I would have liked the group to move in a different direction than it did, but I had to balance my personal beliefs about what success meant with how the group and its leader defined success. If you don’t stay aware of what’s happening and what your triggers are you can get off balance.
3. Keep your edge. I am very confident in interviews, but this year I learned that over confidence can backfire. Don’t get too comfortable. Over confidence can lead to arrogance and not being as prepared as you need to be. Before you go on an interview or attend an important meeting make sure you think about the event ahead of time and review what kind of impact you want to make, what you want others to learn about or from you, and what questions you need to ask. Emotionally center yourself immediately before the event so that your energy is focused and not too scattered or too laid back. If you are too comfortable and believe that you can “wing” it, you might find afterwards that your performance wasn’t as good as it could have been and your over confidence might have sent the wrong message and blown an opportunity.
4. Trust your intuition. Without going into the details of this learning, I had an incident earlier in the year with a new client. Fairly quickly, I started to question whether the match was a good one. As we were proceeding forward, my intuition was screaming at me to get out, and at one point I suggested that I wasn’t the right person. But I got caught in trying to please the client, so we decided to create some specific boundaries around the engagement and to keep moving forward together. When I say my intuition was screaming, I mean it: I had visceral body reactions to my decision, which I tried to calm by offering to withdraw, and then tried to calm further by creating boundaries that I thought would help. The boundaries didn’t work. Later, in reviewing what I had done, I remembered one other time in my life where my intuition was screaming at me and I didn’t listen. That outcome was disastrous; this one wasn’t, but it wasn’t good and no one was pleased. Intuition is the voice of your inner wisdom. Pay attention to it.
5. Take more time off. This year I took three separate vacations — more time than I have ever taken off in the past. The first trip was to Santa Fe where I attended a conference on science and consciousness and added some extras vacation days to it. The second vacation spot was Bermuda where I took five days to lay in the sun and simply relax by myself. The third was to Paris with close family members to celebrate my birthday. Each vacation refreshed me and enabled me to come back to my work with more vigor and a clear mind. Many of my clients, especially those in the US, have forgotten how to take vacations. Even if they go away, they stay technologically hooked in so they’re never free from the stress of work and the mental exercises it requires. Your clients and everyone else can get along without you for a week or even two. You can also get along without your laptop and your blackberry. We’re caught up in a belief system that says we have to be available 24/7. But you need down time to re-energize and de-stress yourself. I challenge you to take more vacations in 2007 and see what happens!
Coaching Questions
1. What did you learn in 2006?
2. What did you do well that you want to keep doing?
3. What will you do differently in 2007?
Copyright © 2006 Ginny O'Brien All Rights
