During 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 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 proposed solution.) “No,” he answers. “Most good systemic solutions make immediate symptoms of problem worse at first.”

Why is this? Because we turn and face what isn’t working along with 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 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 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 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 “why” is a question for therapy, in several months she might arrive at … who knows what. That’s 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 courage and energy.

IT’S NOT THERAPY