The Anatomy of a Change

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.