I am a coach and mentor by training and everyday I coach and mentor clients with challenges, goals and aspirations in their personal and professional life. Here’s something that I have noticed over the past 10 years: many are looking for a new direction, a new career, or moving into a space in which they have no experience, no knowledge, no training nor skill-set; and yet they continuously beat themselves up because they are frustrated that they have not mastered some or all the components to the direction they want to move in. Now if you are reading this and or perhaps listening to a friend bemoan this same thing, you might lean back in your chair and state the obvious. What is the obvious to you?
That’s right when you are outside the circumstances it is clear that none of us is able to “Master the Unknown”. However, when you are in the churning white water rapids, it is all you can do to keep your head above water and literally be drowning in the white foam which surrounds you.
Okay, you be the coach now, what would say to your friend?
The reality is that as a friend, as a coach, or as a consultant who is being paid to give answers, none of us can “fix it” for the person.
What can we do to help out, to coach our friend with this issue?
One of the things I do with my clients is to create a “Bigger Vision/Picture” of exactly what it is that the client is trying to tackle.
We break the big picture down into smaller pictures.
Then we prioritize each smaller picture into what comes first, what comes second, what comes third and so on.
I believe it is vital to keep a tangible “BIGGER VISION” board in full view of the client at all times.
Why? What does this accomplish?
By creating this visual the client keeps the “dream, the vision” in tact and is reminded what it is that they are accomplishing.
I also use the puzzle piece idea quite often.
Make two visuals. Post one and cut the others up into the smaller pieces and keep only the piece the client is currently working on in front of him/her at all times. The other pieces are turned over and numbered as from their priority. Once one piece is completed we celebrate and place the piece onto the bigger who vision and date its completion and then…..
The client turns over priority piece number two and the client works on that piece.
This gives a “process” to the madness which actually immobilizes the client.
What do you do?