With coaching support, talking and listening are just the start of unblocking your potential
The first post I created for Emerging Trails focused on the unexpected, yet obvious, improvements gained in communication, skills, and relationships — within coaching, work, and personally — when creating the space and intention to listen to oneself and others. While it’s a skill I’m committed to mastering to improve my effectiveness as a Professional Coach, it’s one all leaders would be remiss not to develop expertise in. A supplemental ‘obvious yet powerful’ skill that reaps many of the same professional growth benefits of intentional listening is creating space to… talk. Yes, talk!
I was chatting an extended family member recently who works as a VP of Operations at a wholesale B2B company, and as we were catching up on our professional journeys he was quick to share his sentiments on working with his current Leadership/Executive Coach:
- “I love it. It’s honestly a lot like therapy because I never realized how much I try to work through things in my head. Just being able to talk it out, 9 times out of 10 I am able to gain clarity and move forward.”
- “It’s different being able to talk through situations with someone outside of [my] organization — direct reports, my manager, leadership peers — as they are in organizational problem solving mode. Coaching helps me solve specific problems, yes, but also understand where I’m standing in my own way of forward movement. It’s amazing how quickly I can get there once I just get the thoughts out of my brain.”
I wanted to hug him (I didn’t… awkward!) so I told him how happy it made me that he had such a good coach, because that’s exactly how it should go when given the space to simply talk it out.
Making the space to articulate the opportunities and challenges you’re facing, being heard, and hearing yourself, I personally believe it’s undershooting it to say that’s 50% of getting unblocked. A Coach will guide you to see new perspectives and learn more about yourself as part of your own problem solving and growth processes, but it starts with lifting the fog… a fog that overthinking in the brain often causes.
Listening and talking as a means to improve your effectiveness, seems easy and obvious, right?! In practice, it can be hard to sustain, so if you’re unsure of where to start or how to implement this as part of your professional repertoire, you know who to reach out to!
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