She was angry. I could feel her anger and frustration though Teams. They were coming at me in wave upon wave. Crashing down on me making it hard to breathe. “I just don’t know what more I can do” she kept saying. My thoughts were that I had no idea how I was going to help her. I was starting to drown in her maelstrom of emotions. I was literally all at sea. The situation seemed doomed.
” I wanted a mentor, not a coach. I need to be able to have the inside knowledge of how I can move on from this horrid job.”
This was my second session with Clara. A bright, articulate woman in her 40’s who had worked up to a senior position in her company. Her analytical talents and attention to detail had propelled her to her current role. She was the go-to woman for research and her project work was second to none.
As the company changed she found herself more and more out of touch. Her team had been changed beyond all recognition. Most of her colleagues had been moved to other departments or had taken up other roles in outside companies. She felt she had been left behind. Her skills were needed for less in-depth work and she did not feel she was giving any value to her boss or the company.
To make matters worse she had gone for a promotion two years previously and she had not been appointed. The feedback was she was “better on paper” and that was that. She wanted that promotion so much, so she was still angry and hurt about it when we started coaching.
The phrase she kept saying was “I just don’t know what more I can do”.
As a very new coach I was also thinking “I just don’t know what more I can do”
However, that became the turning point. I thought perhaps if you cannot go through the problem, you could maybe go around the problem.
Working through the issues.
We worked on recognising what value she was giving, what was happening at home and looking at the other limiting beliefs she had. As with all of us, there were quite a few. Through the further three sessions she began realising that there were other things she could do. She was very quick to tell me that the promotion she was wanting did not come along every day. I challenged her on what she would do if another one was advertised. “But it won’t be, and if it was it will turn out the same way”, “let’s pretend it did” was my response. Once she could pretend that a job was being advertised, we worked on what she could do differently this time.
She then moved forward in her thinking.
In our last session, she said to me that a job had been advertised. I tentatively asked if she was going to apply and she said she was going to give them a ring and then apply. She said it with a smile. We coached some more on mindset and how she would approach this interview.
I did ask her if she would let me know the outcome.
A month later she emailed me to say that she got the job. In her words “I was exactly what they were looking for”.
Working with me she said “I felt that Maria understood the issues that we discussed and provided me help and support in recognising possible solutions…..I enjoyed the coaching sessions and consider that they enabled me to refocus on what is important to me”.
I was humbled.
Do you feel like Clara. Stuck in a never ending thought loop that is not serving you and in fact keeping you stuck? Come and book a discovery call with me at The Professionals Coach and see if we can get you unstuck.
