Friday Reflections - The Thing Beneath the Thing đ§
Last week, I had a coaching session with a client who wanted improve his communication skills (note: he gave me permission to share this story).
He had received feedback at work that he was too long-winded and agreed the feedback was accurate. He was hoping that during our session, I could give him advice or guidance on how to summarize his points more concisely.
Of course, he's been working with me long enough to know that I donât generally give advice and we don't generally seek to solve the surface level concern đ.
Instead, I act as an empathetic inquirer, gently unearthing layer after layer, until we discover the root of the issue. Because itâs only once we reach the root that we can then create effective and sustainable solutions.
Our conversation went something like this:
Me: Whatâs your motivation for being long-winded?
Him: I feel like Iâm not being clear, so I add more to be clear.
Me: How does over-communicating serve you?
Him: It helps me hedge against my concern that my message wonât come across.
Me: Where does the fear of your message not coming across come from?
Him: English isnât my first language so I have a fear of being misunderstood, which impacts my confidence in communicating.
Me: I donât experience you as being difficult to understand at all. What are you believing about your English proficiency that makes you fear being misunderstood?
Him: I feel like I donât know enough vocabulary to effectively communicate my point.
Me: Ah, got it. Because you believe you donât have a robust enough vocabulary to capture the exact idea youâre trying to communicate, you feel a lack of confidence and then over-communicate in the hopes that somewhere in all of those words, theyâll hear your message.
Him: Exactly.
So we see that the "thing beneath the thing" in this case wasnât poor communication skills.
The thing beneath the thing was the following belief/feeling/behavior sequence: I believe my vocabulary is lacking therefore I fear being misunderstood and feel a lack of confidence in my ability to effectively communicate, and thus my resulting behavior is to over-communicate.
If we had just focused on the behavior (learning to be more concise) and didn't address the root cause of the behavior (belief about his vocabulary), then that new behavior would be lacking a solid foundation on which to sustain itself.
Instead, we focused on shifting the beliefs and then creating new behaviors aligned with those new beliefs.
When weâre willing to be self-reflective and get to the thing beneath the thing, the subsequent clarity enables us to identify what we really want or need and what's really holding us back.
We can then make conscious choices to overcome what's holding us back and experience what we really want and/or need.
And, when weâre no longer limited by our assumptions (of what the issue is or what we want), we donât need to waste time pursuing things we donât really want/need and/or creating solutions that wonât last.
That feeling when we uncover a new insight about ourselves.
So my invitation to curiosity to you today is this:
Whatâs something youâve been struggling with and havenât figured out a solution to yet?
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being âcompletelyâ and 1 being ânot at allâ, how clear are you on the root cause of that struggle?
If your number is anything less than 10, then I invite you to spend some time considering what the root cause(s) is/are before spending more time on solutioning.
Need help with this? I currently have a few spots available for new clients so letâs chat.
Stay curious,
Jessica
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