The 3-step blogs
I often use what I call ‘the power of the three’ to help clients focus on what is helping or stopping them find a way forward. This method often highlights the key motivators enabling the potential change up whilst also exposing the main blockers preventing steps being taken to move on and up. See more 3-step blogs at the end of this one.
Clarity Capacity Courage
CLARITY of the change
What sort of change are you dealing with? Try and write it in a sentence and see how much is self-directed and how much is other-directed, ie. are you pursuing it for yourself or are others asking you to make it? Also, consider your status quo - things as they are now. What would you gain by making this change, what might stay the same … and what might you lose? Get as much insight from yourself and others as you can. Avoid assumptions and apply your investigative skills to fully understand both the nature of the change and what will be required to make it. Coaching can help you find clarity.
CAPACITY to engage in the change
What have you got in you to bring this change about? You cannot coerce yourself or be coerced by others, however much you or they want you to. This is all about co-operation, which is your choice. You either want it for yourself or you want to join in with it. This is where you explore your energy levels, desires, anxieties, hopes, fears, skills and weigh up the likelihood of achieving the change. To pull off transformational change you will need to intentionally stop some things in order to start new things. Significant change cannot just be added to ongoing ‘business as usual’ because by its very intention it will change the current normal into a new normal, establishing a brand new ‘business as usual.’ Coaching can help you assess your capacity for making the change you want to make.
COURAGE to commit to making it happen
What if you did decide to actually make this change? Are you up for it? Can you do it? Will you do it? When you commit to making the change happen you will encounter the challenges that rise up to stop you or persuade you that the status quo is really just fine. But if you are determined to make the change - and help those alongside you wanting to do the same - your courage will get severely tested but, like a weak muscle at the start of the new exercise programme, it will become stronger the more you use it and become more effective in helping the change take shape. Courage grows the more it is used and ‘encourages’ you within to keep on going to reach the tipping-point of the change you want to bring about for yourself or your team or organisation. Coaching helps you to determine your level of courage and find new resources within.
This blog post comes out of a coaching exercise conducted with leaders and teams engaged in the audacious ‘Transforming Wigan’ strategic development project (2015-21) in an attempt to help each person involved to ascertain their level of understanding, personal commitment and potential to engage in leading change. If you find this post helpful, why not book a coaching session to explore how it might help you specifically or, if you are a team leader in an organisation or part of an organisation, why not ask about a 3C workshop?