Not too long ago, I was a teacher. A good one, I hope. The job was not that difficult. I would stand in front of a room of undergraduates and tell them how to do things. And they would do the thing, and then it would fall to me to take the thing and assign it a grade — essentially telling them how well or how poorly they had done. All of us in the classroom accepted this arrangement. It was what they were here for, and what I was being paid to do.
I took the teaching habit with me into the professional world, first as a software developer, and then as an Agile Coach for Fortune 500 clients. I was very, very good at telling people what to do. There was only one problem, and that was the vast majority of the time my clients didn't do what I told them to. They were polite. They listened. They asked intelligent questions, but at the end of the day it was back to business as usual.
The problem wasn't what I was asking for, or how I was asking. Nor was there any problem with my ability to teach and mentor. I was very, very good at teaching people how to do things. I could sit with them for an hour or so, and by the end I was certain they knew what I was looking for. So why didn't they keep doing it? Why did company after company bring me in and pay me a decent hourly wage if they were just going to ignore my recommendations?
Eventually I realized where the problem was. Clients, it turned out, didn't want to do what I suggested because it wasn't their idea. What I was asking them to do would have helped them. They were suggestions that had helped me immensely, but that didn't matter because they had no intrinsic incentive whatsoever to do what I told them.
There's a somewhat faulty mechanism at the heart of teaching. There's an attitude that says You suck at this. I don't. And the only way you will not suck at this will be to listen to what I tell you to do. This works only in very limited ways. If I don't know how to play an instrument, finding a teacher who knows how to play substantially better than I do will help my playing. But what's going to keep me playing? What's going to bring me back to practicing hour after hour? Intrinsic motivation matters.
At school and in the workplace, what keeps us going all too often is fear. I don't want to fail this class! or I don't want to lose this job and end up poor and homeless! These are reasonable worries, but they are abysmal motivators. They will not change your life for the better. As Ron Livingston's character in Office Space puts it, fear "will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
So what's the alternative? Well, coaching. A good coach starts with the premise that you don't suck, that you're actually pretty remarkable. Maybe you're having trouble seeing that, but that remarkable quality is there. All we need to do is clear some space, give you some room to experiment, and you'll see it too.
Once I learned how to coach other people, my results changed drastically. My clients grew and thrived, not because they were listening to me, but because I learned how to give them space to listen to themselves.
I have coached enough people at this point to tell you that many of us never grow out of relying on fear as a motivator. A lot of coaching relationships start with clients saying, "Are you going to make me do _____?"
No, I'm not. Not at all. I'm going to help you discover what you love to do, and I'm going to give you permission and support to go do that. Then we'll have a good conversation about your purpose, and what you might want to take on as your mission in life. And we'll watch as you go do that as well. We'll learn how to negotiate with the need to feed yourself and support your family, because that still matters, but we're going to find the intersection of what gives you joy and what can support you financially.
Everything you undertake is going to be your idea — what you want to do. There will be no need to artificially manufacture motivation, because you'll be dying to do the thing. It will feel like fun, because it is fun.
The process is literally life changing.
That is why I coach.
And I'm looking for clients right now. If you would like to see for yourself what coaching can do for you, drop me a line and we'll find some time on my calendar to see how I can help you. Or join my mailing list and I'll send you emails that will help nudge you in a new direction.
I look forward to meeting you.